Need help for deciding a graphics card for Crysis

[CrossFireXT17]

Hey everyone, well I am planning on building a brand new budget computer this year (keeping around $700). My question is what Video card do you guys recommend for maybe around a $200/$250 price-point? I think I'm going to get a nvidia, because I've used ATI's everytime, which I love them, but also I want to run Ubuntu, and I read that Nvidia's are better to use for all the desktop effects, since they have more compatible drivers. But also is DirectX 10 really worth the big upgrade? Cause I think I can get some nice DX9 cards for cheaper, but it comes down to see if its even worth it

Thanks guys! Any help would be appreciated, have a wonderful day

 

[cmdrdredd]

DX10 cards in that range are junk. If you want to only spend that much then try to find a good deal on an X1950 card.

 

[CP5670]

You used to be able to get a 320MB 8800GTS for $250, but the cheapest price I see now is $270.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: CP5670
You used to be able to get a 320MB 8800GTS for $250, but the cheapest price I see now is $270.

really that low? then maybe spend a few more dollars for that

 

[JustaGeek]

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: CP5670
You used to be able to get a 320MB 8800GTS for $250, but the cheapest price I see now is $270.

really that low? then maybe spend a few more dollars for that

And then I would add another $50 for the 640MB version. He wants the card for Crysis, right...?

 

[MarcVenice]

Wait till 26th of september, for the demo to be released. Even if performance sucks on it, it should still give a decent indication on what kind of videocard is going to be needed to run at certain resolutions. Then decide. No use in spending 250$ when the card is going to run it crappy anyways, or perhaps crappy in dx10, and might as well spend 150$ to play in dx9, or an extra 100$ to play it in dx10 instead, Whose to say.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: JustaGeek

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd

Originally posted by: CP5670
You used to be able to get a 320MB 8800GTS for $250, but the cheapest price I see now is $270.

really that low? then maybe spend a few more dollars for that

And then I would add another $50 for the 640MB version. He wants the card for Crysis, right...?

he did mention a budget though.

 

[Pain999]

I agree either 8800GTS/640MB to be safe or wait at least until the Crysis demo is released to see if the 320MB is going to cut it at the resolution you need. Wouldn't it suck to spend $250 on a 320MB only to find out on Crysis you can only do 800x600 or a higher resolution with no eye candy with good fps?

 

[asdftt123]

Umm...I doubt that. At the very least he will be able to handle 1280*1024 with 320.

 

[CrossFireXT17]

alright...I Can prob change my budge around some and get it up to a $380 card... now what company would you recommend? I just quickly went to Nvidia's site and they have these listed http://www.nvidia.com/object/b...lts.html?id=8800GTS640 what company do you think does the best? I know it prob varies by card, but I'm just wondering


Now for also future reference, can I just post what I think I should get for the rest of my computer here and have you all help me with that? (instead of just having to make a topic in each "hardware" section?) That'd be greatly appreciated!!! I know a lot about computers, and what each thing means on the different hardware aspects, but I just can't combine it all together very well (I always feel I'm going to miss something and have it now match)


thanks a lot guys for you help so far!!!

 

[Laminator]

Go to Dell's web site and get an eVGA 8800GTS 640MB for $306 after discounts and rebates. Great card, great company, great price, and leaves you with a chunk left over. The 8800GTS 640MB is the best card you can get for $380, anyway. The next card up is the 8800GTX and that is $500.

There is also the HD 2900XT, but considering its performance is comparable to the 8800GTS and the 8800GTS is only $306, it's a no-brainer.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: Laminator
Go to Dell's web site and get an eVGA 8800GTS 640MB for $306 after discounts and rebates. Great card, great company, great price, and leaves you with a chunk left over. The 8800GTS 640MB is the best card you can get for $380, anyway. The next card up is the 8800GTX and that is $500.

There is also the HD 2900XT, but considering its performance is comparable to the 8800GTS and the 8800GTS is only $306, it's a no-brainer.

There's still the issue with x64 drivers if you are planning to use Vista x64. ATI still has the better driverset in that realm. But, totally up to the buyer.

 

[pcslookout]

Originally posted by: Laminator
Go to Dell's web site and get an eVGA 8800GTS 640MB for $306 after discounts and rebates. Great card, great company, great price, and leaves you with a chunk left over. The 8800GTS 640MB is the best card you can get for $380, anyway. The next card up is the 8800GTX and that is $500.

