I have a AMD 3700+ processer and a ECS motherboard socket 939, max ram. What is the best graphics card currently offered for this machine? What is a card that I can get away with (well, not the bare minimum, just not too many noticeable flaws or gameplay speed) to play something like Doom 3? What do you recommend? What do you think of the Geforce 6800 GT? I also don’t understand why there seems to be a wide array of prices. Is an Asus that much different than a eVGA or a PNY? (I’m sure I’m reading this wrong. Why yes, this is the first time I’ve ever built a machine.) Also, should I open up my options to using AGP or should I think of the future and go with PCIe?
6800GT is a beautiful card. The price/performance bang-for-your-buck tradeoff for video cards is around $200-$250. You might consider something in the 7XXX series from nVidia.
If you have a PCIe board, you probably don’t have an AGP slot. Also, the bestest and newest cards usually are no longer produced to fit AGP.
PNY and EVGA are just companies mountin either Nvidia or ATI chips on their boards. They tpically use different configuraitons of RAM (type and amount), cooling solutions, and chip performance.
What really matter between card using the same GPU are those things. What type of RAM, how much, what’s the clock speed for te RAM and CPU. And the price difference will based on those factors, as well as any extras offered on the board itself (VIVO capability, HDTV out, etc) and out (bundled software).
The Geforce 6800 series is getting old but it’ll run Doom 3 at a decent clip with most of the bells and whistles. The 7800 series is not much more and will serve you better until the DX10 cards show up next year some time…
Hmmm…my price searching is showing the 7800 to be significantly more expensive than the 6800. Isn’t the 7800 the newest mass-market card now? I think that’s what accounting for the price discrepancy. Anyway, the reviews I can find are on the BFG Tech GeForce 7800 OC - that’s overclocked. I was told not to overclock anything in general, but it looks like they do it for you. How’s this card?
Oh (and this is probably a stupid question), but do I need to pair graphics cards to motherboards? I thought I didn’t need to.
Can’t speak for that card in particular, but BFG cards are usually rock-solid, perform well, and come with a lifetime warranty.
And you generally don’t need to pair graphics cards to motherboards (other than the PCI-E/AGP slot), UNLESS you want to run dual ATI cards in “Crossfire” mode…which you don’t, so you should be good.
I JUST bought an EVGA 7600 GT and it is a pretty nice card. Its better than the 6800 and a bit more expensive, but not as expensive as the 7800.