So i have a 22inch widescreen monitor with a 1680 x1050

So i have a 22inch widescreen monitor with a 1680 x 1050 resolution and im looking at the game bioshock, and im wanting to know if it would be better to get a X1950 pro 512mb or a X1950 XT 256mb? i know that the x1950xt 256mb more powerful but would the x1950 pro 512mb render and preform better becuase of my monitors resolution?

other specs..

Q6600
3 gigs 667 ram
320 GB 7200 HD
X-fi xtreme gamer

does anybody have any experience with my situation???

I don't have experience with Bioshock, but I do have experience with the x1950 pro and a 22" monitor with 1680x1050 resolution. In fact I had 2 x1950 pro's in Crossfire. Things ran okay in standard 2D, but playing games led to some problems. After a short period of time, anywhere from 10-60 minutes depending on the game, the cards would hang while playing games. I tried them with Gothic 3, Dark Messiah and Oblivion. Things looked great, but I couldn't play for too long.

The big problem with these cards is overheating of the voltage regulators. This has been a huge problem with all of the manufacturers. I did read somewhere that ATI changed these boards a little to use analogue VR's instead of the digital ones they originally had to resolve the overheating problem. I can't vouch for that since I have since ripped mine out of my system, for good.

When they did work, the image quality was quite nice, and performance was decent as well (I have an E6600, 2Gb PC2-8000 RAM, in a liquid cooled system). I would recommend a single card, and go for the highest quality you can afford. I replaced mine with a single 8800 GTS, and things run much better now.

Good luck with your choice.

X1950XT Hands down!

Best,

3Ball

Generally it's overrated to the point of being able to play, As in: 256mb wouldnt usually be able to render anything above 1920x1200, at that rez an extra 256mb would help out a lot, and usually anything below that won't see almost ANY improvement. Basically you're rez is a good cut-off point for 256 or 320mb to step up.

Therefore, you will much better served with the 256mb x1950xt, though if you can get stuff from Newegg, they currently have a great deal on a 512mb version of the x1950xt for the same price as a 256. Its a GeCube, but sry dont have a link.

Even with less memory the higher powered GPU will outperform the X1950pro. If you were comparing the same GPU with the different amount or memory then yes 512mb would give some added performance. At 1680X1050 256mb is enough memory for current games.

One clear answer for this can be found by looking at the performance of the 8800GTS 320mb and the 8800GTS 640mb. The big difference between these two video cards start at 1920X1200.

Finally the extra 256mb on the X1950pro will not make up for the higher performing X1950XT's GPU.

The Xbox360 has 512MB of shared memory for the GPU and CPU.

Oblivion doesn't use very much texture memory.

It does if you mod it. And have AA. You can go well over 512 if you put a bit of effort in - see here:

http://devnull.devakm.googlepages. [...] reoverhaul

And if you dont bother modding it, theres a school of thought that says dont bother playing it...

As for Bioshock, I'm running it at medium-high details on an E2140\1950pro @ 1080p (see specs for details) and its perfectly playable. so you should be fine with either @ 1680*1050.