Advice on buying midrange gaming video card?

I say midrange because my buddy suggested the NVIDIA 512MB 7800 GTX for like $650, heh. Out of my league to say the least.

Mainly am after something about half that price that can handle WoW, CivIV with no problem that maybe has a little oomph more for whatever the next big game is on the near horizon.

At present have a recently installed (last fall) super fast AMD processor and new motherboard that I can’t recall exact specs of at the moment (am at work) but with an aging Radeon 8500LE 128 that is shorting out and needs to be replaced.

Anyone got a suggestion or do I need to hunt down the specs of processor and board to be safe?

This is probably going to become IMHO territory, but my two cents would be look into a GeForce 6800GT or 6600GTX. I only recently upgraded to the 7800GTX (a couple of weeks ago) but I can say that the 6800LE I owned prior to my current cart worked very well for all but the absolutely most demanding games. With the 6800LE (which had 3 of 4 of its “secret” pipes unlocked, and was on a par on terms of performance with the 6600GT) I ran Doom 3, Quake 4 and Half Life 2 all at medium to medium-high settings and they all ran acceptably. F.E.A.R. was a little choppier but still playable. It should be plenty good enough for what you’re after, and it generally runs in the $200-300 range…

You have many options available to you, there are many “tech” websites that have monthly articles breaking down video card prices, including price changes, and recommendations for the month. Here are the ones i frequent:

www.sharkyextreme.com
www.tomshardware.com
(this last one i go to less, but it is still good information)

Good luck and happy shopping.

I bought a 6800 GT back when they were high end, but I’d guess they were cheapish now and still quite good.

How much money do you have to spend exactly? Also, since you system is AGP that limits your choice a bit. Checking Newegg (excellent place to buy computer parts) an AGP Geforce 6600GT runs $130, they have a 6800 for $140 after MIR, or a Geforce 6800 GS for $210. Any of those cards should run any game pretty well.

That sounds like a couple smack in my price range and correct for the type of motherboard I have, I think. Apparently I have a AGP Pro/8x video card slot, which I looked up last night to be safe. Read a great review on cnet for the ATI 800XL PCIE, and found one locally for $199, but won’t fit I don’t think. Have to forgive me, bit a of n00b in this area.

You are correct - PCI-E and AGP are differnet, incompatible standards for connecting video cards. I have the AGP version of the Radeon x800xl, and indeed it is a nice card, though the AGP versions are rather scarce these days.

I second the ATI recommendation, the X800 and X850 are both good and still somewhat available in AGP versions–I have an AGP X850XT, which is probably just about $300 right now.

Follow-on question here: I’ve been thinking about upgrading my weak-ass video card to probably a 6600GT. However, I’ve heard that the power required for video cards is really soaring.

I currently have an ATI 9000 Pro and a 250 watt power supply. Need I be concerned about the power supply if I stick a 6600 GT in there?

My current system is a mini-ATX motherboard, Athlon2600+, 1GB RAM, 80GB sata drive, DVD-R, and Radeon X850XT – on a 220Watt power supply, no problems.

Your mileage may vary.

Yes. 250 watts, especially if it’s a low quality power supply, which it probably is (as most high quality power supplies have more power) is inadequate for a modern system. You might be getting along fine with it, but lack of power can cause some hard problems that are hard to detect, or random crashes.

I’d recommend upgrading power supplies even if you weren’t getting a power hog video card - but definitely if you are.

I second the upgrade to a power supply.

I don’t know about ATI cards, but nVidia GeForce 6 and 7 series cards don’t get enough power fom the AGP or PCI-E lines, and require an additional power source from the power supply. Unless you have a newer motherboard with its own dedicated 12V line, you’ll need to plug at least one of the large 4-pin molex connectors from your PSU into the back of the card. My 7800GTX requires either the 12V line (which I have) or two molex leads from the PSU connected to one molex port on the card via an included joiner cable.

A 400W power supply will do you fine. Try and get a brand name though. I’ve had a few cheapies in the past and they always ended up being nothing but major headaches.

check either newegg.com or tigerdirect.com, they should have a great price on a nice video card, as well as a decent antec or similar power supply. I got my dad an antec 350watt power supply from newegg for something like $30, and it’s virtually silent.

Anything from the antec truepower series will serve you well, that’s what I buy.

And, from a performance/dollar ratio for nVidia cards, stick with the 6600GT (AGP or PCIE). It performs well, and in some cases better than the 6800xxx.

Oftentimes it’s the rating of the power supply and especially the 12V line–I’ve had 400W cheapies fail to power my current system, but my 220W Biostar runs it fine (it’s a Small Form-Factor to boot)–mostly because the Biostar can provide almost all it’s total aggregate power out the 12v line.

For me it’s been an issue of cheap PSUs aging poorly and eventually feeding out “dirty” power, being unable to provide clean, consistent voltage reulsting in increasing system instability. And by “aging” I mean “approaching their first birthday.” My last two PSUs have been great and eminently stable – my current, a Thermaltake PurePower moduler 500W, and my last, an IcePower 450W, have all performed perfectlly. (The latter was considerably cheaper but still excellent quality for the price, which was less than twice that of cheapo disposable ones)

220W is probably find for most casual uses. My system, which has pretty current stuff in it, draws about 155W at an idle desktop, and that’s powering three hard drives, two optical units, the motherboard (main and +12V), video card (+12V and PCI-E slot), two other PCI slots, two 120MM fans and two power inverters connected to two strands of EL wire (part of the IDE cable set I use). Naturally it draws more power when optical drives are in use or, in particular, when the video card is doing something stressful (gaming/benchmarking) but outside of that it runs pretty lean.

Yeah, that’s insane, but about what I’d use if I had a tower setup too. In general, a high-quality 220W-250W power supply will run even a dedicated gamer rig as long as it’s only running one optical and one hard drive (and isn’t a newer P4)

There’s no reason it would perform better than the 6800 GT in any tests. It is simply a crippled 6800 GT with fewer graphical pipelines - it doesn’t have any features that the 6800 GT doesn’t.

Chances are pretty good however that nvTweak can unlock those pipes. Assuming they are all good (since lower-end cards are often simply cards where one or more pipes did not completely pass inspection) you could beef it up to 6800 standards without any added cost.

I did that to my 6800LE; unlocked 3 of the 4 available pipes (the 4th had errors), boosted performance by 33%. Not too shabby.