More upgrade advice I'm afraid!

My budget is very limited - £40 (£50 at a push) and I need to upgrade from the onboard Nv6150 card. Mainly play most of the racing sims and the onboard just isn't coping well. Mobo spec is Athlon 64 X2 Dual 4600 with 2GB RAM. PSU is 500W.

I quite like the Nvidia cards (mainly because that's all I've had), but open to ATI if there's a similar card for the same price. Basically just need something that will allow me to play with LFS, rF, GTR2/Evolution etc etc at a decent frame rate with fairly high settings (I wanna see what these sims should look like!!).

I was looking at the 8600GT and then the 9400GT which seems slightly faster. Not bothered about DX10 stuff like Crysis!

Oh, I also dabble with a little Linux as well - Ubuntu, OpenSUSE - the main flavours. I've read somewhere that Nv cards are better supported under Linux. Anyway, hope someone can advise....

If I were in your position I would wait a couple weeks and pick up an ATI Radeon 4670, as it will be a very good card for that the price. The GeForce 8600 is a piece of crap, don't go for it. The 9400 would do fine, but have you looked at the 9500? It might be better.

i agree, that the 8600gt is a piece of crap. never buy it, i agree with cobra, you should wait for some new cards to come out.

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

If I were in your position I would wait a couple weeks and pick up an ATI Radeon 4670, as it will be a very good card for that the price. The GeForce 8600 is a piece of crap, don't go for it. The 9400 would do fine, but have you looked at the 9500? It might be better.

Thanks very much for the advice. I don't know about you but I've always found the ATI numbering scheme to be difficult to grasp as the numbers don't seem to mean much. At least with the Nvidia cards they are sequencial whole numbers and the bigger the number the better the card! Maybe it's just me though!!

I was looking at this 9400 card: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?NOV-94GT5

And this is the 9500 card: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?NOV-95GT5

Quote from SpyDa-LV :

i agree, that the 8600gt is a piece of crap. never buy it, i agree with cobra, you should wait for some new cards to come out.

Interesting that you both agree that the 8600GT is crap as some other posts I've seen seem to indicate the opposite.

I can wait a few weeks if it means getting the best card for the money I have.

Thanks.

This is still a pretty good deal too: http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/specpage.html?NOV-950P5

The 8600GT is very very weak - it's not that much faster than the 7600GT...

See I dont see why you guys are saying the 8600GT is weak, I can run all my games maxed out with atleast decent frame rates to be smooth, they might not be high but they are smooth..But I have the OC version, I don't know if that has to do with anything or not.

LOL Duke Nukem 3D and Midtown Madness don't count! We're talking about CURRENT games!

Anyway, to the op, ATI's numbering scheme is not that hard to comprehend, and in fact it's no different than Nvidia's.

ATI | Nvidia
2600s | 7600s
2900s | 7900s

3600s | 8600s
3800s | 8800s

4600s | 9600s
4800s | GTX 280, 260, Geforce 9800s

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

LOL Duke Nukem 3D and Midtown Madness don't count! We're talking about CURRENT games!

Haha, I am talking about CURRENT games! playing Crysis I dont get amoazing FPS with everything on high I just tryed and I get 8-11 FPS and its still playable.

And the FBM test on SO I get about 5-10 FPS.

Its still a good card for the price, I bought it for like $86 off www.chiefvalue.com in January

The Nvidia 8600 is a great card, Ive never owned any other graphics card before, but I got the Nvidia 8600 and its never let me down no matter what game I play. I don't think you will be disappointed.

Just get the X1950 Pro that I linked to earlier. It's faster than both the 8600GT and the 9400GT, since it has 256 bit memory rather than 128.

Quote from DaveWS :

Just get the X1950 Pro that I linked to earlier. It's faster than both the 8600GT and the 9400GT, since it has 256 bit memory rather than 128.

Do you think this would be better than the 4670 suggested by cobra?

I realise that at the end of the day, whatever card I get it's going to be a huge step forward over the onboard card I have, although I may as well at least try to get the best price/performance card that's on the market.

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

LOL Duke Nukem 3D and Midtown Madness don't count! We're talking about CURRENT games!

Anyway, to the op, ATI's numbering scheme is not that hard to comprehend, and in fact it's no different than Nvidia's.

ATI | Nvidia
2600s | 7600s
2900s | 7900s

3600s | 8600s
3800s | 8800s

4600s | 9600s
4800s | GTX 280, 260, Geforce 9800s

That is very useful to know - it now makes more sense, thanks. Where would the X series cards that DaveWS suggested fit into this?

Quote from Zero7 :

Do you think this would be better than the 4670 suggested by cobra?

