Spec me a vid card bitches

Akiakaiu · Post by **Akiakaiu** » September 2nd, 2008, 21:12

Now that the prices seem to have dropped to my price range I was looking into purchasing a new card for my new machine. And was looking at either the 8800GT or the 9800GT as $20 separates the two of them. I know when the 9800 first came out the 8800 was still better for gaming, is this still the case? Also is SLI worth the hassle as I hear not everything likes it or can I use my 8600 as a physics only card? (I think with the new drivers one can do this now.) Or just stick with el uno card layout?

Also, will a 420W run all this stuff, or since I'm moving beyond the 8600GT I should slap another PSU in there? I have a brand new 450W sitting here too, will that work?

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » September 2nd, 2008, 21:17

AFAIK there's not much between the 2 cards, but the 9800 is probably better.

I wouldn't bother with the second card for now, physx is barely supported on anything, benchmarketing tool only currently.

PSU depends on stuff, but a high quality 420 or 450 should be fine, assuming you're not running bucketloads of HDDs

Lee · Post by **Lee** » September 3rd, 2008, 14:14

The 9800GT is exactly the same speed as the 8800GT, it's just a die shrink which means it'll run cooler, use less power and should over clock a bit better.

I don't know what you're looking to spend but if the ATI Radeon HD 4850 isn't much more then I'd definitely go with that, it's much faster than both of those cards.

Post by **Dog Pants** » December 27th, 2008, 9:41

Right, it's nearly january and prices should be dropping hopefully. My card has never worked properly since I bought it so I want a new one. The whole new nVidia vs ATI thing moves too fast for me though, and while I've had an nVidia for years and am happy with them I'm no fanboy. I haven't checked my budget yet but I reckon around £200 should be about right.

Specs here: http://www.5punk.co.uk/phpbb/viewtopic. ... 923#162923

Any other suggestions as to replacement targets of opportunity welcome too.

Cheers motherbitches!

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » December 27th, 2008, 10:37

GTX260 or HD4870

Current state of play is that they're pretty much equal performance wise, but nvidia certainly (IMO) have the better drivers and dev support, sometimes with ATI you won't get AA, or other odd issues (City of Heroes is bad for this)

Also, if you want you can borrow my 8800gtx to make sure it's your video card at fault, not something else.

Post by **Dog Pants** » December 27th, 2008, 11:12

Might be a good idea. It's an intermittent fault though, doesn't appear for weeks sometimes. It causes my screens to go pink or black, even though everything is working fine underneath (it doesn't always affect both screens at once, although one usually follows the other shortly after).

Post by **deject** » December 27th, 2008, 16:22

you might want to take a look at the Radeon HD 4830 as well. A few places are saying it's a great value.

Baliame · Post by **Baliame** » December 27th, 2008, 18:44

I can definitely say HD 4830 is worth its value and it's relatively cheap.

Sheriff Fatman · Post by **Sheriff Fatman** » December 27th, 2008, 23:17

Dog Pants wrote:Might be a good idea. It's an intermittent fault though, doesn't appear for weeks sometimes. It causes my screens to go pink or black, even though everything is working fine underneath (it doesn't always affect both screens at once, although one usually follows the other shortly after).

Oddly enough, I've had the exact same problem. I put it down to my iffy Foxxcon mobo, which has been the root of many dramas recently. I never found out what the exact issue was, but (as usual) a re-install and update of the bios/drivers fixed it. Which doesn't help you at all, but there you go

Post by **Dog Pants** » December 28th, 2008, 0:01

The whole system's been getting slowly more stable as I update the BIOS (I had some nasty RAM problems at first as the BIOS didn't fully support DDR3. Nice sales there ASUS).

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » December 28th, 2008, 1:05

I'd suggest playing with drivers,

Also, poking around the internet says that possibly upping the PCI-E bus speed by 5 can help.

Post by **Dog Pants** » December 28th, 2008, 10:01

Cool, that might save me a couple of hundred quid. Cheers!

spoodie · Post by **spoodie** » December 28th, 2008, 11:22

I had a problem with the latest Nvidia drivers (180.48) and had to rollback to the previous version (178.xx).

They caused L4D horrible graphics lag, the screen would freeze for 1-3 seconds at a time. Also 2142 had an overlay of artifacts over most of the screen. That's still not right, but it's playable now.

Mr. Johnson · Post by **Mr. Johnson** » December 28th, 2008, 11:33

spoodie wrote:I had a problem with the latest Nvidia drivers (180.48) and had to rollback to the previous version (178.xx).

They caused L4D horrible graphics lag, the screen would freeze for 1-3 seconds at a time. Also 2142 had an overlay of artifacts over most of the screen. That's still not right, but it's playable now.

had the same problem, very annoying.

Post by **FatherJack** » December 29th, 2008, 7:14

I think my BFG NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB Factory OC to 626Mhz, 1Ghz RAM has finally given up, just short of its 2nd birthday - for the last two months I've been using 169.25 "Omega" drivers, which have been the most stable I've ever tried, but now even WoW blue-screens within seconds on the login page. I haven't changed anything else, except disks which I did after the problems started.

I'm thinking a BFG Factory OC GTX 280, since I have an nVidia motherboard and don't want to move away from the drivers and tools I'm familiar with and I still want a single-card solution.

Post by **Dr. kitteny berk** » December 29th, 2008, 10:29

FatherJack wrote:I think my BFG NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB Factory OC to 626Mhz, 1Ghz RAM has finally given up, just short of its 2nd birthday - for the last two months I've been using 169.25 "Omega" drivers, which have been the most stable I've ever tried, but now even WoW blue-screens within seconds on the login page. I haven't changed anything else, except disks which I did after the problems started.

I'm thinking a BFG Factory OC GTX 280, since I have an nVidia motherboard and don't want to move away from the drivers and tools I'm familiar with and I still want a single-card solution.

BFG have an 8000 year warranty or something, might be worth abusing it for a spare card

Also, I suspect an nvidia refresh might not be far away, so look at BFG's step-up terms, you might be able to get a 280 now and replace it with a 295 cheap/free.

Post by **HereComesPete** » December 29th, 2008, 23:05

Weird that is. BFG gives good warranty and such, that card is cheaper than the many evga ones and it's clocked faster than all but the highest specced evga. Good choice imo.