Graphic card recommendations?

#1 Check out the Nvidia 6600 GT. You can find them new on eBay for $200 or less!

#2 I'm not sure what the current price for the Nvidia 6800 is, but I was very very happy with the TSE demo performance using that card.

#3 You can find a basic 6800GT on pricewatch.com for around 330. That is a damn good card and worth the money from what i have seen. Personally I'm holding out for the new dual core AMD chips so the current 939 chips go down. Then it's on to SLI.

#4 ATI ALL THE WAY :D

#5 I get good results from the ATI Radeon 9700 Pro. I believe you can get that card for $200 or less now.

If you can wait a while and save up a bit more, Nvidia is coming out with some really nice cards. I've always been an ATI person (since it came out) but these new Nvidia cards are the reason I may be changing in the near future.

Quote:NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA), a worldwide leader in graphics and digital media processors, today expands its award-winning NVIDIA GeForce 6 Series of graphics processing units (GPUs) by unveiling two new products: a 512MB version of the performance-leading GeForce 6800 Ultra GPU and a new lower-cost AGP version of the GeForce 6200 GPU which brings Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 technology to even more affordable price levels.

"Whether you are an extreme gamer or someone looking for an amazing upgrade, NVIDIA has the right product," said Ujesh Desai, general manager desktop products at NVIDIA. "These two new products further validate our commitment to bringing leading-edge performance and features to both the AGP and PCI Express markets."

Working with leading DDR manufacturers, the NVIDIA 512MB DDR3 GeForce 6800 Ultra GPU provides faster frame rates at higher resolutions and color depths and double the memory for geometry data and textures. The 512MB DDR3 GeForce 6800 Ultra GPU also features SLI technology to deliver an ultimate gaming supercomputer for the extreme gamer. In the mainstream space, the new GeForce 6200 AGP GPU brings Shader Model 3.0 functionality to the $79 price point.

The two new GPUs deliver breakthrough technologies, each providing new levels of performance and visual quality. These new products also utilize the NVIDIA ForceWare software suite and Unified Driver Architecture (UDA), incorporating software optimizations that take full advantage of the newest features and its industry-renowned compatibility, stability, and reliability.

The NVIDIA GeForce 6800, GeForce 6600, and GeForce 6200 models are available for both PCI Express and AGP-based PCs. These GPUs were the first to support the revolutionary Microsoft® DirectX® 9.0 Shader Model 3.0 standard for ultra-realistic effects and NVIDIA PureVideo technology for home-theater quality video on the PC.

These new GPUs are shipping now from NVIDIA and are expected to be available from numerous partners in April.

#6 I'd recommend staying away from low end cards. That $79 6200 is probably not going to be very good. The Radeon X300's we got with our Dell's here are crap as well.

We've had good sucess here running nVIDIA 6600+ and Radeon 9700+ and the X700-800 run great too.

#7 If you're using Linux, stick to NVIDIA. I have an NVIDIA 6600GT working very nicely.

#8 Asus recently showed a dual core, NVIDIA 6800 Ultra based video card. The card sports two NV45 cores, and 512MB of GDDR3 RAM, 256MB for each core.

As Brian said, I'd stay away from the $79 card as well. It's probably going to be deja vu for those MX440 owners.

#9 6600GT is the best value for money as far as video cards go. You can get them for about $180 idf you look around, and they are faster than the ATI equivalent. Do HDR and pixel shader 3 stuff

#10 It's funny you say that. I have a X300 and mine is having issues diplaying the Realm Wars game.

#11 X300 is probably worse performance wise than the MX440 (8xAGP) and MX460's out there, but atleast it has v2 shaders. Question is... how useful is that when it's already barely hanging on?

The X300SE is total rubbish. Even a first gen GeForce DDR card will crush it... apart from shaders of course. I agree with a lot on people here, the GeForce 6600GT is probably the best value/performance right now and shouldn't have much problems handling high end games. And if you got an SLI mainboard, if you run into problems, just stick a second GF 6600GT in there ;)

#12 Another thing about graphics cards is that you rarely get all the specs if the card you're buying, so it's a bit hard to compare the chips. Here is a complete list of all popular GPU's out there complete with feature list and specs for each GPU.

#13 The 6600 GT is an excellent card but for a very few $$$ more you can get a base model 6800. I believe newegg.com has them as low as $190. I think youll find the 6800's performance significantly better than the 6600gt. As for ATI, the only cards of theirs I would recommend are over your price limit.

The ATI's i refer to are the current generation. I myself use a 9800pro and have had excellent results with in. I have seen them as low as $130.

#14 Lol... I use a really bad card ATI Radeon 9200, it's pretty bad.. but it runs the TSE demos nicely, it just doesn't display one of those shader features, forgot which one..

Certain games run slow as hell with it though, like Minions of Mirth is almost unplayable.. I only have 384mb of ram, ~1100 Ghz AMD processor...


Thinking of upgrading too.

#15 What do you think of ATI 9600 XT? I recently purchased this piece of hardware and I really hope it will work ok with TSE(demos runs great)

#16 If the demos run great I'm pretty sure it can handle TSE :P

My problem is that certain demos are wanky in PS2.0 and others aren't...

#17 I just purchased a BFG Tech 7800GTX OC. Runs TSE and TGE without issues. Awesome card! Have you guys seen the ATI hardware in the XBOX 360 or the nVidia Hardware in the PS3? These cards rock, and also indicate that the new generation of cards are coming out shortly, so I will bet almost anything that the current video card prices are going to get cut in half again by Christmas. Just my two cents. If you want something now, pretty much any ATI or nVidia card that costs $150+ and supports Shader 2.0+, OpenGL 2.0 and DX9 is going to rock.

#18 Www.tomshardware.com for a good guide

I'd always go for an NVIDIA because the linux drivers are usually out before the same Windows ones. ATI doesn't seem to have anywhere near the level of linux support thus by buying NVIDIA you leave yourself the option of Linux, even if not usign it right now.

I say atm 6600 GT or 6800 are the best point on the price/value curve

#19 I run an ati x800 on linux, and its been great, very fast.