Hi,

Im just looking for some advice.

I currently have GeForce 7900 gtx which is about 2.5 years old. I currently use Win XP pro, but could use Vista if I had to.. (dont really like Vista ) and I have 2 gb RAM.

I think the card is starting to be on its way out as I have intermittent problems (can hardly play Lotro at all)

EQ2 has been alright but recently noticing some tearing in the graphics. Have done all the relevant driver cleaning and reinstalling in safe mode. What has made me think its the hardware itself is that I get occasional horizontal lines moving from the bottom to the top of the screen even during boot up. I read that this is likely to be hardware than software, so thought Id start sussing out new cards.

Trouble is I am a student and on a tight budget, so is there any card which would not break my bank but would let me play these games well enough?

Thanks for input

The 7900 GTX is still a good graphics card but if you want a new one that would give you some amount of performance gain to validate the spending of money then you should go for the 9800 GTX+ it will also possibly come in March renamed as the GTS 250.

So the bottom line is: if you can't afford to buy what I mentioned then don't bother to upgrade yet because the 7900 GTX is still a good graphics card.

Is your graphics card overclocked?

If so then set it back to it's original setting.

You could also carefully remove the fan and apply some more thermal paste.

Avoid those thermal pastes that contains aluminium because that could fry your graphics card if not being extra careful when applying it.

Thanks Jefferson for your reply,

I will check on the price of that one, the card is not overclocked, been using it at default settings.

As far as using thermal paste, Ive never done that sort of thing before, I will check on that as well  :)

Originally posted by tenpigs

Hi,

Im just looking for some advice.

I currently have GeForce 7900 gtx which is about 2.5 years old. I currently use Win XP pro, but could use Vista if I had to.. (dont really like Vista ) and I have 2 gb RAM.

I think the card is starting to be on its way out as I have intermittent problems (can hardly play Lotro at all)

EQ2 has been alright but recently noticing some tearing in the graphics. Have done all the relevant driver cleaning and reinstalling in safe mode. What has made me think its the hardware itself is that I get occasional horizontal lines moving from the bottom to the top of the screen even during boot up. I read that this is likely to be hardware than software, so thought Id start sussing out new cards.

Trouble is I am a student and on a tight budget, so is there any card which would not break my bank but would let me play these games well enough?

Thanks for input

 

I had the 7900GTX and like you but with me after having it about 1.5 years I noticed tearing and graphical errors and similar lines you speak of poped up with several games where certain games I didn't have a problem, I brought the card to my favo. comp. shop, they checked it out and noticed that the card was busted, they replaced it for a 7950GT/512 as they didn't have the 7900GTX anymore.
 

So I fear it's your card and not some driver issue as your issue seems to be very indentical to mine when I had that card, question is it a ASUS card? if so try contacting them, my comp.store is a ASUS dealer, the reason why my problem was fixed very quickly.

Its not an ASUS card although it is on an ASUS motherboard.... its and INNO (Ithink)

I had the PC built at PC specialist ... maybe I will contact them and see what they suggest?

It depends really on your budget, and what you want out of the card.

Myself, I've just got a radeon HD 4670 to replace my failed geforce 7800GT. The raw performance is a little bit behind my old card, but I can get away with having a few more fancy features enabled, and better textures due to the increased texture memory. It plays lotro at 1280x1024 with everything on full, and it's been perfect so far, the only slow down is from the hdd loading the next area in, and that only lasts a couple of seconds. The 4670 is at the bottom end of what is a reasonable gaming card, anything below is going to need a lot of things turning off to get it to run. My 4670 cost me around £60 including delivery, so for a budget, it's not a bad choice.

If you can afford to go a bit higher,  but not that much more, then something like the geforce 9800GT will offer a bit more performance, but will probably be around the £100 mark. From there, you can just keep throwing more and more money in all the way up to £400. For a budget though, I'd personally say 9800GT if you can afford it, or higher if you can stretch, but if you need a really low budget card, the radeon 4670 has the bottom end recommendation.

I think the HD4670, HD4830, and the HD4850 are the ideal graphics cards to aim for when you are on a budget.  The problem with the 9800GT is that its tech is more dated and the HD4830 will beat it out performance wise.  I would say upgrade your ram first though since ram is cheap and upping to 3~4GB will have an impact over 2 GB.

