A newbie enters the Forum and bows low......

[Arnold Rimmer]

Hey all.

Just about to get a new PC built for gaming and I want info on graphics cards. Does anyone think that (for now) the 7800 GTX 256Mb is probably the best lager in the world?

What about the new Radeon X800 XL 512Mb - any good? Its cheaper than the above too.

Currently running a Radeon 9800 Pro in my other machine which is pretty hot too. All advice welcome.

Ta.

Arnie

 

[Me__2001]

currently the 7800GTX in SLI is the best but it think the X1800XT gives the best single card performance, the X800XL is the best card for its price and can handle pretty much any game you throw at it, the 9800Pro should be able to do the same but at a lower resolution and without AA and AF

what motherboard are you planning on using ?

 

[Arnold Rimmer]

Apologies - I'm already floundering. What's AA and AF and what motherboard would you recommend? I'm not too technical I'm afraid. I use a Mac most of the time or praps I shouldn't admit to that!

Ta.

 

[Me__2001]

there is nothing wrong with using Macs, heres a definition for AA and AF

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anisotropic_filtering

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-aliasing

who is building the PC ?

 

[CITech]

Hey all.

Just about to get a new PC built for gaming and I want info on graphics cards. Does anyone think that (for now) the 7800 GTX 256Mb is probably the best lager in the world?

What about the new Radeon X800 XL 512Mb - any good? Its cheaper than the above too.

Currently running a Radeon 9800 Pro in my other machine which is pretty hot too. All advice welcome.

Ta.

Arnie

Arnie, the 7800 can be described as "le nads de chien" to put it mildly. (I will leave you to work out the translation)

The run sweet as a nut in SLI configuration, and also multiple monitor setup as I have (See below). Not sure what the single card confiuration is like, so I bow, meekly, to Me_2001's earlier comment.

ps. Kryten sends his regards!

 

[Arnold Rimmer]

My local dealer. They built my existing Athlon 2800 with the 9800 Pro and it's been incredibly stable and reliable. In 3 years only a handful of restarts have been needed with fairly heavy gaming etc. And when it was overheating and kept shutting down they fixed it immediately with a new 9800 and a bigger fan. I don't mind paying a tad extra if I get the service.

Thanks for the links BTW. Motherboard - any particular recommendations??

Arnie.

 

[Me__2001]

i assume you want to keep it AMD based? and want socket 939 64bit one ?

if you do then the Asus A8N-SLI deluxe or premium, or theres the DFI LanParty UT NF4 Ultra-D or LanParty UT NF4 SLI-D (if you want two graphics cards in SLI, then i think you'll need the second of the DFI boards)

 

[G~MAN]

Well i have a Asus A8N sli Premium mobo ... and so far nothing wrong with it. Touch wood !

The graphics card ... hard one really ... if you want a futureproof system i would go for a SLi set up with ONE 7800GTX for now. The only reason you would want 2 is if u were to be playing ur games at a high resoulytion e.g. 1600x1200 basically a bigass widescreen monitor!Having all AA and AF turned to full.

What size is your monitor atm ?

I havnt really seen or read up on the new ATi cards but i heard they arnt that much better then Nvidias current line. Some of Nvidias card are better in some games and vice versa