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View Full Version : New Video Card Advice Needed


Alfster
08-12-2007, 10:23 AM
I want the most bang for the buck. Price doesn't matter much to me, I put in my old card when I had this system built. I think it's a Radeon 1650 or some shit.

Anyway, I'm looking to upgrade it. Should I run two cards (SLI), or is that not worth the price?
Khariz
08-12-2007, 11:15 AM
It's worth the price and getting cheaper.

Lemme try and get something together for you.
Khariz
08-12-2007, 11:16 AM
This is a really nice feature by Gamespot.com

It talks about all 4 classes of cards, by price, and lets you know the goods and the bads about all of em, and compares single card to SLi.

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6173135/index.html
Bobmuhthol
08-12-2007, 11:28 AM
You have an SLI motherboard but you're running a Radeon? How much sense does that make?

If price seriously doesn't matter to you, run 2xGeForce 8800 GTX. They're 768 MB each.
Alfster
08-12-2007, 09:39 PM
It doesn't make much sense. The only reason I didn't upgrade my cards at the time my machine was built was I wanted to save some cash and upgrade that later.
Alfster
08-12-2007, 09:40 PM
This is a really nice feature by Gamespot.com

It talks about all 4 classes of cards, by price, and lets you know the goods and the bads about all of em, and compares single card to SLi.

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6173135/index.html

Thanks!
Numbers
08-12-2007, 10:37 PM
I'd suggest waiting a bit. There's a bunch of games coming out soon that'll stress even the top-end video cards, such as Crysis, Bioshock, and Call of Duty 4. More than likely their releases will coincide with a new generation of video cards.
Bobmuhthol
08-12-2007, 10:58 PM
lol, no game in the next few years is going to stress top-end.
Celephais
08-14-2007, 02:04 AM
More importantly in the "wait" camp is the recent release (preview) of Shader Model 4.1 in DirectX 10.1, which to my knowledge isn't natively supported by any existing cards. If you want to future-proof, wait until hardware with explicit support for SM 4.1 is released.
Alfster
08-14-2007, 07:25 AM
Cool, I'll be sure to keep that in mind. Any idea on how long until that's released?
Celephais
08-14-2007, 12:05 PM
Cool, I'll be sure to keep that in mind. Any idea on how long until that's released?

No idea... Microsoft just released a preview of it in their latest DirectX SDK (August 07), I haven't had time to play around with the preview (Just got a DirectX 10.0 card and I've been too busy playing with that, and I think the preview requires Vista SP1 beta, which isn't even released yet).

In reality though the difference between DX10 and 10.1 aren't groundbreaking, and games that take advantage of 10.1 are certainly going to work for DX10 cards (the list of new things for 10.1 are really just niceties).

So it all depends on your level of patience (because as soon as the DX 10.1 cards start coming out we'll be hearing about the next greatest thing).

Oh and I'm entirely of the opinion SLi isn't worth it. SLi boards are, because you get two PCI-Ex 16 slots... and what you can do is get a DX 10 card, maybe not top of the line, and then later when the next technology comes out you move your old card to the other slot, and get a new card, don't SLI them, but make the new card for graphics, and with DX 10 cards you can turn the other card into a physics card (High end nVidia cards support being turned into a physics card... not many games support it now, but when you "upgrade" and retask the card you buy now, it will be ready to become a physics card).