Jump to content

OT: Help with video cards


mikeszekely

Recommended Posts

I love my 6600GT, but if you're on a real budget crunch and really don't need the horsepower a 6200 should work ok, as long as you DO NOT buy it in the store, I see too many for over a 100 in the store. Go to newegg, they have several 6200's for about 75 bucks. Most of them passive cooling too. No noise is one benefit to a 6200 at least, good for media pc's or quiet systems. They also have non-gt 6600's for $120

6200's at newegg

6600 non-GT's at newegg

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not to derail things too much...

Vista would force everyone to update hardware across the board. On the high-end of things, Vista wants 1GB of RAM (2GB for 64-bit machines), PCI-e video cards, and an HDCP-compliant monitor (large and not to mention expensive). Makes me wonder about the low-end specs....

Anyways....

To that end, Az, I'm looking to get off as cheap as possible.  The only realy game I'm looking into buying for PC in, say the next 12 months, would be Neverwinter Nights 2.  Granted, NWN2 isn't scheduled to release until July or so, so no concrete system requirements are out there, so it'd be hard to say what I'd actually need to run it at decent settings.  But, to put it another way, the 6600 is a consideration only if I can find an excellent deal, and the 6600GT is simply out of the question.  Once we start getting that expensive, I'd rather just wait until I start building my next PC.

342644[/snapback]

If that's the case, then look at the FX5500 or the 6200. Both are cheap and should last you for the next 12 months. The best thing to do would to just wait till the release date of NWN2 comes closer, then do a larger upgrade (processor, motherboard, RAM, video). NWN2 is a ways away so there's not pressing need to update right now. In a few months, the price of some parts will probably go down and you might get a better deal then as opposed to now.

If you don't need it right now and NWN is running fine, then it's best to wait till the system requirements are released. You would be wasting money right now if you went out and got parts for the game in which you don't have a clue what it needs. At this moment, I would hold off on the video. If there are other parts which you want to upgrade (hard drives, DVD-ROM/DVD burner, sound cards, cases, power supplies, etc), get those done now. I would want you to be prepared but at this point, you don't have much to prepare for (no system reqs).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Not to derail things too much...

Vista would force everyone to update hardware across the board. On the high-end of things, Vista wants 1GB of RAM (2GB for 64-bit machines), PCI-e video cards, and an HDCP-compliant monitor (large and not to mention expensive). Makes me wonder about the low-end specs....

MS has been swearing that they're gonna keep a lot of space between minimum spec and recommended spec.

Much like Doom3.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

he best thing to do would to just wait till the release date of NWN2 comes closer, then do a larger upgrade (processor, motherboard, RAM, video).

I'm really not interested in doing a larger upgrade. I think this motherboard and processor should do me fine for awhile, as leaps in processing power kinda petered out around 3GHz (and 2.6GHz isn't all that far off). RAM is simply a given, but like I said, I can go from 512 to 1536 for about $80. And of course, there's the fact that my video card sucks.

My reasoning? Well, you kinda said it yourself.

Vista would force everyone to update hardware across the board. On the high-end of things, Vista wants 1GB of RAM (2GB for 64-bit machines), PCI-e video cards, and an HDCP-compliant monitor (large and not to mention expensive). Makes me wonder about the low-end specs....

Once Vista comes out and everyone is more secure on how to work with multi-core processors... say, two more or years or so... I plan to build a new PC. No sense in spending a ton of money on upgrades for this one, then, especially since almost any upgrades I purchase now wouldn't be worth canabalizing later. I mean, I'd certainly need a new motherboard that supports a multi-core processor, better RAM than the PC2700 stuff that goes in this one, a newer, more advanced video card that probably has a better connection than AGP (which goes back to the motherboard), a higher cap on my max RAM (again, goes back to the motherboard), etc. The only things I think I might be able to canabalize are the hard drive (although I'd probably be better off buying a bigger one, I could still have two) and the optical drives (a DVD burner and a DVD-ROM).

Link to comment
Share on other sites

well... my comp wasn't keeping up anymore... mostly it was Civ IV that brought it to a crawl.

i have an athlon 2800xp with 512 of 2800 DDR and Geforce 5200.

At the advice of our IT guy I swapped out the ram with 1 gig of pc3200 (budget value grade stuff) and got me a shiny geforce 660GT (OEM, 150 bucks).

well, Civ IV just purs along nice and smooth now, happy as can be. I think I'll fire up homeworld 2 and see how that goes now...

muahahaha.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...