Hi,

I am looking to buy a new graphics card for my PC, and wandering what your opinion is & what you think is good but also not too expensive.

If possible could you tell what graphics card you have, rough price and what FPS you get from playing the game!

Thanks

James

I'm not an ATi expert, so I cannot give you any hints in that direction, but from the nVidia side a 6600GT seems to be very good bang for the buck (I have one myself). It's already a bit overpowered for LFS but if you also play other games then this or even its bigger brother the 6800GT might be a good choice.

My fps in LFS are CPU limited, meaning it doesn't make a difference if I run in 1024x768 @ noAA/AF or 1600x1200 @ 4xAA/8xAF. Depending on your current GFX card you may or may not see a big jump in FPS, as LFS is mostly CPU reliant. It does look much nicer at a higher resolution with AA/AF, though

I don't know any UK prices but here they are about:
6600 GT - 120€ > 82£
6800 GS - 220€ > 152£
6800 GT - 250€ > 172£

I think it would be helpful if you'd post your current PC specs. Makes it easier to judge if a certain combo makes sense or not

What are the advantages & disadvantages of using either PCI or AGP and what would you recommend ?

PCI-E is slightly faster, but that has no impact on performance yet (perhaps in 2 or 3 generations), but it's definitely the choice for future.
I'd choose the 6600GT, it's a good card for now, and it's technically identical to the 6800. that means when you think the card is too slow you can load a new firmware to the device and it will be just as fast and good as the 6800.
And that's really loads of bang-for-buck.

Vain

i would go for the 6600GT for the main reason its an excellent card for the money, and its nVidia.

i have an ATI Radeon 9800XT and would NOT recommend it to anyone, it overheats constantly, ive had to put an exhaust fan under it to try and keep the temps down (working so far), this is the first and the last time i am buying an ATI card, and judging from friends who have them aswell they have the same problems with lack of performance and overheating, so a tip from me, never look at ATI for a graphics card! NVidia all the way!

6600GT is the great performance for the money

if you have a PCIe motherboard that is SLI compatable then an SLI compatable graphics card is a good choice, as you can run one at first, then when you have the money you can buy another identical card and run it at the same time, effectively giving you twice the graphical power!

Quote from Vain :

PCI-E is slightly faster, but that has no impact on performance yet (perhaps in 2 or 3 generations), but it's definitely the choice for future.
I'd choose the 6600GT, it's a good card for now, and it's technically identical to the 6800. that means when you think the card is too slow you can load a new firmware to the device and it will be just as fast and good as the 6800.
And that's really loads of bang-for-buck.

hmmmm, so getting 2x 6600 GT's may be rather quick!

Yer they're pretty quick. You'll probably find your ears bleeding pretty quickly from the noise the crude stock fan makes. Thats why I stuck a Zalman VF700-Cu on mine, and now its cooler and silent. edit: Just to add I have heard 2 6600GTs running in sli and I couldnt stand the noise!

For midrange the 6600GT is pretty good, thats what I have. I cant help but feel though that there are now better cards out there for not much more money. If I was buying a new midrange card now it would have to be the ATI X800 GTO 256mb. Considerably better than the 6600GT and not much price difference.

Quote from Jakg :

hmmmm, so getting 2x 6600 GT's may be rather quick!

1x 6800GT = Better investment then 2x 6600GT's.

You get very little boost (and in some cases none) by getting two 6600GT's over a 6800GT.

Plus its cheaper.

For reference, I'm running a standard 6800 (it was basically the same price as the 6600GT, before anyone makes a comment) with an Arctic Cooling after market cooler and fan, in conjunction with an AMD64 3200+, plus 1 GB of corsair RAM and I'm hitting the 140+ FPS usually. It will drop to about 60 with a full grid, at the start, on full quality, with AA and AF at 4x at 1280x1024.

Quote from thisnameistaken :

If you have a motherboard with a PCIx16 slot, get a PCI card, otherwise get an AGP card. The advantage of AGP is that it works on motherboards that don't have a PCIx16 slot. The advantage of PCI is that it works on motherboards that don't have an AGP slot.

