so my 6600gt is starting to show its age

and bioshock can't even play at low settings


so whats a good card that would let me play bioshock at medium-high settings on a 1024x768 screen.

budget is less than $200.



Thanks!

Is your motherboard AGP or PCI-e?

Thanks guys its pci-e


lunyone - those 7900gs are clocked 50 mhz down to agp speeds for some odd reason i've checked them out

also will x1950pro work on a 570sli mobo?

and another thing...will it run bioshock on max or just medium-high?

Don't know if it will run on max settings or not, since I don't have Bioshock . For the amount of $ that you want to spend, the x1950pro is the best bet. The 7900gs's don't require as much power, but are just a shade slower than the x1950's. Any PCI-e mobo should support either the 7900gs or x1950. Not sure why you would have a problem with either, unless your talking about doing SLI (which is nVidia's version of AMD's crossfire). If your thinking about doing SLI/Crossfire, I wouldn't do it. I don't think you can SLI two ATI boards, you would need a Crossfire board to do that. You would be better off getting a 8800gts for about the same $ of a SLI setup and still have better performance.

Not a problem. I think I read somewhere that the x1950pro only needs something like 26-28A max on the 12V rail. So I'm assuming you would be fine. Someone else can correct me if I'm wrong.

7900gs is terrible for bioshock

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] /page8.asp

go for 1950pro or 8600gts

just finished the demo a few minutes ago (game was kinda creepy near the beginning, but still fun). XP pro x64 sp2, X2 3800+, 2GB PC3200, 7800GT (all at stock speeds), @ 1024x768 res, other ingame settings on high (they were all the default settings and res for the game), and manual driver settings as well (8x AF, gamma correction on, multisampling on, threaded opti on, AA and verticle sync controlled by app, etc). gameplay was around 20-25 FPS it seemed, so it was definetly playable either way, no stuttering that i noticed. if you want perfectly smooth fps though with a similar gpu (such as the ones that were being recommended), you may need to turn a couple settings down some below max.

lol, well, it was definetly playable overall, there were only a few places where it could actually be considered smooth though (40+ fps or so im guessing, given what the settings were). with fraps i could probably give more accurate numbers.

edit: well, i was fairly close anyhow... fps hovered around a high of 30 fps on average, but rarely above that, and dipped to 19-20 on occasion in more demanding areas, capped at 60 fps max in non demanding areas, due to vertical sync (verticle sync tends to reduce performance some when enabled, so either way). yeah... with driver options disabled, fps is around 30-40 on average, so smoothness is there, but you sacrifice additional visual driver settings to get that consistantly.

i play the full version it with a gainward glh 7800 gs agp(570-1500) a 3700+amd @ stock windows xp 32 an a nforce 3 ecs motherboard muskin level one pc3500 @221 mhz ..all setting were on high after install and i dit not need to change them..lovely graphics but do not my frame rate..see y and good luck

those are old drivers.
They use drivers from 6 months ago and run a vga chart. They need to update their charts so people don't get the wrong idea.

Hardware
Processor: Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800, 2.93 GHz
Motherboard: Intel 975X - Intel D975XBX2
Memory: Vitesta DDR2 800 4-4-4-12 533 MHz
Graphics Card: PCI Express Card
Hard Disk: 2 x Hitachi 120 GByte SATA, Cache 8 MByte
Network: Intel 1000 Pro
Audio: Intel High Definition Audio
Software
OS: Windows XP, Build 2600 SP2
DirectX: Version: 9.0c (4.09.0000.0904)
Chipset Driver: Intel 8.1.1.1010
Graphics Driver ATI Catalyst 7.1 / Nvidia Forceware 93.71 / Geforce 8 Nvidia Forceware 97.92
Network Driver: Windows default
Audio Driver:
Other Driver: none

We are up to 163.44 drivers. ATI is 7.8?

modern drivers and recent tests

http://www.digit-life.com/articles [...] page4.html

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] s_roundup/

I have the x1950 pro on AGP and I play bioshock at 1024x768 as thats my normal res. At that res i max out the in game settings and its flawless...no jitter or any such thing. Runs nice and smooth. The lowest my fps has got was about 35 but its usually in the 50-70 range going upto over 100fps at places. If you get the XT it will be ever better. so your call.

What's the rest of your specs? My son's computer is needing upgrade on the GPU to streach the build another year or so. He's got a P4 3.2g Prescott, 2gig's DDR 3200, 9600xt (was 9800pro until it crashed ), Asus P4p800se, 450w PSU with 28A on 12V rails .

How's your FPS on your GTS that you have?

I have mine overclocked what you see in my sig. I get away with 1440x900 everything on high. It does get slow at times but playable. My lowest frame rate is 25fps and average around mid 40fps.

if you clicked on the little computer sign ontop of my post it would tell you hehe

but just for you:

asrock 775 dual vsta mobo
E6600 @ stock
2gb ram
250Gb HDD
x1950pro 512MB (AGP)
380 watt Tagan PSU

need any other info?

no worries....oh and im still using windows XP forgot to put that in.

WOW!!! Last time I checked the 8600gts's were over $200. Now I can get one for $140 shipped after $20 MIR.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814127284

I agree. 1950PRO 512mb is just fine for Bioshock. Single core cpu and 1 gig mem. too. VERY playable @1280x960!
All settings defaulted to MAX. 1950XT 512mb would ROCK this game inside out!!! I'd even venture to guess that 256mb cards would do pretty well. As for the MIN. req. video card... X1800 series on up, Geforce 7800 series on up for playability at 1200x? resolutions. For higher resolutions I'd recommend 1950XT or 7800GTX level cards.
All with in 200$ (+/-).

it plays fine on my x1950 pro 256mb at 1024X768 on my 19crt
amd 4200x2, 1gig ram

dont know the exact fps but it hasnt stutterd yet with all max setting

It's strange the Best Buy's and Fry's over here had the 8600 GTS less expensive than the 2600 XT.

You would need 8800 GTS to have an enjoyable experience for Bioshock for DX10 at 1280x1024.

The game is practically unplayable for the X1950 PRO @ 1600x1200 max settings.

PPAL808VGA01

Cleeve, I need your help in deciding between 2 video cards.

Any is help is appreciated- thanks!

Try to find 1950xt. But they're more close to $200 and is getting harder to find. They are much better than any geforce 7 series because it has 48 pixel shaders while geforce 7 has only 16. Those pixel shaders are really showing its power in modern games while geforce 7 series are getting creamed from oblivion, lost planet to bioshock.

For something cheap. you can go either 8600gts or 1950pro. 1950pro is little faster for this particular game but nothing major.

If you want to do max detail with 20-22" monitor you should go with 8800gts or faster.

Check this out. This should be what you need ..

http://www.legionhardware.com/document.php?id=681

13 pages of benchmarks showing that GPU is whats important in this game and not really your CPU. I recently bought ASUS 8800 GTS 640Mb still playing on single core amd 4000+ so hopefully i will get around 70 FPS on my 1024x768 old crt after i start playing that game
That would be great if all new games were only GPU dependant Then no need for 8 cores ..

Update: Since they used a 256mb version of the x1950pro for these tests and it beats the 512mb version of the 7900GT they used... Im thinking VRAM is not that important for this game. By the same token, the fps are so close to playable at medium (35fps) and 1280 x 1024 with the 256mb x1950pro, I cant help but think that a 512mb x1950pro might push it over the edge into the playable realm. Although, the visual quality seems to see a drastic drop between high and medium, much more so than between medium and low. Perhaps thats why the fps droppage between medium and low is pretty insignificant (35fps vs 30fps) with the 256mb x1950pro.