Hey all, I am looking to upgrade the video card on my XPS720. The stock 8600GTS is getting sketchy - it was a budget card anyway.
I am thinking that CoD5 will not run well with my GeForce 8600GTS. CS:S already chops on some maps.
I will be buying a new PC in a year or so. An expensive card isn't something I want to take a hit on.

Here are the specs:

nVidia 680i SLI
E6600 Conroe Core 2 Duo @ 2.4GHz
267 Reference Clock
667 Memory Bus Frequency
1067 FSB Frequency
320GB HD @ 187GB free
GeForce 8600GTS 256MB
4 gig ram
Vista 32 Bit (I will not get XP)

What do you guys think?

 

The nvidia gtx 260 and ati 4870 1gb are both great cards for around 180 dollars. Either should be a big step from the 8600gts.

 

What are your thoughts on an 8800GT? Or perhaps another 8600GTS in SLI?
I really don't want to spend that much on a computer that will go away in less than a year.

Edit: What are your thoughts on a 9600GT?

 

The 9600 gt is a pretty solid card and probably the best performance for your money. If I remember correctly it's only a little bit slower than the 512mb 8800gt/9800gt (which are pretty much the same card). I've been using the 8800 since it launched and I can still play most games on medium to high at a low resolution like 720p.

If you can stretch your budget a bit you may want to look at the ATI 4850 though, It should beat all of those cards and starts around 120 dollars.

Also skip the 8600gts sli setup, one 8800gt should beat it easily.

 

whats the best performance two 8800 gt SLI can deliver. (i am trying to pwn crysis)

if say you had 6 gb of ddr3 and an i7 or phenom II 3.2 ghz, with a dual 16x pci-e 2.0 SLI motherboard.

i am unsure if i should upgrade to a better motherboard and cpu, and keep my dual 8800 gt set up, or get a more powerful signal card like a 4890 or gtx 285.

right now my motherboard sucks ass with dual x8 SLI

whats your thoughts?

 

i think if you can replace a video card you can build your own computer for cheaper than that Dell XPS you bought and have it perform better.
If you can give me a price range for the video card though I'll give you some suggestions : )

 

This 720 I got from the dell outlet. I dont want to spend over $100 because I will be building my own computer in a year or so.

 

$100 really wont let you get anything better than what you are running right now. If you are going to be building the CPU then why not get a badass graphics card for use now and then transfer it to your new machine?

You can always OC your card you have now. Im using an OC BFG 8600 GT and it runs CoD:WaW @ around 50 fps on 1680x1050 resolution

 

There are cards less than $100 but I wouldnt really trust them if you wanna play games with them. You can always check tigerdirect.com and newegg.com though.

 

I pwn every game but Crysis with my single 8800GT. I'm looking to run SLI in a few months.

I'm running Intel core quad at 2.75 as well as 4gb of memory.

 

Really? The 9600GT performs like 90% as well as an 8800GT and here's one for $100 - $20 MIR = $80:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127418

Even comes with CoD5.

I was going to ask the same question, but then I started thinking about it, and it really doesn't make sense. Technology moves too damn fast, and in 1-1.5 years his super expensive card would be badly outdated compared to the super expensive cards of the future.

In the time between now and then he won't really get his money's worth from the card because other components in the PC will become the bottleneck.

 

so your saying that running SLI with a quad core, and a true dual 16x motherboard, will indeed pwn crysis with two 8800 gt?

 

Possibly. I'm running a steady 60fps at 1920X1200 with the best settings that Crysis will allow while not having a SLI set-up.

 

Exactly. I don't want pick up a super nice card that will be outdated by the time I want to build my next PC (a year or so). At THAT time, I will bite the bullet and get something really nice. However, for this PC I really want to stay under 100 (9600GT sounds like it may be fine).

 

I was thinking about your plight again and realized you can just overclock your 8600GTS and you should be good to go.
Yuo can defenetly get it from the core speed of 675 MHz up to 750-800MHz easily and that would be a FREE way of "upgrading".

 

Which program? I have Rivatuner and nTune. It seems as if the overclock doesn't stick. Upon restart the settings stay at factory. Which program should I use to get the core speed up?

 

I use RivaTuner. You dont want to have the overclock settings start when you start up the cpu. I just switch it within the program for the amount of time im playing the game or else i would probably fry my card by now.

 

I have had good luck buying second hand graphics cards off of Craigslist. I usually drop by the person's place and check out the card in a working system. Haven't had any issues, and I've bought a lot of cards this way: GF4 Ti4200, Ati Radeon 9700 Pro, GF6 6600GT, GF7 7900 GS. Not a single issue. Graphics cards are so fungible I really don't see a reason to buy a brand new one if you have no need for cutting edge.

Right now I'm using a 9800GT and it runs everything I play but it came with my new computer.

 

Sorry to ask so many questions, but how did you configure this? You reclock every time you play a game?

 

I've been looking around on E-Bay. I'm not opposed to picking up a used card.

 

You can change your core/memory clock speed in real-time... I haven't used it in a long time, but I would guess you'd have profiles for OCed (gaming) and non-OCed (standard use), and would switch between them depending on what you were doing at the time. It may even have game detection, not sure if I'd trust that though, I'd rather toggle these things manually.

If this gets you what you need, it's free... and hey, if your card ends up frying, I guess you can always buy a new one anyways.

 

I don't save the profiles I just manually configure the graphics card for what I am doing at the time. Like for regular computing I leave the factory settings and for games I have the fan run at around 95% and the processing speed at around 675 MHz/ 800 Mhz memory speed.

Its kinda weird though that your CS:S is chopping on maps since my friend has always played it on an old 6600GTS and it works flawlessly.

If you wanna spend like $50 pick up a second 8600 GTS and run them in SLi.

 

8800/9800... Either one of those cards you can not go wrong with. I use the 8800 and I love it.

 

Newegg has a Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 for $99.99 after a mail in rebate ($15 MIR) and free shipping too.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102824

This would be a great card.