Graphics Card

[phegarty]

I'm buying a new PC and was wonder what graphics card is the bes 'round these parts!! i'm thinking of getting 256mb ATI Radeon 9800XT..thoughts???

Actually while i'm at it what does everyone think of the Dell 8300???
Thanks

[Renzatic Gear]

I'd go with a 9800 Pro 128 meg...the price you pay for an XT isn't worth the rather minimal speed increase. That, and you can always mod a Pro to an XT for free if you're feeling particularly gutsy.

Getting a 256 meg card really isn't worth it, either. Most of the time manufacturers use lower quality ram to justify doubling it..so you pay more, but usually end up with worse performance in comparison to the 128 cards.

[no.1gamer]

You'll be able to play all current games with a 128 MB card. That's what I have.

I'll upgrade when I'm forced to by system requirements. Then I'll just go buy another inexpensive video card.

I'm such a cheap @$$.

:p

[Jasmania]

I'm currently running an ATI-Sapphire Radeon 9800 Pro 256meg card. I found a great deal on-line and went with the 256 over the 128meg because, in my case, it wasn't much more.
I'm currently playing FarCry and Hidden & Dangerous 2. With my graphics card & processor I can run everything maxed out with full AA and AF without a hitch. FarCry looks absolutely AMAZING!!!

[Renzatic Gear]

Farcry is just gigglity awesome, both graphically and gameplaywise. There are some damn tense moments in that game...and the freaking trigen make me regret playing it in realistic mode.

Once I beat it I think I'll play it online...anyone that has it is welcome to jump in and play it with me.

[TBolt]

I have a Dell Dimension 8250 with an 128MB ATI Radeon 9700TX card. Both the computer and the card have been great. I've noticed that ATI releases a lot of updates for the drivers pretty regularly.

The big mistake I made when buying the system was purchasing only 256MB of RAM. After the fact, I learned that one should never buy less than 512MB of RAM on a WinXP system. Doh!

Good luck w/ your new box!

TBolt
Picture Hangar (http://www.onpoi.net/ah) Moderator - Free Pic Hosting for Gamers by Gamers

[matthewcraig]

I'll be the voice for the underdog again, and say you should take a look at the NVIDIA cards, too. I have purchased a FX 5800 (for some reason it is the underdog model of this underdog chipset) for $200 a couple months ago. I'm real happy with it. I'd look at the FX5950 if I were going to buy another card today. Most people are dead-set on ATI cards, so you can get NVIDIA cards pretty cheap. ATI might be the preference of the gamers these days, but I get the feel NVIDIA is the preference of the developers. There are a lot of games that present the NVIDIA logo on start up, and I haven't seen any that say ATI.