Graphics Cards... What should I do?

Ok folks, I need help.

I find myself in the strange situtation of being able to spend a little extra on a graphics card this year. Having only ever been handed someone elses castaway or buying a budget card (£50) to replace a dead one I don't really know what i'm looking for.

The very upper limit I can goto is around £250 but even then i'd like not to spend all that much on it. I have read in tech reviews for (supreme commander) the game i'm upgrading for that the ATi cards are slightly better than the Nvidia alternative but really i'm asking your advice on this.

Can anyone reccomend a decent card for me?

Thanks in advance for any help

Dave

 

1. what are the rest of your system's specs?
2. do you know if you have a PCI-Express or AGP slot?
3. what PSU do you have and/or how powerful is it? (if u dont know, i can help u find out)

 

atleast a 7600 to 8800. You can get a nice 7600 for 80 bucks and max out alot of gamez.

 

I'm upgrading pretty much everything at the moment, new board, chip, ram, psu and graphics card.

Going to eventually have:

2Gb pc6400 Ram
P4 Dual core 2 3.2Ghz Chip
Motherboard with PCI-E slot

and was considering this
sapphire radeon x1950 with 512mb onboard.

 

so u mean a core 2 duo? or a pentium D? if its a pentium D (which it seems to be) id get a core 2 duo e6300 instead which goes for about $180 USD and will outperform all pentium D's and most AMD procs by a long shot. sure, it may cost a bit more than u wanted to spend but if u have to, save up a bit longer until u have the extra cash to make it a worthwhile upgrade. everything else looks good

 

Yeah it's a P4 D dual core @ 3.2 Ghz £80 ($157)

but a similar speed core 2 duo is @ 2.93 Ghz for £659 ($1295)

Obviously that must be better because it's so much more expensive however, would I get better performance from a core 2 duo @ 2.13Ghz (which is actually slower than what i'm running on at the mintute)

 

mhz doesnt really matter that much any more. the "slowest" core 2 duo @ 1.8ghz for about $150 will beat out an FX-62, AMD's former leader which cost $1000 before core 2 came out (its<$600 right now)

check out the core 2 e6300 or if u can pay for it, the e6600.

 

yeah listen to him and u can over clock mad... i have a e6400 and im running both of my cpus at 7 ghz. Im fast or maybe faster than the extremes... The only problems with dual cores from intel is that its hard to run single threaded games. Before i get flamed I did do my research... I couldnt run battlefield2 it was pissing me off with having a 8800,3 gbs of corsair xms2.....ANd of course a E6400 intel dual core...

My processor was running at 2.13 ghz where the game is single thread so i couldnt run it with two cpus. So what I did was bought a zalman 9700 and overclocked that pup to 3.5 ghz. My processor has to be atleast 7 ghz, but www.canyourunit.com told me that its running at 11ghz. I wont need to upgrade for a good 3-4 years. Listen to viper boy t he mhz doesnt matter anymore, its the was they designed and built the chip to make it alot faster.

Btw even with the stock cooler u can overclock to 2.8 with no problems, like i told u before dont get a sapphire radeon x1950 or anything in the dx9 nature. How much is it 220? dude if u h ave 80 more dollars i would get the xfx or evga 320 mb 8800 gts. If u ever seen the trailer ive seen for alan wake ull crap urself. Another, the ram size on the card doesnt always mean its the best dude. I had a good 6600 128mb where the 256 5500 sucked major *** compared.

The memory size is there to fool noobs that think the higher the memory interface the better the card. I was reading for 300 bucks the xfx xxx 320 mb 8800 gts is better than all of the 8800 640 mb gts. For 80 dollars more u get so much more with this card.

 

7GHz??? I don't think so.... The HIGHEST clock speed I've ever seen from a E6400 is 4.9GHz and the person was using liquid nitrogen to cool the cpu. With a good cooling solution, and a very good motherboard/ram combination you should be around 2.88GHz using a 360MHz FSB at 1.350V and be maxing out in the 3.2GHz - 3.5GHz range with A LOT of tweaking for performance.

To the OP. Don't go with a Pentium D for your processor. Clock speed =/= performance now a days when you are comparing different generations of CPUs. If you're on a budget, the E6300 would be a great choice for only a few more dollars, and it will blow by the Pentium D with ease. I *highly* recommend going with a Core 2 Duo.

To answer your graphics card question, a nVidia 7900GT/GS would last you a while and X1950 is a great choice as well. If you want to invest in DirectX10 (which requires windows Vista) you will want to spend a little more on a 8800 series card. A 8800GTS with 320MB of memory can be had for $299 American.

 

lol yea 7ghz is impossible...maybe u mean 3.5ghz but just cause u have 2 cores doesnt mean u multiply the speed by 2

 

Duly noted guys. Nice one, thanks

 

I have a program that says ur cpu speed is at 3.5 ghz, then it said your total speed was something like 7ghz. www.canyourun.com