75ZT Community

What's the latest thinking on PC graphics cards please chaps?

I have a pair of Radeon X1650 and think I need to upgrade to be able to play the latest version of Railworks with any degree of realism

Are pairs of graphics cards still de rigeur, or is a single card now the way to go? Nvidia or not? How much video RAM?(1920 x 1200 monitor). Suggestions for an upgrade please? I most certainly DON'T intend to pay out £300 just to play a game but I imagine that I can get a lot better than my present setup for not too much money.

Any ideas please?

I've got quite an old piece of kit and I upgraded to a Saphire Radeon HD6670 from http://www.novatech.co.uk/ It was about 70 quid, plus I got a free 360 gig mini ext HDD! (Special) and I have 2 gig RAM.
I play a lot of Flight Sim X and it's adequate.

NB. Just found it: http://www.novatech.co.uk/products/comp ... 1-20g.html

Thanks Bill.

Oh dear. Not many thoughts on graphics cards then. Are we not a community of rabid hard-core gamers?

This is the rest of my Spec - MS Windows 7 Ultimate (64bit) - INTEL PENTIUM 4 CPU 2.93 GHz - 2.0 GIG RAM. Build 2006..... Quite old in PC terms! But it does the job....lol.
My Windows Rating is 4.1 this is because of my processor, but my individual Graphics Rating is 7.1 not bad.

raistlin wrote:Oh dear. Not many thoughts on graphics cards then. Are we not a community of rabid hard-core gamers?

All I can say is what I say to customers who come in to buy a new PC. Go for the biggest numbers for the amount of money you want to spend.

I haven't played games on my PC since the days of Doom, and even then, graphics was not a problem

Sorry can't be any more help.

inno-3d-gtx460se-graphics-card-t5320.html

Swapped out a Radeon X1950 Pro for this....fan is a bit noisy on these for my taste but incredibly overclockable!

Don't be conned by higher clock rates on other makes costing almost twice as much! The Inno 3D will happily run at 850mhz (graphics) and with no ill effects whatsoever using the MSI Afterburner programme.

Kombustor scores achieved by my own card / system:
•KMark score (OpenGL 4): 5077 points (50 FPS)
•Submitted by Zeb on July 23 2011, 11:13 am
•Graphics score: 3340 points (64 FPS)
•PhysX score: 16327 points (76 FPS, 1001 SPS, GPU PhysX)
•Combined score: 30770 points (21 FPS, 2002 SPS)

•Duration: 130000 ms
•Resolution: 1280 x 720
•Anti-aliasing: X4
•Window mode: fullscreen

•Primary renderer: GeForce GTX 460 SE/PCI/SSE2/3DNOW!
•OpenGL version: 4.1.0
•Graphics drivers: 8.17.12.7533 (5-20-2011) - nvoglv32

•Number of GPUs: 1

•GPU0: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 SE ◦Device ID: 4318 - 3619
â—¦Memory size: 1024
â—¦Core clock: 850 MHz (Standard 650mhz)
â—¦Memory clock: 2202 MHz (Standard 1700 mhz)
â—¦Shader clock: 1700 MHz (Standard 1300mhz)
â—¦Max GPU usage: 94%
◦Max GPU temperature during the test: 68°C



•CPU: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 4000+
•CPU speed: 2109 MHz
•Operating System: Windows Vista 32-bit build 6002 [Service Pack 2]

My son wanted to 'tweak' his system, (which was 10 times better than mine as it was) and bought all this stuff to do it!!!!


________________________________________
Order Code Description Qty Unit Price
(ex vat) Line Total
(ex vat)
________________________________________
IL-I73770K INTEL I7 3770K RETAIL 1 £216.65

GIG-Z77UD5 GIGABYTE GA-Z77X-UD5H MOBO 1 £133.32

CM-HAFX COOLERMASTER HAF X CASE 1 £99.15

OCZ-A3240G OCZ AGILITY 3 SATA III 2.5" 240G 1 £116.65

CRU-BS8G16 BALLISTIX SPORT 8GB (2X4GB) 1 £34.16

NOC-NHD14 NOCTUA NH-D14 CPU COOLER SOCKET 1 £56.66

Basket Total (ex vat): £656.59

VAT @ 20.0%: £131.31

Total Order Value (inc vat): £787.90
________________________________________

And that is without his new 26" LED (Light Emitting Diode) Screen!
So, if you want better graphics - now you know! But it is quick! I mean REALLY quick!

It's been a couple of years since my last upgrade.
I have 2 cards running in sli.

Video cards change so fast that unless your reading up about them on a regular bases you'll get left behind.

I always use www.overclockers.co.uk to buy/ read all about the latest trends

Good luck

I'm a long time FPS gamer blokey !!
Well if its GFX grunt you want . then try my Nvidia 295 gtX, getting on a bit now but still blows most out of the water.. at the expense of rather a few watts

http://www.hwcompare.com/9035/geforce-gtx-295-vs-geforce-gtx-570/

Its runs everything flat out on a 24 inch LED monitor ..

actually a good site to compare stuff ..

Thanks everybody Food for thought

OK - somebody made me an offer I couldn't refuse

http://uk.msi.com/product/vga/R6970-Lightning.html

For £30 brand new I couldn't say no and it seems to have sufficient ooomph

In fact it's Crossfire compatible so I can buy another if I want to run them together. At £230 a pop I'll not be considering that for a while

At some 310 mm in length, it'll take up a fair bit of space in my PC case but I've measured and there is plenty of room for either one or two.

raistlin wrote:Oh dear. Not many thoughts on graphics cards then. Are we not a community of rabid hard-core gamers?

Probably not

I use to do quite a bit of PC gaming but since getting the XBOX 360 a few years back I now tend to use that for gaming and the PC for work. I still play Starcraft 2 on the PC however even my laptop can handle that so no need for high end graphics there!

Paul, That will do nicely , @ 30 quids he could have lost an arm !!

It should do everything you want after the older cards . just worth keeping an eye on your PSU output as this card draws around 250 watts .

take care

Chris

raistlin wrote:OK - somebody made me an offer I couldn't refuse

http://uk.msi.com/product/vga/R6970-Lightning.html

For £30 brand new I couldn't say no and it seems to have sufficient ooomph

In fact it's Crossfire compatible so I can buy another if I want to run them together. At £230 a pop I'll not be considering that for a while

At some 310 mm in length, it'll take up a fair bit of space in my PC case but I've measured and there is plenty of room for either one or two.

Thanks Chris.

I have an Akasa 1000W PSU so no worries there

Hmm... just been offered another R6970 for £75. Could make a nice Crossfire graphics platform

I have ran a ATi Radeon hd5770 for a while now and it will play all the top end games on high or ultra and you can pick one up for around £100.