good card for newer titles out now

[nojoy]

im on a p4 2.4ghz , 512 megs of ram, radeon 9800 pro . agp of course

and im thinking of giving myself a present. im on a budget
and was considering a 6600 256meg card or a 6600 gt 128 meg.
anywhere between 100-150 range, might be able to go a little more not sure. was thinking normal 6800 card if i can find a cheap one.
My goal is to be able to play quake4 etc decently without having to kill all my textures etc ingame to play.
thx in advance for the help.

 

[DuxSyagrius]

Quake 4 now has a patch for dual CPU, dual core, and Hyper threaded systems. At low resolutions (1024x768) you can get like a 25-40% performance increase. The 6600 series is not that much better than the 9800 Pro and is in some cases slower. I would suggest you download the patch and suck it up for awhile. i think the 7600 series from Nvidia is going to be a good card and will go for about 179-199 and offer better performance than the 9800 Pro or the 6000 series cards. it will offer you playble FPS whule giving access to newer rendering techs. On a side note, I would suggest you get a new CPU and mobo while you are at it. The A64 3000 games as well as a 3Ghz P4 and you can get an AGP based board for less than 75. 205 bucks for a new CPU and mobo will serve you better than getting a new 6600 GT...

 

[nojoy]

yea im working on that to.
how much of a improvment are the x700 pro 256 to a radeon 9800 pro.
and the x800's.

 

[the_guru]

Quake4 is an OpenGL-based game so Nvidia cards are better.

Here are some benchmarks for you:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2005/12/02/vga_charts_viii/page11.html

A 6600GT is a good buy.

 

[DuxSyagrius]

The 9800 Pro has better bandwidth so it can turn on the "eye candy" better than the X700 or the 6600GT. If I had a choice, I would go with any X800 product first, the 6600 GT second, and the X700 fourth...... The 9600, X600 and X700 all sucked as the mid range option for ATI. The 6600 GT supports SM 3.0 whereas the ATI cards only do 2.0. But its not clear to me of the 6600GT has the bandwidth or sheer power to push decent frames with SM 3.0 enabled. The 6600GT has a very good price though if you can get a rebate with it (as low as 105 with rebates) X800 GT cards can be had as low as 160, 9800 Pro cards for 140. Good luck.

 

[the_guru]

The 9800 Pro has better bandwidth so it can turn on the "eye candy" better than the X700 or the 6600GT. If I had a choice, I would go with any X800 product first, the 6600 GT second, and the X700 fourth...... The 9600, X600 and X700 all sucked as the mid range option for ATI. The 6600 GT supports SM 3.0 whereas the ATI cards only do 2.0. But its not clear to me of the 6600GT has the bandwidth or sheer power to push decent frames with SM 3.0 enabled. The 6600GT has a very good price though if you can get a rebate with it (as low as 105 with rebates) X800 GT cards can be had as low as 160, 9800 Pro cards for 140. Good luck.

He wanted to play Quake4. Compared to the price tag all ATI-cards except the X1000-series suck at OpenGL.

 

[DuxSyagrius]

You are right, NVIDIA cards are better in general when it come to open GL based games. But if he wants to ramp up his resolution and AA/AF, the 6600 GT becomes badwidth limited. For instance, on Doom3 the 6600 GT out performs the X800 GTO marginally at 1280x1024 with no AA enabled. But at 1600x1200 with 4x AA enabled, the X800 GTO pulls ahead by 7 FPS. There is about a $50 premium for the X800 GTO, but when you add in the fact that there are many other games out besides Quake 4 he will eventually want to play, it is not the best option at this point in time. The 6600GT may perform better than his 9800 pro but not enough to warrant spending 105-160 bucks on a card that will produce an extra 10-15 FPS on 1 type of game. I forgot the fact he has a 9800 pro so in all actuality there really isnt a budget solution that is worth buying in respect to the performance of a 9800 Pro. He should change his CPU platform or wait to see what the 7600 series from Nvidia can do. My buddy has a x800 mobility and a 3.4 Ghz P4. he maxes out every 3d shooter he has with no problem. the 9800 Pro isnt THAT far behind. No joy should really be thinking of getting away from that P4 (533 Mhz bus maybe? yuck), 512 MB of RAM, and AGP slot.

 

[nojoy]

just to be more specific, i usually play all my games low settings regardless of card. since ive been playing since back in the days of quake playing netquake etc. 320x240 for the win!!
but seriously i usually dont play past 1024x740 or whatever it is i forgot. mainly dont really play for the eye candy, i want steady performance. i was told with a better new gen card i can prolly get it.
example of my play style is i still play 1.6 counter strike at 800x600
ati tray tools set to balanced or sometimes optimal performance if im trying to play quake4.
gosh i feel like that girlfriend you have and she walks into a shoe store and c ant decide which pair to buy lmao.
other games i play to, are bf2 i seem to run it ok way better then quake4. world of warcraft i really got no complaints play at default rarely lock up or anything. day of defeat source and counter strike source.
so a card that can handle quake4,dod source, cs source, wow, counter strike 1.6(thru that in to make you nasa pc owning peeps a chuckle =p)

another thing , would memory on these cards matter these days.
i was for awhile considering a normal 6600 256 meg card. hmm..i think im losing it =/

 

[DuxSyagrius]

Well, by saying that, I think it is safe to say a NVIDIA card would be the best bet for you. I really dont think a 6600GT is worth the cash considering what you already have. See if you can score a 6800 vanilla for around 189 or so. That would boost your performance markedly. Or wait for the 7600 series. The 6600 vanilla with 256MB of DDR-2 is a good buy at 99 bucks (if you can find it at that price) It can be overclocked to 6600GT perfornce relatively easy. But I think there is a 6600GT for 105 on new egg right now. But let me offer this bit of advice to you: At low resolution and with no eye candy involved, you are in the VERY CPU dependant mode. When you ramp things up thats when what type of GPU you have becomes important. You would see more performance by getting into a A64 3000 and a new mobo for around 200 bucks than by moving up from a 9800 Pro to a 6600 GT or maybe even a 6800 vanilla. I think its even safe to say that a sempron 3300 would do a better job at gaming than your 2.4 Ghz P4 (depending on that CPUs bus speed, it may game worse than an athlon XP 2400 clocked @ 2ghz). I'm not trying to tell you what to do, but I would hate to see you drop 150-190 of an AGP based card and you dont get the results you were looking for. Just something for you to think about.

 

[the_guru]

I was a bit tired when I replied last time.

As DuxSyagrius said, the difference between a 9800Pro and a 6600GT is very small. your current card is better than a 6600 256MB.

The biggest problem is that you have to little RAM. Another 512MB will do much.

 

[KennyG]

In all honesty, you're better off waiting and upgrading to pci-e

 

[nojoy]

first of all thx guys, you guys rock . input is awesome.
welp i had a 150 bux and ended up blowing it on a vid card, that found at a cheap price on newegg. a saphire x800gt 256 meg agp was onsale for 159. Next day i go and check the order and they where out of stock, but the order went thru and is now around philly, so in a way i think i got lucky. Now im gonna just scrounge up some bucks and get me at least a amd 64 3ghz cpu or something like that. im gonna wait till around march/may i think ut2k7 is scheduled for release and i will see whats out there for pci express. =)
now i need some good ram. who can point in that direction. /ducks the reply traffic heading his way.