GFX card...

Fafnir

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Ok bought myself a 2.4 (got 3.0 delivered)ghz, 2gb memory, 120gb harddrive comp and saved cash on the card then by getting a Geforce 4 MX 420. And finally decided its time to upgrade the gfx card then i think i'm set for another year or two.

So you guys got any suggestions what card to get?
 

Sycho

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Depends how much you want to spend.

Below £100- radeon 9700 pro.
Around £150- geforce 6600GT
Around £175- geforce 6800LE
Around £200- geforce 6800 non ultra(in my opinion best valued card ever, at least one of them, can mod it so it becomes near same speed as a 6800GT)
Around £275- geforce 6800GT or radeon x800 pro/xt if lucky.

If you got the money to spend, go for a geforce 6800 non ultra, unlock the extra pipelines using rivatuner aswell as extra vertex shaders, you will love the card.

If not the radeon 9700 pro is still extremely good, it's £91 here but you could probably pick one up cheaper if you look around.
 

Dwali

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i went from mx 440 64 mb to gf fx5500 128 ddr...this card is very good to...but don´t know the price...but like sycho said...if u are after a card gor for radeon in that case
 

Fafnir

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Sycho said:
Depends how much you want to spend.

Below £100- radeon 9700 pro.
Around £175- geforce 6800LE
Theese are the ones i've been thinking about. My brother got the 6800LE one and say's its good. So might go for that one, just have to find a stupid store clerk then that i can scam abit for a lower price. Thats how i got the comp first 6000 SEK cheaper that it was on the pricetag.

Was not fun to see the prices on similar comps today, could buy 4 of thoose for the price my one cost on the tag.
 

Sycho

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The 6800LE is good(has 8 standard pipelines but can unlock to 12) but a 6800 non ultra has a chance to unlock 16 pipelines aswell as 6 vertex shaders, so it be a 6800GT basically at less clock speeds.

AOpen 6800LE is £170 here in the uk with doom 3, pretty impressive benchmarks it has aswell as the 6800 non ultra.

If you got £200 go for the non ultra, leadtek one is supposed to overclock well and have a decent heatsink but the 6800LE is still a fantastic card, just for £30 more you can have a seriously good card if you get one that unlocks 16 pipelines.
 

Danya

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Unlocking is not guaranteed don't forget, so don't be surprised if you can't successfully unlock all pipelines of a card.
 

Sycho

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Yes i know, but 6800LE is maybe like 3-5% better performance than a 6600GT but £30 more roughly though i would pay the extra to have a chance to get 12 pipelines, even if you do not it's still a nice card.
 

Kaun_IA

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i have ati radeon X800pro 256 DDR3 (Sapphire) and its over 300 pounds, and for the record i had a ati radeon 9800pro 128ddr (Hercules) before and it fried like a chicken on its own (dont ask how, one of my friends who was a very good expert on comps was wordless how can a card do that) so imo i tihink 9800 series can burn in hell. 9600 is a good bet to.
 

PinkyPink

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Dont get the 9800XT its the most useless card ive ever bought waste of £309 imo. Had nothing but problems updates dont help even overcloaking it doesnt help so i just run about daoc with white dots all over the buildings and landscape.

Imho go for nvidia card my bro has had 3 1st being ti4200 and he never had a problem to date with any of em.

Btw if anyone knows how to resolve my 9800XT problem please pm me and let me know. Im currently using ati tool to play games like HL2 and doom3 without those pesky white dots on screen, but im afraid my card is gonna fry soon.

Pinky.
 

Esoteric

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Hmm sounds like a faulty card. If its new send it back.

Im always struggling to fund my pc experiments so I have a 9600XT 256mb bought a small while ago for 150 or so.

Very pleased with the card too performs well and so forth.

Been an ati fan for a little while now.
 

Neffneff

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if yer getting little coloured or white dots over yer screen without overclocking it..then more than likely its faulty or overheating...if it comes with fan etc on it..make sure its working and spinnin round...if new...send it back and get a replacement.
 

PinkyPink

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shame as i didnt get the problem for about the 1st 6 months i had it, it has only been recently that its happened and as always i misplaced the receipt and im kicking myself. The fan is working altho the card seems like its onfire was considering buyin a arctic cooling fan for it.

Pinky.
 

Sycho

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Artic cooler is very good i have one on my 6800gt which usually hit 75-80c when playing games, mine hits 58-60 xD
 

PinkyPink

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God knows what temp mine is but when i touch it, it burns my hand after about a second. It cant be good forthe card heh, also after about 3 hrs of play my PC crashes windows dump blue screen thingy.

God my Pc is fucked.

Pinky.
 

Natswoo

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PinkyPink said:
God knows what temp mine is but when i touch it, it burns my hand after about a second. It cant be good forthe card heh, also after about 3 hrs of play my PC crashes windows dump blue screen thingy.

God my Pc is fucked.

Pinky.
Can u see smoke from the back when it crashes?
 

PinkyPink

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lol nope just short of shuts down then i have to restart. Have formatted twice and it still does the same thing so must be a hardware problem.

Pinky.
 

Void959

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If you're buying the new card for general purposes then ignore me...but if you're planning on getting it mainly for DAOC then I don't suggest you go too high. In my experience DAOC is severely CPU limited at the high end - that is, if you have a reasonable graphics card and upgrade to a better one you will not see much increase as the game is not drawing on many of the GPUs advanced features and power but using 100% of the CPUs resources. The upside of this however is that if you do buy a good card, you will be able to use high AA, AIF etc. without any noticable decrease.

Catacombs may well change this as it has a new graphics engine, but remember the changes will only affect the catacombs areas, so if you're planning on playing there alot then you might consider a better card.

As for specifics I would suggest a 6600 GT or equivalent. Don't even bother with the 6800 or X800 families, the bottom end will cost you more than the 6600 GT and with less performance whilst the top ends performance will be wasted unless you plan on using it for other top end games. The suggestion of buying a cheap card and unlocking pipelines is good but somewhat risky, it may work completely but is just as likely to work partially or not at all and I have heard (rare) reports of the card becoming physically damaged.
 

Sycho

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Even if you can't unlock the pipelines a 6800LE is faster than a 6600gt and £10-20 more only anyway, daoc is relies an awful lot on your cpu/ram for performance which is true but gfx card does help just not anywhere as much as ram/cpu.

If catacombs uses direct x9.0c, 6800LE/NU will be better since it has a 256 bit interface(6600GT is 128 bit) providing the person plays above 1024x768 resolution with anti-aniliasing and anistrophic filtering on.If you do not use those features then you will not notice much difference from a 6600GT or a 6800LE.
 

Danya

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Don't need DX9.0c to take advantage of a 256 vs 128 bit interface you know. :p
 

Sycho

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Danya said:
Don't need DX9.0c to take advantage of a 256 vs 128 bit interface you know. :p

I know, that's why i said anti-aniliasing, anistrophic filtering plus high resolutions, this is where it comes into play mainly, direct x9.0c was mentioned because current daoc uses 8.1 i think? which doesn't stress a gfx card much at all.
 

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