Necessary video card to drive a 24" widescreen?

[lousydood]

I have an older system (AMD64 3000, ATI x800XL) and I'm looking at putting together my next machine for general purpose and gaming.

I currently display on a Mitsubishi DiamondTron 2060u and I may keep that for some time, but I am looking to go LCD sometime later.

What video cards would be necessary in order to run games such as Oblivion, smoothly, at 1920x1200? I'm not so concerned about price, within reason.

I haven't settled on particular motherboard or CPU either, but it will be one of the newer dual-core whichever happens to be at a good price point.

 

[ViRGE]

Oblivion in particular is beastly, take a look at AnandTech's benchmarks for it. At 1920x1200 you're looking at either a GeForce 8800-series card or a Radeon 2900XT just to get playable frame rates. If you want to use antialiasing and ansio filtering, those requirements become a 8800GTX(or Ultra).

 

[secretanchitman]

i would say that an X2900XT, 8800GTX would be required to run oblivion at 1920x1200 cranked...i get by just fine with my 8800GTX 320MB. it plays all the games i want at 1920x1200 with everything cranked.

 

[Rike]

Originally posted by: secretanchitman
i would say that an X2900XT, 8800GTX would be required to run oblivion at 1920x1200 cranked...i get by just fine with my 8800GTX 320MB. it plays all the games i want at 1920x1200 with everything cranked.

If price is no object "within reason," then you're looking for 8800GTX for top end bang for the buck right now. Something like this.

 

[lousydood]

Thanks. I think I will be picking up that card, though I may wait a little to see if the price drops.

 

[lousydood]

Actually, the eVGA 8800Ultra looks tempting with the Newegg combo deal. eVGA mobo + this card get $100 off, that puts the price about the same as the GTX. I think.

 

[zylander]

I ran my Dell 24" on a 6600gt for about a week. It got the job done, but the latest games had to have the settings turned down. Now with my OCed 7900gt I can play Oblivion and STALKER at medium-high settings with playable framerates.

 

[drakore]

Depending on how much money you want to spend, i would look at the 8800 GTS 640mb

 

[lousydood]

Here's what I'm thinking atm:

Intel E6600
EVGA 650i Ultra T1
EVGA GeForce 8800GTX
Crucial 2x1GB PC2 6400
Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro
Antec 900
Corsair 520w

open to suggestions

 

[tigersty1e]

The important question is how many more months will the card be able to play games at that res in medium-high-noAA quality?

 

[lousydood]

The EVGA 650i Ultra + EVGA GeForce8800Ultra combo is about $50 more than the EVGA 650i Ultra + EVGA GeForce8800GTX combo.

Is the Ultra worth that $50 more? And should I even be considering this motherboard?

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: lousydood
The EVGA 650i Ultra + EVGA GeForce8800Ultra combo is about $50 more than the EVGA 650i Ultra + EVGA GeForce8800GTX combo.

Is the Ultra worth that $50 more? And should I even be considering this motherboard?

$50 more? That's actually not a bad deal; 10% better performance for what sounds like 10% over the cost of a GTX. What GTX is it?(EVGA's factory overclocked 8800GTX KO ACS3 is actually faster than their plain Ultra)

 

[gramboh]

The thing is with the GTX and Ultra, you can possibly OC the GTX to Ultra speeds pretty easily. The GTS to GTX is a bigger jump due to memory and shader units or whatever they are called, in addition to clock speeds.

Not sure on the 650i deal, check the motherboard forums. The P35 is the hot thing to get now, moreso than 680i unless you want to run SLI.

 

[lousydood]

Just the EVGA 8800GTX 768-P2-N831-AR http://www.newegg.com/product/...p?item=N82E16814130072

vs EVGA 8800Ultra 768-P2-N881-AR http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16814130090

 

[Rike]

The only difference between the GTX and the Ultra are the GPU, shader and memory clocks and the difference isn't much. However the AR price difference is $133.

Of course, if you're already wanted tp get that EVGA mobo anyway, it's only a $33 difference for guaranteed performance. I'd do that only if that is the mobo you already wanted. If not, go GTX and then see if it will OC.

 

[aiya24]

it also depends on what games your playing now and will be in the future. since price for you is no object, get the 8800GTX.

the Ultra, IMO, is a waste of money. yeah, its faster but i doubt you'll notice the difference. FYI, the Ultra uses faster memory than the GTX and also the A3 stepping/batch thats why it can reach higher clocks than some GTXs. but you could get a A3 GTX and test if your memory can run at Ultra speeds.

most people who purchased their GTS320/640s in the past month have gotten A3 batch cores.

 

[counterpoint]

Well as for the mobo, I can't find any reason not to get it. It's a good price (especially with the combo) and the alternative is a P35-based board which would be good but more expensive.