What card do u use for 1680x1050?

[abeck_23]

I'm looking to buy a new card to run with my new monitor. I want to run games at 1680x1050, I was wondering what card other people are running and what the performance is when gaming.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

Well it'd help if you mentioned the games in particular and your budget.

With such limited info I'd say the X1900XT is a good starting point for top current and future games.

 

[randomizer]

I agree completely with TheGreatGrapeApe. Any card with at least 128mb ram can run that resolution (unless its so old it doesnt support it, in which case it probably wont have 128mb anyway). You will just have to get used to minimum graphics and slideshow framerates. :lol:

 

[navyseal2101]

Fx 5200. Nuff said.

 

[Weirdo0815]

If you want any semi-recent game to run at 1680x1050, you will need a pretty powerful card. Before my latest hardware upgrade, I was running games like Far Cry and Half Life 2 at 1680x1050 on my Apply 20" cinema monitor using a Geforce 6800GT AGP8x. I was not able to have everything on but there was still enough on to make it look great.

(That computer was a Athlon 64 3700 btw)

About six months ago, I upgraded to a Dell 2407 (i think thats the model number) 24" widescreen and just last week, I upgraded my computer to a Core 2 Duo E6300 with a eVGA 7900 GT KO (256MB version). I can now run HL2 and Far Cry at my monitor's max rez with EVERYTHING turned on, including AA and AF, thats 1920x1200, and get VERY playable FPS numbers.

Not to destroy your hopes though, there is not a lot of games that run widescreen yet. Most of the ones that do are FPS's and a few RPG's (oblivion comes to mind).

Like i said, it really depends on what games you want to run. If all you want is to run Windows at that rez, like GrapeApe and Randomizer said, any card with 128MB ram will be enough but if you want games to run, you will need a little more power then a FX 5200 can give, sry navyseal

If you are looking to stay with AGP (if you are running that now anyway), look for like a 6600 GT/x700 XT or a 6800 GS(or XT)/x800 GTO. If you can find a 6800GT or 6800Ultra in AGP form for a good price, you would be well off for a long time.

If you are running PCI-Express, you can look for the above mentioned chipsets or you can go with a 7600/x1600 or greater.

There is a website that has a list of games that can run widescreen (with or w/o a mod to the game). http://www.widescreengamingforum.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

 

[randomizer]

If you are looking to stay with AGP (if you are running that now anyway), look for like a 6600 GT/x700 XT or a 6800 GS(or XT)/x800 GTO. If you can find a 6800GT or 6800Ultra in AGP form for a good price, you would be well off for a long time.

If you are running PCI-Express, you can look for the above mentioned chipsets or you can go with a 7600/x1600 or greater.

Yea 6800gs is an awesome card for its price and OCs pretty well too, plus if you get the agp version you can attempt (emphasis intended) to unlock the pixel pipes with rivatuner or something and get higher performance. But dont expect to be able to do that and make it work properly, sicnce there is a high chance that it wont work well once the pipelines are unlocked.

And forget the x1600 since it doesnt perform well, but the 7600gt is a great bang for the buck card.

 

[2Cb]

The 7950GX2 is doing great too at these resolutions. If you have the budget, I'd say go for that one.

 

[Vinny]

My card can do that res just fine and handels past games (HL2, FarCry, B&W2, Doom 3, etc.) perfectly fine on high settings. Games like Oblivion and FEAR (with a widescreen mod) ask a bit more out of it though so I can't run those two as high as the other games.

I say go with something cheap for now, like a X1800XT and get a better card after the DX10 cards. A X1800XT should be plenty of power for most any game today and more than enough for the next year (besides DX10 games).

 

[turkishdrummer]

id personnelly go with the 7950. Ive been using it for about a month and its worked out great for me with my monitor.

 

[Weirdo0815]

If you are looking to stay with AGP (if you are running that now anyway), look for like a 6600 GT/x700 XT or a 6800 GS(or XT)/x800 GTO. If you can find a 6800GT or 6800Ultra in AGP form for a good price, you would be well off for a long time.

If you are running PCI-Express, you can look for the above mentioned chipsets or you can go with a 7600/x1600 or greater.

Yea 6800gs is an awesome card for its price and OCs pretty well too, plus if you get the agp version you can attempt (emphasis intended) to unlock the pixel pipes with rivatuner or something and get higher performance. But dont expect to be able to do that and make it work properly, sicnce there is a high chance that it wont work well once the pipelines are unlocked.

And forget the x1600 since it doesnt perform well, but the 7600gt is a great bang for the buck card.

Yea, i included the x1600 there because that was ATI's first, poor attempt at competing against the 7600 series.

If you are looking for cards $200 or less, check out the article Tom's just did on the subject. They test the X1800 GT (or GTO, i cant remember and am too lazy to look at it lol), a X850 XT (previous generation, same generation as the 6800/6600 but ATI and not Nvidia), and the 7600GT. I wouldnt recommend going with the X850 as it does not support SM 3.

so here is my suggestion for different price ranges to run what you want:

AGP8x:
Up to $150: 6800 GS (or GT if you can find one) or a X1600Pro
$150+: 7800 GS

PCI-Express:
Up to $200: 7600GT or X1800 GTO
$200-300: 7900 GT or X1900 GT
$400-500: 7900 GTX or X1900 XT/XTX
$500+: 7950GX2

If you want to run games at playable frame rates at 1680x1050, you will be looking at about $200+ for a gfx card. Cards cheaper then that might be able to run it but not nearly as pretty and clean as the above ones.

Stay away from the X8??'s as they are not only previous generation but they dont support shader model 3. The 6800's do, thats why they are an ok option for upgrade.

This is all just my opinion though so... My two cents

 

[randomizer]

SM3.0 is not really important at the moment but you also dont get HDR with the X8xx series.

 

[Heyyou27]

I use two overclocked 7800GTs; I'd say you'll want at least an X1900XT for 1680x1050.

 

[randomizer]

What kind of performance do you get with those 7800gt's?