I realise that at the end of the day, whatever card I get it's going to be a huge step forward over the onboard card I have, although I may as well at least try to get the best price/performance card that's on the market.

That is very useful to know - it now makes more sense, thanks. Where would the X series cards that DaveWS suggested fit into this?

I'm not sure how good the 4670 will be, I'd expect similar to the Nvidia 8600GTS, since it still only has 128 bit memory, and probably will be more expensive than the X1950 Pro.

I guess the X1950 would fit in like this:

ATI | Nvidia

X1600s | 6600s
X1900s | 6800s

2600s | 7600s
2900s | 7900s

3600s | 8600s
3800s | 8800s

4600s | 9600s
4800s | GTX 280, 260, Geforce 9800s

However the X1950 Pro is slightly faster at most games than an Nvidia 7900 series card, which is faster than the 8600 series so I still think that's the best value / performance.

Quote from scoobyrbac :

....8-11 FPS and its still playable....

Playable?

Jaa, kniebeej Uz 8-11 kilometriem stundaa tas ir pietiekoshi xD

mana ome ielu pāriet ātrāk ok, stop spamming

Quote from Zero7 :

More upgrade advice I'm afraid!

My budget is very limited - £40 (£50 at a push) and I need to upgrade from the onboard Nv6150 card. Mainly play most of the racing sims and the onboard just isn't coping well. Mobo spec is Athlon 64 X2 Dual 4600 with 2GB RAM. PSU is 500W.

I quite like the Nvidia cards (mainly because that's all I've had), but open to ATI if there's a similar card for the same price. Basically just need something that will allow me to play with LFS, rF, GTR2/Evolution etc etc at a decent frame rate with fairly high settings (I wanna see what these sims should look like!!).

I was looking at the 8600GT and then the 9400GT which seems slightly faster. Not bothered about DX10 stuff like Crysis!

Oh, I also dabble with a little Linux as well - Ubuntu, OpenSUSE - the main flavours. I've read somewhere that Nv cards are better supported under Linux. Anyway, hope someone can advise....

The 8600gt is a good budget card. I had one for 2 years and recently upgraded to a 9800gt. I got around 100-150fps in a busy server. And it is full hd

Bottom line: any card you get will be FAR better than the onboard one you're currently using. I simply suggested the Radeon 4670 as it is a current generation card, whereas the Geforce 8600 is 2 generations old and Radeon x1950 is 3 generations old. I was just thinking you might want a current card, but any of them will be better than what you currently have.

I have a 2900HD and it's actually a very fast card. Played Crysis at High everything on my rig (shown in sig)

Very big and quite alot of heat but hey. =/

Quote from shiny_red_cobra :

Bottom line: any card you get will be FAR better than the onboard one you're currently using. I simply suggested the Radeon 4670 as it is a current generation card, whereas the Geforce 8600 is 2 generations old and Radeon x1950 is 3 generations old. I was just thinking you might want a current card, but any of them will be better than what you currently have.

That was my thought as well. It seems to me it would be better to get the best performing card from the current generation to future proof any features that are implemented later. When you look at the spec of some of those cards, they don't all match e.g. some don't have Shader 4.0/4.1 or support DX10.1 like the 4670 supports.

OK, the 4670 isn't going to perform at the same speed and resolution as higher end cards, but it does seem to cover all the bases with regard to features.

I think I'll do some more digging into UK sites selling the 4670 and then compare price and performance/features to older cards.

Great feedback though - thanks very much to everyone for posting...

BTW, about this:

Quote :

X1600s | 6600s
X1900s | 6800s

2600s | 7600s
2900s | 7900s

3600s | 8600s
3800s | 8800s

4600s | 9600s
4800s | GTX 280, 260, Geforce 9800s

where do we fit the x800? AFAIK before these we had:

9600s | 5600s
9800s | 5800s/900s

Now that I think about it, the ATI Radeon 2xxx and 3xxx series were actually released in the same year, so they both correspond to the Geforce 8xxx series.

ATI | Nvidia
x600 | 6600s
x800 | 6800s

X1600s | 7600s
X1900s | 7900s

2600s, 3600s | 8600s
2900s, 3800s | 8800s

4600s | 9600s
4800s | GTX 280, 260, Geforce 9800s

If ur interested I have a X1950pro for sale

CHECK IT OUT

Quote from anttt69 :

If ur interested I have a X1950pro for sale

CHECK IT OUT

Thanks, I may consider this , however I want to wait and see how much the 4670 will be from my local store.

The 4670 is out now here in Canada, selling for $100, or about 50 of your pounds. Seems like a good deal to me.