Graphics card help/info

[waiman]

hey, my brother is looking to buy a gfx card for his pc that can run war on the minimum possible settings, but still be able to run it smoothly(playable rather).

he has only £60(maybe slightly more) to spend on a gfx card (<--- lol i know) but i cant think of anything apart from 3650ATI(£59 on overclockers), and im not to sure how that would cope running it.

any help/info/surjestions that i could pass on would be greatly appreichiated, cheers in advance

-Saltz

[jizzah]

NVIDEA
Gainward GeForce 9500 GT 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail
OcUK GeForce 9600 GT 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail

ATI
Gainward ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail
PowerColor ATI Radeon HD 4670 PCS 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail

[Chey]

i can definately say that the 9600GT can run war perfectly fine, been playing it on max settings, with lovely performance

its a sweet card for its money

[jizzah]

Umm, advice?

1st is room. how much room do you have in there? Have a good look and measure (carefully!) the space avaliable. Some of the nvidea cards are decidedly beefy.

2nd, futureproof. Have you any intentions to upgrade in the future or u just want a card bundled in that's capable? SLI/Xfire, if you decide to go that way are m/board dependant.

3rd temp/noise. You bothered about the din from vidcard fan? there's some decent passive cooled options out there. I got a Gainward GeForce 9500 GT 256MB GDDR3 HDTV/DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail for running my other monitor on (gx2 for my gaming). Works fine, and as long as your insides arn't too tightly packed it'll work within temp parameters with lil room underneath the card, airflow from an outside source (grill, fan intake).

Anyways, the short story, All the 9500's onwards from nvidea'll work fine, just get one in your price range. You get an ATI 3850 and higher with 50-60 quid too nps. Higher the number the better IMO :P

[Muylaetrix]

Originally Posted by waiman

hey, my brother is looking to buy a gfx card for his pc that can run war on the minimum possible settings, but still be able to run it smoothly(playable rather).

he has only £60(maybe slightly more) to spend on a gfx card (<--- lol i know) but i cant think of anything apart from 3650ATI(£59 on overclockers), and im not to sure how that would cope running it.

any help/info/surjestions that i could pass on would be greatly appreichiated, cheers in advance

-Saltz

i upgraded my agp ATI 9600 (yes, ati 9600, not nvidia 9600, the thing was ancient) to and ATI 3650 with 512 mb ram(asus brand, no fan edition, just a HUGE heatsink) for WAR and i am rather satisfied with it. good performance and i payed 95 euro including tax on it (that`s about 60-65 uk pounds i think). keep in mind i `m stuck with an AGP version, not an PCIxpres version, so if you have PCIxpress, performance should be even better.

biggest bottle neck is my crap sempron 3000 cpu (32 bit version, clocked at 1.8 ghz). but even with AGP and crap cpu, the game runs more than decent.

[waiman]

sound guyz sound, looks good ill pass the info on, in regards to space and that, ive personaly taken a look inside the my bros gf box(LOL no pun intended ¬_¬) and theres plenty of space between AGP and bottom of the box. heat may be a issue, but with todays cooling solutions, shouldnt cost more than £30 to get anything cooled alot more than stock coolers do.

anyway dudes, keep the info coming its really helpful and those whos posted cheers for the info, greatly apreichiated

-Saltz

[Apollyn]

Originally Posted by jizzah

Umm, advice?

1st is room. how much room do you have in there? Have a good look and measure (carefully!) the space avaliable. Some of the nvidea cards are decidedly beefy.

Definitely second this one!! Bought me a nice 8800GTX and a new case and the damn card was about 1 cm too long - ran into the hard drive bays, had to get the hacksaw out and customise the case, not fun or easy, dont wanna recommend that to anyone!!

[waiman]

hah, the lenghs people will go to, to get parts in their pc ;D

the amount of times ive had to bend the struts on my gfx/network/sound cards to slot properly into my mobo mounts is unreal, has to be done tho

[Zoia]

Atm, i have a 8600GT, AMD 64 3500+(2.21 ghz) and 2g ram. For £60 you can get a better gfx card than that.