Ive lookin in my motherboard manual and all it mentions is "Three 32-bit PCI v2.3 complaint slots" does this mean that 'PCI-e" will work with my PC?

Will PCI-e work with any normal PCI slot or do you have to have a faster "special" slot?

James

No, PCI-e is something different than the normal PCI slots, be they v1, v2, or whatever is current. PCI-e slots are expressively named PCI-e (PCI Express).

Vain

The difference in the slots. PCI-E is replacing AGP.

Looking at either the GeForce 6600 or 6800 in AGP (which makes more expensive) do you think that it is worth getting 128 or 256? & if so how much difference does it make to gameplay, especially if LFS ?

Thanks

Nowadays there is no difference between 128mb and 256 mb vram. I know no software that allows for more than 128 mb vram usage. But as always, texture size is going to increase, so in 12 or months you may see an option in a game you can only enable when you've got more than 128mb vram (like "ultra-high-res-textures").

Vain

Pretty sure theres a setting on Doom 3 that needs a 512mb card for the textures..

For LFS however 128mb is sufficient.

Quote from xpjames :

Looking at either the GeForce 6600 or 6800 in AGP (which makes more expensive) do you think that it is worth getting 128 or 256? & if so how much difference does it make to gameplay, especially if LFS ?

Thanks

Go for the 6800GS, nice and cheap these days (I have one in my backup rig). It plays all current games fine on the highest settings. Well Quake 4 should I say, as it was the last game I played on it.

Quote from AndroidXP :

I'm not an ATi expert, so I cannot give you any hints in that direction, but from the nVidia side a 6600GT seems to be very good bang for the buck (I have one myself). It's already a bit overpowered for LFS but if you also play other games then this or even its bigger brother the 6800GT might be a good choice.

My fps in LFS are CPU limited, meaning it doesn't make a difference if I run in 1024x768 @ noAA/AF or 1600x1200 @ 4xAA/8xAF. Depending on your current GFX card you may or may not see a big jump in FPS, as LFS is mostly CPU reliant. It does look much nicer at a higher resolution with AA/AF, though

I don't know any UK prices but here they are about:
6600 GT - 120€ > 82£
6800 GS - 150€ > 102£
6800 GT - 250€ > 172£

Where you can buy a 6800GS for 150€?illepallillepallillepall
The starting price for a 6800GS is about 190-200€ up to 240€!

Whoops, you're right. Must've been my imagination

Quote from AndroidXP :

Whoops, you're right. Must've been my imagination

No problem!

The 6800GS is about £150. So I have no clue what that would be in €.

The Aopen Aeolus GeForce 6800ultra cost only 204€ and its very fast!

Here the link:
http://www.mix-computer.de/mix ... ls.html?artNo=JAXE17&

That is PCI-E. PCI-E are cheaper then AGP. And as the person who made the thread needs AGP, that's sort of useless to them.

Whooooooopsss, my fault!
A good AGP card is the Club3D GeForce 6600GT!
It has a good performance and it's cheap(~126€).
Here the link:
http://www.mix-computer.de/mix ... ls.html?artNo=J9GU40&

I am moving from ATI to Nvidia because my last two Graphics cards burnt out last week and ive heard that Nvidia cards have better bang for their buck. Im investing in an XFX 6800 GS XXX which has amazing specs (Find the specs @ http://pcgames.extremepcgamerz ... index.php/topic,28.0.html) My previous ggraphics cards were Sapphire x1300's (in crossfire configuration) and they only had a large heatsink with no cooling fan on them. I kept telling the shop owner that i bought the cards from that they were overheating and were artifacting. I didnt have the cards overclocked and i had 2 cooling fans placed on top of each card hoping they woul cool enough but a month after i bought the cards they burnt out.

So anyway i would reccomend to buy a graphics card with a cooling faninstalled and something like the XFX 6800 GS XXX because its not too expensive (279 euro here in ireland) and it comes with 2 free games. I have my card ordered and should have it next week.