Lanzfeld Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 Hi All, My current system is a little dated but it still was giving me really good framerates up until recently when I added a 23 inch LCD monitor and now it needs to push around 1920X1080 pixels so I notice that it has become a little jerky in CMSF at times on "balanced/balanced". At present I have a 6600 GT 128 MB PCI-E card with a Athelon 64 3200 CPU and 2MB RAM. I know, its older. I WAS planning on getting a new system but the wife and I just spent a TON of $$$ on new furnature and TV's. So what I need to do is, until I get a new system, put a stop-gap video card in so I can get better frames but not high end enough that makes my CPU the chokepoint. Can anyone recommend some good middle ground here for less then $200.00 USD? Like I said, better frames then what I have but not high end enough to be a waste with my CPU. Thanks! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt Joch Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 I upgraded a few months back from a 2 year 8800 GT. I finally settled on a ATI 4890 which I found to have the best cost-benefit ratio. It works perfectly in CMSF and CMx1 with Win XP. You can pick up the 4870 which is basically the same card for around CAN $ 150. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanzfeld Posted January 29, 2010 Author Share Posted January 29, 2010 What CPU do you have Joch? ...and thanks! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MeatEtr Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 This is exactly why I refuse the LCD monitors, still use my trusty old Viewsonic CRT. Try lowering the resolution a bunch, don't just take the default rez. Problem is most LCDs look terrible at lower rezes, but see how low you can go without it looking bad. I gotta GF 9800GTX+ 512mb and am loving it. I'd say you don't need any of the 1G cards unless your playing big open world games like GTA4 or Armed Assault at high rezes. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanzfeld Posted January 29, 2010 Author Share Posted January 29, 2010 I felt the same way MeatEtr until I used my brothers 23 inch LCD! I still have 3 or 4 19 inch CRT's! I am sticking to the native 1920x1080 as it really does look best. The wide angle allows so much more of the battlefield to be seen I love it. Anyway...what is a "1G" card? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sgt Joch Posted January 29, 2010 Share Posted January 29, 2010 I have an intel Core duo 8500, no longer top of the line, but still going strong. On monitors, for a long time, I refused to upgrade from my 22" CRT, by I upgraded to a 27" DELL widescreen LCD at 1920x1200 and the image quality is amazing. Just as clear as on a CRT, but the colors are more vibrant. Once you switch to widescreen, you wont want to go back. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanzfeld Posted January 29, 2010 Author Share Posted January 29, 2010 Yeah my point was that I only have an athelon 64 3200 so I am a little short on processing power I think. I dont really know too much about this stuff. I dont want my graphics card to be held up too much by my CPU. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MeatEtr Posted January 30, 2010 Share Posted January 30, 2010 I felt the same way MeatEtr until I used my brothers 23 inch LCD! I still have 3 or 4 19 inch CRT's! I am sticking to the native 1920x1080 as it really does look best. The wide angle allows so much more of the battlefield to be seen I love it. Anyway...what is a "1G" card? Yeah it does look great, there's no denying seeing games on a big widescreen at high rez rocks. It's the age old deal, better looks while trading off on performance. For me though playing the latest games at max graphics settings (Crysis, Fallout, Armed Assault 2) at 1024x768 with great performance is worth it. To each his own. The 1GB(forgot the is just 1 gigabyte of RAM or memory the card has. They even have 768mb, 1.768GB, and even up to 2GB of RAM on cards nowadays. If you got the money and power supply to back it up then go for it. I recommend the 1GB cards for anybody playing the latest games at high rezes. The extra memory is needed at high rezes. While for my setup, it would be a complete waste. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanzfeld Posted January 30, 2010 Author Share Posted January 30, 2010 Any Nvidia recommendations? 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MeatEtr Posted January 30, 2010 Share Posted January 30, 2010 Any Nvidia recommendations? What kind of motherboard and power supply you got? Saw you gotta 6600 GT 128 MB PCI-E card, so did a quick check over at Newegg and got this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048%201069609642%201305520548&name=NVIDIA&ActiveSearchResult=True Looks like for a PCI card you can't spend more than around $200. As for brands, I always liked EVGA and BFG 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
eniced73 Posted January 30, 2010 Share Posted January 30, 2010 Hey neighbor. I am across the state from you and was thinking about getting rid of my 2 GTS 8600 GeForce Nvidia (512mb each) cards. If you think you might want both of them (if you can run SLI) let me know. 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Schrullenhaft Posted January 30, 2010 Share Posted January 30, 2010 I'm not sure what might be the best video card match for your current Athlon 3200, which is a bit dated at this point. You will not be able to get the most out of the video card's performance being matched to your current CPU. However you should still see an increase your performance, just not as much as would be possible with a faster CPU. One, mildly inexpensive card would be the Radeon HD 4850. For Nvidia cards there is the GeForce 9800GT which might be a decent match. As mentioned a bit earlier, you may have to check your power supply to make sure it is capable of handling a video card that will have more electrical current demands on it. There is also the possibility of issues with your motherboard. You may want to find out the model of your motherboard or system and do some searches on it to see if there are issues with using newer video cards. Almost all video cards sold for the PCI Express slot are PCIe 2.0+ standard. Some PCIe 1.0/1.1 slots have problems running these newer video cards (actually it is the chipset and BIOS that will have issues). 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lanzfeld Posted January 31, 2010 Author Share Posted January 31, 2010 Thanks for the info! I will check out the 9800 GT. Like I said, this is a stopgap. Eniced73, PM me a price for 1 or both. Thanks again! 0 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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