I'm going to switch from a Nvidia 7600GT to a Radeon X850XT PCIX16 which drivers should I use and is there any patches for a Epox9NPA Ultra with a AMD Athlon 64 3000 with a GIG of RAM, I might need? will my RIVA tuner work with this card or do I need a different OC utility?,looks like this card is much better than my old one, thanks
and I'm getting it for like 30 bucks some on e bay for over 200,plays Crysis on med-low, 7600 won't even play it with out skipping like crazy
Sorry my setting on this card for crysis Are as  
Tex=q=med       shad=q=low
Obj=q=med      vole ef=q=med
Shad=q=low    game ef=q=med
Phys=q=med   post=q=low
Part=q=med   water=q=low  
And sound low, running on abit ip35pro

thats an strange choice for an upgrade.  are you getting it cheap as that is two gen's back card even if top of the range.
 
  With drivers i am not sure, i usually just say go with the latest.

go with the latest... but that IS quite a wierd upgrade
 
check the market price for ebay, and don't pay a dime over that, cos that is a very old card...

If you're getting it for $30 I hope you're selling the 7600GT for more.

Just as a heads up to you, the X850XT only supports SM2.0 (aka DX 9.0b).  I used to have one, and this card will not play Bioshock because Bioshock requires SM3.0 (aka DX 9.0c).
 
ATI has had SM3.0 support since x1000 series and Nvidia since the GF6 series.  Make your choice wisely, because lack of SM3.0 support prevents you from benefiting from a lot of graphical features that are in all of today's games.
 
But, if you are playing everything on the lowest settings you shouldn't have any problems.  It doesn't sound like you need tons of performance, so go for it.  It is just not a very good card by today's standards, or even last year's.

Well, he got it only for $30 and depending on the game, the 850XT can be much faster than the 7600GT. (Especially the DDR2 ones.)  Just look at the VGA charts, they show the X850XT is faster, especially on lower resolutions.
 
As for Bioshock :
 
http://www.paolofranchini.com/shsh [...] hp?f=1&t=5
 
You can now play Bioshock on SM2.0 cards.

If the guy had a Crossfire mobo with another X850 he may be able to produce some fairly good stats with some games. Shame ATi didnt included SM3.0 though

sm3 support is pretty useless if they don't have the speed to make use of it ala 6xxx series from nvidia, a marketing tool for cards of that age, nothing else.

yeah i noticed the 6800 was poor on 3DM06 in SM3.0, alot worse than 2.
 
Same thing can be said now for SM4.0 with the new batches of cards. Next lot should fix it

Crazy! That's not 'the way it's meant to be played'™ at all.

When I first got Bioshock, I did see that a SM2.0 project was being worked on.  I was going to be upgrading soon to a new system (the one I am using now), so I lost track of it.
 
Great to hear they finally got it working though!  My x850xt was able to play HL2 and CS:S at 1920 maxed out easy, as well as a few others.  The new games were not kind to it though.  Those new games maxed out look a lot better on my 8800gt maxed out too.  Not fps-wise, I am talking about texture-wise.
 
So, SM3.0 is actually worth it now is all i was trying to say in my other post.

they did get it working... I'm running a modded (SM2 playable) copy atm... but it's not ideal... looks and runs much better on my main system... 5 minute load times FTL

Now that I think about it, I think I tried the fix a long time ago, and the load times were very ridiculous.  Not to mention the performance was still pretty bad on decent settings.