I'm running around with medium-high settings and the changes from this thread:
http://forums.freddyshouse.com/warha...-settings.html
It doesn't run very smooth with that, but i like it when it looks pretty. It's still acceptable with medium settings. With low settings, it should be fine.

I've ordered new parts though and they should arrive tomorrow.

[Muylaetrix]

Originally Posted by waiman

sound guyz sound, looks good ill pass the info on, in regards to space and that, ive personaly taken a look inside the my bros gf box(LOL no pun intended ¬_¬) and theres plenty of space between AGP and bottom of the box. heat may be a issue, but with todays cooling solutions, shouldnt cost more than £30 to get anything cooled alot more than stock coolers do.

anyway dudes, keep the info coming its really helpful and those whos posted cheers for the info, greatly apreichiated

-Saltz

i c you have an AGP graphics card, make sure it is an AGP version your brother gets.

also, depending upon how old your system is, you might have a look at the PSU too, those new generation graphics cards take a lot of power and if you have a PSU that`s lower than 500 watt, it might not be able to cope.

[krilly]

the best bang for you buck you can get at the moment are ati 4850's which you can get for around £100 if you look around on line.

£60 for a 3850 isnt bad though
if you went nvidia something like an 8600 or a lower end 8800 would be around £60 too.

I'd stick with the ati though, thing I've found with nvidias before is the quality of the manufacturers can vary somewhat. (I've had 2 nvids go pop on me, but never had any ati problems)

I'll be getting a 4850 or 4870 myself, when I have enough cash for a 500W + power supply too.

3850 you might be able to get away with a 400W or 450W supply by the way.

(im on a x1950 pro at the moment, good enough for TF2 and spore at fairly high settings, worried it might creak abit in heavy RvR though)

[Muylaetrix]

Originally Posted by krilly

(im on a x1950 pro at the moment, good enough for TF2 and spore at fairly high settings, worried it might creak abit in heavy RvR though)

even an ibm server farm struggles with heavy RVR.

i don`t think the hardware that can cope with 200+ players with full spell effects fighting each other on your screen has been made yet.

[Apollyn]

Originally Posted by Muylaetrix

even an ibm server farm struggles with heavy RVR.

i don`t think the hardware that can cope with 200+ players with full spell effects fighting each other on your screen has been made yet.

True but last night we had a full WB and maybe a few extras and Destro outnumbered us fairly easily, musta been at least 60 or so players goin off at each other in a keep seige and I didnt notice any slowdown at all.

My rig is ok I guess (E8400, 3gig ram, 712mb 8800GTX, P5K) but by no means outrageous and Ive got everything maxed plus making the Nvidia manager force AA and everything on in the game so I was pretty impressed with the stability.

[fang]

Originally Posted by Apollyn

True but last night we had a full WB and maybe a few extras and Destro outnumbered us fairly easily, musta been at least 60 or so players goin off at each other in a keep seige and I didnt notice any slowdown at all.

My rig is ok I guess (E8400, 3gig ram, 712mb 8800GTX, P5K) but by no means outrageous and Ive got everything maxed plus making the Nvidia manager force AA and everything on in the game so I was pretty impressed with the stability.

Ooh it's just okay I guess .. nothing much to look at really ..


I hate you.

[Stoney]

Well... I have....
A Nvidia 7800 GTX..

My pc is what, 3 years old now.... and that card was cutting edge when i bought it...

also have an Athlon 64 x2 duel core 4200+
and 2 gig of ram...

I have had no problems at all playing so far... and played time last night was 15 hours on open beta... and i think it defaulted to max settings...

Im also running this at 1920 by 1200 resolution on a 24' monitor.. and running a second monitor (19') off the same card...

I can play TF2 on this with no slowdown at all...

Just my 2 coppers worth....

(hopefully the patch wont make it harder to run!)