X850XT

[JK949]

I have 2 motherboards I'd rather not toss but both are agp.
One is a MSI K8N NEO2 F and the other a GIGABYTE K8NSC 939.
I'm running an Athlon 64 3500 and a gig of Corsier XMS 3200 ram in dual channel.
Will these boards and cpu play games ok for a while with the X850XT
card. If not, what should I not bother buying game wise.

 

[MustISO]

That setup should work fine for all the latest games. Maybe not at the highest settings but it'll certainly work well.

 

[Malladine]

Originally posted by: MustISO
That setup should work fine for all the latest games. Maybe not at the highest settings but it'll certainly work well.

qft

no games today, nor in the next year or two imo, are/will be beyond that rig

 

[stelleg151]

Yah u fine man for a while, enjoy the games.

 

[v8envy]

Originally posted by: Malladine

no games today, nor in the next year or two imo, are/will be beyond that rig

Not quite true. City of Villains, cranked up, sometimes drops from 60 to 10 fps at 1600x1200. Saw it with my own eyeballs.

There are games out right now (e.g., FEAR) which will stress even 7800 GTX and X1800XTs, even SLI. This is a card for a year, 1.5 years tops.

Of course, if you don't mind cranking the detail and resolution down and turning off AA, it's a perfectly fine card. But then a $107 X800 will also do.

 

[flexy]

you're totally fine with the x850xt

 

[blckgrffn]

OK is different for everyone. But if you play at 1024*768 or even 1280*1024, I think that you are set for at least some time...

Nat

 

[JK949]

Thanks for the input. I run things at 1024 x 768 no matter what I'm doing and don't turn on aa unless the game accepts it.
One more question if you don't mind. Are there and alternitives to the latest cat drivers that Ati has. I can't stand there control center crap. I'm running 5.10 right now
but don't want to miss out on any game improvements that 5.12 provides. Any suggestions.

 

[flexy]

5.11 and 5.12 are out WITHOUT CCC and with control-center. There should be a link somewhere in the forum for 5.12 w/ control-center.

Btw. nothing speaks against eg. HL2 1330x1024 with 6xAA and 16xAF, thats what i use with my X850XT and it's f****g fast ! 🙂

Other games may vary...but IMHO there's no reason to play ANYTHING below 4xAA with the X850XT. If you run even lower like 1024....i would just crank AA and AF up like nothing...the card can easily handle it in MOST games.

 

[blckgrffn]

Originally posted by: JK949
Thanks for the input. I run things at 1024 x 768 no matter what I'm doing and don't turn on aa unless the game accepts it.
One more question if you don't mind. Are there and alternitives to the latest cat drivers that Ati has. I can't stand there control center crap. I'm running 5.10 right now
but don't want to miss out on any game improvements that 5.12 provides. Any suggestions.

Yep, you'll be good forever. A good friend of mine runs a 6600GT, and I keep pressing him to upgrade. He asks me what it can't play at 1024*768. I shrug, he shrugs, and his computers last a lot longer than mine 🙂 Got to itch that upgrade bug. 😛

 

[alent1234]

Originally posted by: v8envy

Originally posted by: Malladine

no games today, nor in the next year or two imo, are/will be beyond that rig

Not quite true. City of Villains, cranked up, sometimes drops from 60 to 10 fps at 1600x1200. Saw it with my own eyeballs.

There are games out right now (e.g., FEAR) which will stress even 7800 GTX and X1800XTs, even SLI. This is a card for a year, 1.5 years tops.

Of course, if you don't mind cranking the detail and resolution down and turning off AA, it's a perfectly fine card. But then a $107 X800 will also do.

FEAR is the exception

Last year Doom 3 was the hype and people were worried that their PC wouldn't handle it. When it came out a lot of people were let down because when you got past the eye candy there wasn't much to the game.

OP should look at the genres he likes to play and build a rig to handle it for a few years out. If my ancient P3 933 could support 1GB of RAM, I wouldn't be planning an upgrade next year so I can play Civ4. I can play it now on high settings until I build up and open up the map.