Video Cards - What are you using?

[wayneyoung]

Was considering on upgrading my video card to one of the newer 1GB cards such as the Diamond ATI Radeon 3650HiDef (or) GeForce 8600 GT video cards.

Keep in mind that although these cards have really great specs for the average and advanced gamer they are not the top shelf of video cards - so keep that in mind that my budget is limited to $140 or less.

what do you recommend keeping in mind my budget constraints - so what I am asking here is to NOT recommend the latest $500 card (or) brag about how you have the worlds greatest system running terra flops of processing power.

Reasons I want to up grade: I usually clock about 50 fps ( I know 30fps is cinematic quality) but many, many times my frame rates drop into the low teens - especially in a dungeon when fighting gets congested

My current system: Dell

Mother board: Latest VIA Chipset + has all PCI express slots

Processor: Pentium 4 Hyper Threading - 3.0Ghz

Memory: 2 GB DDR

Hard Drive: 280 GB 10000rpm HD

Video Card: ATI X600 256 MB


Monitor: Dell 21" Monitor

[BCShooter]

Might I suggest you look at Tom's Hardware they have a load of good info on building computers and getting the most bang for your buck on computer parts. That is where I got most of the info to build my machine 2 years ago. They had a guide on building a gaming rig for $720 USD that could be OC to 4Ghz. Now I have added several things to mine to up it a bit more than what they did.

[thef00l]

I'd go for ATI. Always have so far, and they haven't let me down.
I currently use an X1950XTX 512 gb which i bought last year, and although one generation back (dx9 hardware support) is still rocking.
I run WoW in full settings and AoC medium settings with 6x Antialiasing.

So, i'd go with ATI, your choice is very descent (3650), i'd take it over NVidia any time.

EDIT: You might want to add a proccesor in the upgrade as well.

[oosel]

im using 2x9600 gt's in sli they are more than enough to run everything maxxed on wow even though wow doesnt use sli and they are cheap as chips to buy at less than £90 each

[Pernicious]

I've always gone with NVidia. Solid company. I tend to pick the under dog, AMD, Nvidia. Just seemed like a good mix. Of course then AMD merged with ATA. I thought, well maybe i'll give ATA a shot, got myself an ATA card. put it in... Sorely disappointed... There was a lot of this "catalyst" crap and things just wern't working as smoothly. Trying to find help on that website wasn't much fun either. I promptly returned the card and now am using a NVidia GeForce 8500 GT. Powerful card, with no fan so its super quiet and doesn't over heat. Totally loves it.

BTW, I do think ATA makes great TV Tuners though, and I do have one of them in my system.

[Oliselia]

I just nabbed this bad boy from tiger direct.. Need to muck with my UI still only getting ~65FPS (maxed settings) :( have to much crap loaded, need to trim down


-Oli

[Absalom]

If your focus is WoW...then I'd say grab a dual core setup (since WoW actually uses it now) and a PCIe video card of your choice. I went with ATI (sorry Pern) and I am happy with it. Since the graphics for WoW are kinda behind the times.. you really shouldn't have much trouble finding a video card to get you away from the "4fps in shattrath blues". I am being vague on purpose. I don't want to tell you to run out and buy the top of the line because honestly.. you don't need it.

Course, I spent tons on my system when I made it.. but yeah.. you dont *Have* to spend so much on the video card

[xTAGx Wizard]

I'm using the 8600Gt and love it. My machine is real similar to yours and I can run over 60fps and usually only drop to around 35fps in Shatt on a busy day......

[Elricc]

/cry.
Being in the "older gamer' group I come from where you get/build etc the best you can so it lasts. I had a friend build me a new PC almost 6 years ago-yes 6 years. Not your average toy machine though a dual 2.8 xeon processor server with 3G ram & hyperthreading & a few other goodies. I can be burning disks & playing wow at the same time.A person at a LAN we used to go to tried to floodping me from a single processor machine whilst i was server for a FPS we were playing-his machine stopped-we didn't notice any change lol Back then nothing came close to it.
I upgraded to a 7800GT video card a couple of years ago-again at the time it was top of the line. Well last saturday it went bang & being AGP. I can only get a generic 512M video card now

[mavric240]

I have this card, http://www.nvidia.de/page/go_7800gtx.html

You can check this out to compare or review other cards:
http://www.notebookcheck.net/Noteboo...News.48.0.html