There is also the HD 2900XT, but considering its performance is comparable to the 8800GTS and the 8800GTS is only $306, it's a no-brainer.

The tax alone makes this deal not hot.

 

[Keysplayr]

Originally posted by: pcslookout

Originally posted by: Laminator
Go to Dell's web site and get an eVGA 8800GTS 640MB for $306 after discounts and rebates. Great card, great company, great price, and leaves you with a chunk left over. The 8800GTS 640MB is the best card you can get for $380, anyway. The next card up is the 8800GTX and that is $500.

There is also the HD 2900XT, but considering its performance is comparable to the 8800GTS and the 8800GTS is only $306, it's a no-brainer.

The tax alone makes this deal not hot.

Even if the tax is 30.00, It's still a SUPER hot deal at 306. Considering the cheapest GTS640 on newegg is 349 after rebates.

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: pcslookout

Originally posted by: Laminator
Go to Dell's web site and get an eVGA 8800GTS 640MB for $306 after discounts and rebates. Great card, great company, great price, and leaves you with a chunk left over. The 8800GTS 640MB is the best card you can get for $380, anyway. The next card up is the 8800GTX and that is $500.

There is also the HD 2900XT, but considering its performance is comparable to the 8800GTS and the 8800GTS is only $306, it's a no-brainer.

The tax alone makes this deal not hot.

I ordered a Visiontek HD2900XT from them. They list the price as $381 and then charge me $22 for taxes but offer free shipping (3 day) and then if you use paypal you get it for $365 which is less than anywhere else you can find.

I chose to stick with ATI cards since their drivers seem better with Vista x64 which is what I use. You can get an 8800gts from them for a good price too using this. I recommend it and dell is a big company with competitive pricing. DOn't be taken back by the tax, because the 10% off with paypal deal is really nice.

 

[CrossFireXT17]

Originally posted by: Laminator
Go to Dell's web site and get an eVGA 8800GTS 640MB for $306 after discounts and rebates. Great card, great company, great price, and leaves you with a chunk left over. The 8800GTS 640MB is the best card you can get for $380, anyway. The next card up is the 8800GTX and that is $500.

There is also the HD 2900XT, but considering its performance is comparable to the 8800GTS and the 8800GTS is only $306, it's a no-brainer.

I went to the site, and its listed as $370? unless I looked at the wrong one haha, I added it to my cart and it stayed the same price

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
There's still the issue with x64 drivers if you are planning to use Vista x64. ATI still has the better driverset in that realm. But, totally up to the buyer.

I wasn't planning on using x64 anything right now, too much to worry about for this build (I know its a great technology and will soon come, but I just will stick to 32bit)

 

[Laminator]

Originally posted by: CrossFireXT17
I went to the site, and its listed as $370? unless I looked at the wrong one haha, I added it to my cart and it stayed the same price

You have to apply some discounts to get it to a certain price and then send in a mail-in rebate. There's a thread somewhere around here that tells you specifically how to do it.

If you don't mind waiting, though, I'd seriously recommend waiting until the GeForce 9 cards are released in November. Even if they don't turn out to be twice as fast as GeForce 8 we will still see a price drop and since GeForce 8 prices haven't moved much since their release last November, the price drop could be very substantial.

I wouldn't worry too much if your video card budget was, say, $150, but $380 is a lot of money to blow on a GPU that has a good chance of being worth not nearly as much and being replaced by a faster GPU in just two months.

 

[CrossFireXT17]

Originally posted by: Laminator

Originally posted by: CrossFireXT17
I went to the site, and its listed as $370? unless I looked at the wrong one haha, I added it to my cart and it stayed the same price

You have to apply some discounts to get it to a certain price and then send in a mail-in rebate. There's a thread somewhere around here that tells you specifically how to do it.

If you don't mind waiting, though, I'd seriously recommend waiting until the GeForce 9 cards are released in November. Even if they don't turn out to be twice as fast as GeForce 8 we will still see a price drop and since GeForce 8 prices haven't moved much since their release last November, the price drop could be very substantial.

I wouldn't worry too much if your video card budget was, say, $150, but $380 is a lot of money to blow on a GPU that has a good chance of being worth not nearly as much and being replaced by a faster GPU in just two months.