Originally posted by Cleffy

I think the HD4670, HD4830, and the HD4850 are the ideal graphics cards to aim for when you are on a budget.  The problem with the 9800GT is that its tech is more dated and the HD4830 will beat it out performance wise.  I would say upgrade your ram first though since ram is cheap and upping to 3~4GB will have an impact over 2 GB.

Why are you giving bad advice to the poor lady?

Everyone knows about the bad quality of the ATi drivers.

So don't push a shoddy product on an unsuspecting buyer.

Just hush now, Cleffy.

And it's the 9800 GTX+ and nothing else.

Fast and simple.. depends on yout definition of "low budget". If you dont want to spend at least $250 you better keep your 7900GTX a bit more.

Personaly I prefer nVIDIA over ATI and when buying a nVIDIA you must check the following:
- Using a 9800 as an exemple.. the 9 is the card's generation and the 800 is what you can call "model" or "brand". Now, a 9300 (low brand) aint really worth the low $ you pay.. a 9600 is a medium brand and well, might be a bit better then a 7900 but not that good overall.. you should never pay lets say $500 for a graphics card since sooner or later it drops to a more acceptable price, but $200~$250 for a high brand like a 9800GTX+ or a GTX260 is a well invested money since you will be able to play basicly all with high or almost high settings.

I dont simply say you'll play all at high because nowadays.. there are more factors to be taken into account.. a Dual Core CPU for exemple is a must.. if possible, a Quad Core. A good motherboard with PCI-Ex 2.0 (although not totaly necessary since a 9800GTX+ that uses PCI-Ex 2.0 works very well on a PCI-Ex slot), just uses half bandwidth which goes unnoticed on most games, only the ones that push your computer to the limit will lose performance from this lack.

And well.. 4GB of ram, DDR2 800mhz minimum is also a good idea, getting 2x 2GB is better since you can setup it in dual-channel easily.

Main point.. keep your money if you aint thinking on a $250 at least. paying less 80$ for a medium card, although a bit better then a 7900GTX, aint that worth it.. I know it, I've went from 1x 6600GT to 2x 6600GT in SLI to a 7950GTX and finaly to a GTX260 (which is a bit better then a 9800GTX+ but basicly the same).

HA! And dont get a card based on "it has more RAM, it's good".. that's crap.. I knew a guy that bought a 8500 that had 1GB of RAM and my 7950GTX with 512MB beated the crap outta it.

You should check out this article at Tom's hardware, they keep monthly list of best video card for the money at different price ranges: www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2118.html

As for ATI drivers, I recall them having some issues in WoW a few years back around when the 9800 came out but I picked up an ATI HD3870 and haven't had any problems.  They used to have an interesting setting in the driver to apply sepia-tone, embossed, chrome and other special effects but those don't exist anymore.  The ATI HD line all have hardware acceleration for movie codec decoding which was a big plus, where as NVIDIA only had that on the 8800gt at the time (all GeForce 9 series and higher do hardware h264 decoding).

NVIDIA has had their share of problems too ($200 million loss for faulty chips lol?) so I wouldn't say one brand is straight up better supported or more reliable.

I would just find your price range on that list and go with a suggested card   I doubt you would need more than a $150 card for EQ2 and it's a good  performance value but around $200 seems to be the sweet spot for me.

Oh I imagine you already did this but you should be sure to make sure the heat sink is air dusted out, a lot of dust on the heat sink can cause it to run hot and give artifiacts and glitches.

If you're playing EQ2, Id suggest getting an ATI unless you can avoid nVidias G92 chipset.  It has some issues with EQ2.

an ATI 4850 is a very solid board with EQ2

I am thinking of upgrading too , from my 7800gt to a 9800 gtx 1 gig.

Dont forget to make sure your power supply is enough for your replacement.. 500 W are propably the minimun requirement !

Originally posted by Jefferson81

Originally posted by Cleffy

I think the HD4670, HD4830, and the HD4850 are the ideal graphics cards to aim for when you are on a budget.  The problem with the 9800GT is that its tech is more dated and the HD4830 will beat it out performance wise.  I would say upgrade your ram first though since ram is cheap and upping to 3~4GB will have an impact over 2 GB.

