Which Video Card for Very Tight Budget?

[dfloyd]

Right now I have a Athlon 64 3200+, 1GB of Memory and a X800XL.

Mainly looking for something to make it easier to jack up settings such as FSAA and AF on the following games:

Battlefield II
Fear
NFS Most Wanted (This game just tears my system up with slowdowns)
And of course future games

Before I list the cards I am looking at let me add one point, I am having to piece together this budget literally one dollar at a time. Very tight on cash in other words.

With that said here are the cards:

The 7800 GT (I have heard this could be had for $250 and to me that sounds very good for that price)

The X850XT (Planning on attempting to overclock it to PE speeds but I see retail models of this for around $200)

Or the X1800XL (I would much prefer the XT but considering the cost difference it is unfortunatly far out of my range)

Now remember the main reason I am even considering the X850XT and such is because in several benchmarks (Like BF2 on this siteit has even surpassed the 7800 GTX when I turn on FSAA and AF (The main reason I am upgrading). So for $200 it appears to be quite the monster card and considering many have said it is easy to overclock to PE and higher speeds. Not to mention it is just as fast as the X1800XL in several games with the high end settings.

Now I know it sounds like the X850XT might be perfect for me, but thats the last catch, future proof. I dont have any idea when I can upgrade again and I am not sure how it compares to the others considering things like HDR and SM 3.0 etc.

Ok now that I have laid out all the info, what do you guys think? All suggestions much appreciated.

Also if anyone from Anandtech is reading this would not be so rough if I can win that Athlon X2 4800+ from Newgg , considering my birthday is the nineteenth of this month would be a nice gift heh.

 

[MacVista]

the X850XT probably... however with a X800XL already... it wont be an enormous difference.

 

[Xenon14]

I just ordered a GTO^2 from the forums for $180 shipped. It comes unlocked at 16 pipes and is a great overclocker.. reaches XT speeds on stock cooler. You should look into it, definately a great bang for the buck.

But yeah, as the previous post said, since you already have an x800xl, it's probably pointless.

 

[KBTuning]

if it were me id go for a 7800GT

 

[buzzsaw13]

Spend the extra cash for a 7800GT

 

[XJustMeX21]

7800gt no question.

 

[Powermoloch]

??u have an X800XL eh? Try sell it off, and use the extra cash w/ the current amount u have to pick a decent card for ya. Jumping to x850xt will just disappoint u.

7800GT just get my vote

 

[Effect]

Originally posted by: Powermoloch
??u have an X800XL eh? Try sell it off, and use the extra cash w/ the current amount u have to pick a decent card for ya. Jumping to x850xt will just disappoint u.

7800GT just get my vote

Agreed. The 7800GT for performance (after sale of x800xl, will be a fair bit cheaper). Or if you really want to save money, go with the sapphire x800GTO^2.

 

[yacoub]

Originally posted by: dfloyd
Right now I have a Athlon 64 3200+, 1GB of Memory and a X800XL.

Wow, that's exactly what I have right now... only I recently oc'd my 3200+ to 3800+ speeds and have my X800XL (Zalman on mine) oc'd slightly.

I play NFS:MW in 1024x with everything maxed out and it's smooth and beautiful but I could understand wanting higher res than that especially if you have a bigger monitor.

Also FEAR is a mess to try to play if soft shadowing and high settings are on even at 1024x.

Of the cards you listed I would rec the 7800GT but honestly if you can wait another couple weeks there should be a lot more info out on the 7900GT/GTX and probably the X1900XL so you will have a better idea what to expect in March/April.

 

[Hacp]

7800GT. It has alot of overclocking headroom.

 

[dfloyd]

Hmm seems most agree the 7800 GT is the best bet right now but I am seriously confused by that. I say this because of all the benchmarks I have seen seem to show for the most part, the XL and even the X850XT in many cases beating up the GT. At least when games are ran in the settings I am hoping to run them in. With no FSAA or AF the 7800 GT usually wins most all of the time, but once you crank up FSAA and AF the Ati cards really seemed to be pulling ahead. Am I reading the wrong benchmarks?

And please dont get me wrong, not disagreeing at all, just a bit confused from the numbers I have seen. In fact please click on the link in my first post, it shows the X850XT beating the 7800 GTX at stock when FSAA and AF are enabled in several games. Thats my main concern, I dont want to just run high res. I personally want to run mid res with all HQ settings and AF + AA on and set as high as possible. When I say mid res I mean 1680 x 1050 would be max ever ran, and thats only if enough cash comes in for the 2005 FPW. If it does not the max res I will ever run is 1440 x 900 but I do want to run that with all max HQ settings.

 

[Munky]

http://www.techreport.com/reviews/2005q4/radeon-x1000/index.x?pg=1
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/games-2005.html
http://www.behardware.com/articles/599-...800-gtx-512-mb-the-new-king-of-3d.html

There are some games where an x850xt/pe can keep up with a 7800gt, like Farcry and Chaos Theory just to name a few. But in general, the 7800gt is faster, and especially if you plan on keeping the card for a while the 7800gt would be a better choice in the long run. However, even a 7800gt is not enough to run some demanding games like FEAR smoothly at 1600x1050 resolution, so you may need something like a x1900xt/x or a gf7900 (to be released next month supposedly) to run modern games at high resolutions.

 

[dfloyd]

Hmm well looking over all the benchmarks you posted I only have two real options.

Either come up with more cash for a X1800XT or above, or a 7800 GTX or above or wait until their prices drop.

When I go to the majority of gaming sites I look for one thing, HQ FSAA and AF benchmarks at 1280 x 1024. This is my average gaming res and the one I tend to see if a card will do well at. The problem I see so far is that none of the cards I mentioned above stay really smooth across all games at the settings I am wanting to choose. The X1800XT could do it as could the 7800 GTX but unfortunaly they are out of my range at the moment. $300 is the max I could ever spend for a video card so I guess my only option is to wait a while. I guess its not really so bad after looking at the benchs though, it appears my X800XL is alot closer to the 7800 GT and X1800XL than I realized.

Thanks for all replys though, guess I will end this with a ISO X1800XT or 7800 GTX for $300 or less heh.