Where is this thread at? I tried looking for it and couldn't seem to find it...

the budget can be increased, I'm just trying to not spend $3,000 I'm trying to keep it as low as possible. So thanks for the tip for waiting, but I want to try and get this done while I have time before school gets into full swing, so I can get it now, and I'm guessing this will be the best deal on this card for a while

 

[cmdrdredd]

Originally posted by: CrossFireXT17

Originally posted by: Laminator

Originally posted by: CrossFireXT17
I went to the site, and its listed as $370? unless I looked at the wrong one haha, I added it to my cart and it stayed the same price

You have to apply some discounts to get it to a certain price and then send in a mail-in rebate. There's a thread somewhere around here that tells you specifically how to do it.

If you don't mind waiting, though, I'd seriously recommend waiting until the GeForce 9 cards are released in November. Even if they don't turn out to be twice as fast as GeForce 8 we will still see a price drop and since GeForce 8 prices haven't moved much since their release last November, the price drop could be very substantial.

I wouldn't worry too much if your video card budget was, say, $150, but $380 is a lot of money to blow on a GPU that has a good chance of being worth not nearly as much and being replaced by a faster GPU in just two months.

Where is this thread at? I tried looking for it and couldn't seem to find it...

the budget can be increased, I'm just trying to not spend $3,000 I'm trying to keep it as low as possible. So thanks for the tip for waiting, but I want to try and get this done while I have time before school gets into full swing, so I can get it now, and I'm guessing this will be the best deal on this card for a while

You have to search for it. I did a quick search and didn't find it either. I didn't search hot deals though...gotta be in there.

 

[CrossFireXT17]

hey thanks, I found it then... the rebate ended the last day of August :-\ but its alright, I'll keep watching for it...

now question for motherboard, what exactly should I look for? I think I got a CPU and a motherboard picked out...

CPU: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16819115031
Motherboard: http://www.newegg.com/Product/...x?Item=N82E16813128063

the reviews for that motherboard looked really good from what I've read on google , and I like the included HDMI, but if I install the Nvidia card, does that disable the HDMI port since I'm taking it away from the onboard port?

also I like that CPU for a dual core, and also for the Intel's virtual technology, because I want to try out linux, and if I can switch between the two even faster, that'd be awesome!


What do you all think?

 

[Delerious]

With a $380 video card that processor may end up being a bottleneck.

 

[bryanW1995]

not if he runs at 3.0 ghz, which is only an 800 mhz oc on that cpu. Why do you want hdmi included? are you planning to use this as an htpc? You could always use an hdmi/dvi cable to connect an hdmi device to your video card.

 

[myocardia]

Originally posted by: CrossFireXT17
also I like that CPU for a dual core, and also for the Intel's virtual technology, because I want to try out linux, and if I can switch between the two even faster, that'd be awesome!


What do you all think?

That cpu doesn't have Intel's Virtualization tech. Only the E6300's and higher have virtualization capabilities.

 

[SickBeast]

OP: IMO you should wait for Crysis to come out before buying anything.

If you game alot and your current system won't cut it (i.e. you need something *now*), then I would say that the 320MB GTS is a decent choice.

There is a good chance that the game will be able to use your system memory to supplement the 320MB of video memory if you can run Crysis in DX10 mode and it's properly coded. My guess is that you will need fast system memory for this to help, and even if you do have good memory, it won't be as fast as having the extra 320MB.

nVidia is supposedly doing their fall refresh right around when Crysis is coming out. Seriously consider waiting.

Also keep in mind that neither nVidia nor ATI has a decent DX10 driver at this point. They are barely functional. Games like Bioshock have required patches, hotfixes, and beta drivers just to run.

As for the 32/64 bit thing, generally the 32-bit drivers have been better. That said, Vista-64 is the future, and you *will* need 4GB of RAM or more during the lifetime of a new graphics card.

ATI has had the reputation of having better Vista drivers, regardless of 32/64 bits. I have experienced a few bugs with my 64-bit nVidia drivers, but they have all been very minor and have not directly affected gameplay (they were to do with the control panels and such).

 

[CrossFireXT17]

Alright, so if I do indeed wait like a lot of people are saying, how long do you think it would be till stuff would be ready? December? That's fine, I'm just curious...

So in otherwords, would it be worth spending time and doing research on what products to buy, and then hope that it goes on a price drop this fall? or just wait and see what new stuff is shipped out?