Help with Video Card Purchase ($100-$150)

x1950 pro will do ya good

I'll start looking at the X1950 pro's. I forgot to add that I am using XP & have no plans to goto Vista.

I should ask if the 1950pro is alot better then the 7900gs

If you dont overclocking, the 7900GS is not out of the question. I should out perfrom the X1950pro when OCed. X1950pro is is a safe bet though.

Just make sure you have the power supply to power the new card.

-Wolf sends

You guys need to look at some of the newer games when pushing the GF7's. Sure the OC'ed 7900GS or 7900GT are overall very comparable to the X1950 pro, but there are signs of this changing. We saw Oblivion and NFS: Carbon greatly favoring X1900 over GF7900. And now The X1950 pro, 8600GTS and even HD2600XT are smoking the 7900GS so far in many newer games. (UT3, COD4, HL2 episode 2, TF2, I'm betting Crysis too). The X1950 pro beats the 7900GTX in the UT3 demo. Anyway, Some examples as to why I myself am leary of the GF7's in the future:


http://www.legionhardware.com/docu [...] id=693&p=5

http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] i=3128&p=4

http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] /page3.asp

http://www.legionhardware.com/docu [...] id=691&p=3

http://www.anandtech.com/video/sho [...] i=3122&p=3 (7900GTX)

Is it a few games or a trend? You may want to rethink that if a max overclocked 7900GS offers only half the framerates of a X1950 pro in a new game you want to play.

I'm not knocking the 7900GS for most games, I bought a couple myself. But many new upcoming TWIMTBP titles, the 7900's are getting crushed, OC'ed or not. If Crysis turns out like UT3 and COD4, there will be some unhappy GF7 owners.

Bioshock, Lost Planet, COH are more examples:
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] /page8.asp
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] page11.asp
http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] /page5.asp

I do have a PS that has a pci/e connector. One thing I forgot to mention that I do have my PC overclocked.

Should I still be looking at the x1950's & is this one good

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] NEFL090707

Most of the links I posted were without fsaa. You're right, the X1950 pro has generally done better with fsaa, but in some of these new games, even it's performance is too low to really look at with fsaa @ max detail levels.

The problem with the Tom's charts are they only show no fsaa at 1024x768, which puts us in cpu/system bound territory. Example is Dark Messiah. If we only look at the 10x7 no fsaa, basically anything above the 8600GT is cpu bound and all within 2-3 fps. http://www23.tomshardware.com/grap [...] &chart=280 But If we look at more gpu limited settings like 12x10 4xaa, then there is a huge difference. http://www23.tomshardware.com/grap [...] &chart=282 And even then the tops cards are cpu bound (X1950XTX obviously not the top card), so bump it up more to 19x12 4xaa, and things change up top too. http://www23.tomshardware.com/grap [...] &chart=284

Check this review: http://www.firingsquad.com/hardwar [...] /page7.asp

The HD2900GT didn't really impress too much for the current asking price. I'm thinking it's a bad buy with the HD3850 soon to be released at a similar price. It's basically equal to the X1950 pro in this review, winning at UT3, losing at Episode 2, and being equal in the rest of the gaems.