 

Why are you giving bad advice to the poor lady?

Everyone knows about the bad quality of the ATi drivers.

So don't push a shoddy product on an unsuspecting buyer.

Just hush now, Cleffy.

And it's the 9800 GTX+ and nothing else.

 

bad ati drivers? in 1998, maybe...

Not a single problem with mine, and i've had the card nearly 6 months now. drivers have been good quality, and all gone in with no problems, and all worked as they should.

Nvidia are still the best choice at the higher end, but at the low end, ati have the edge, and they're stable as any nvidia platform to boot.

4850 can be had for less then 150 bucks. Seen some as low as 125. They are current gen and can play most games at a high Rez. The old 9800 GTX are a steal at 125-135 on Newegg. If you have the 2 six pin conectors to run them.  I would avoid the lower end offerings of ATI if you can If you can afford grab a mid range card. It will last much longer.

hd4850. nuff said.

Ohh guys .. a lot of info there!!

Thanks for all that input, I think I might be able to stretch to a 9800 next month after I do a couple of shifts at the local hospital

I will read all this again and think it through more, but from what I have gleaned from it so far ... looks like Id be better going for the 9800 as suggested. The 7900 hasnt quite given up yet so I can make it do a bit more!

Thanks for all your help

Originally posted by Altairs

I am thinking of upgrading too , from my 7800gt to a 9800 gtx 1 gig.

Dont forget to make sure your power supply is enough for your replacement.. 500 W are propably the minimun requirement !

I'm glad somebody brought up the PSU issue!  It's crazy that folks are just recommending cards without mentioning that you need to buy something that doesn't need more power than you already have or you'll need to upgrade yoru PSU, too.  On top of that, there are other issues:

• Can you upgrade your PSU? - this is difficult with some OEM machines, like some Dells.
• Card size vs. Case size - some graphics cards are HUGE!  You need to make sure you have adequate space for a new card.
• Cooling - some cards run hot -does your case have adequate cooling for a newer card?

Simply put, you at least need to consider these factors before just plopping in a new card.

FYI - a good site for comparing cards is gpureview.com.  It'll let you pull up two cards side-by-side to see how they compare to each other.

~Ripper

I would definately contact the company that build your computer to begin with. They would be able to more effectively tell you what your computer can handle,and if you need to add a new power supply to go along with the video card or not.

The 8800 Nvidia series is very good as well...but avoid the 8600's. They are budget cards...cheaper but not great gaming cards at all and would be a downgrade to what you currently have.

Another thing to actually pay attention to is your monitor's max resolution because the high end cards just go completely to waste if your monitor can't go high enough res to put the card to work (though it doesn't sound like you're going for some crazy $400 card or anything)

My buddy is using a 9800 on a (quality) 400w PS with no probs, the quality of the PS can matter more than the rated watts because some companies use very dodgy rating systems to reach a high wattage value to stamp on the box.  There is also a lot of overestimating of PS requirements, a 9800gtx system only draws 265W of power at max load; if you aren't going SLI then a 400W PS technically covers everything except a 4870x2.  If you're using a pre-built computer they generally come with low quality power supplies but if you were handling the 7900gtx you should do fine.  PS manufacturers don't really have a way of rating the quality of their PS with a simple number so they find it's easier to market higher wattage ratings even though they're usually wasted unless you're really dumping a lot of money into your PC.  Though if you do need a new one then I would get a 500w or 600w for posterity :)

Like some people here have mentioned, your PSU can play a significant part in your choice.

While total watt output is important, for the newer cards, having sufficient amps on the 12v rail(s) is most important for stability.

As for a card upgrade? Like others have mentioned, depends on budget.

9800GT - Basically an 8800GT in 9 series clothes, but still a good card.

9800GTX - Better than the GT, but a few more dollars. Would be my second choice.

9800GTX+ - Best card for the money (IMO). Would be my first choice.

9800GX2 - Best card in the 9xxxx series. Might as well get a  GTX260 .

Anyway,

Good luck.