Latest and greatest performance /best value.

[GURU]

early into Nov 06 Nvidia are supposed to be releasing their newest generation of video cards!
they will be stupidly expensive and will also have stupidly insane performance!
they are called Geforce 8 series.
top of the line will be GF8800GTX. it is supposed to come with its own exernal power supply brick but we will have to wait and see to be sure!
it sports a 384bit wide memory path way and also 768mb of onboard ram !
core speed of around 600mhz and also memory speed of around 1800mhz in total. it also supossedly has a 64 pipeline unified shader engine .

ATI and their new baby arent scheduled to be out until early next year ! sounds similar to Nvidia in specs !
they are both going to be insanely power hungry. minimum system requirements for just one card are around 500W and around 750W psu for dual cards!

Intel and their current baby the Core 2 Duo are certainly the bees knees in the performance [super performance]and power stakes[low power] but they have been dealt a severe blow by AMD buying out ATI . their new chipset which is the RD600 is supposed to be the best of them all so far, but now most motherboard manufacturers have got cold feet and are not going it use it at all!

AMD's counter to to the new core 2 cpus is the 4x4 set up which seems a total waste of time and energy cos they all use server cpus ie the opterons which have 1207 pin count and also require registered ram. it is all pointless and the only mother board manufactureers that are going to do it are the server ones n e ways!

best bargains are the new Nvidia GF 7950 cards. they are around $430-500. they are an updated version of the 7900GT . they sport more ram = 512mb and also faster core speed 550mhz and memory 1400 mhz.

best performance value cpu is the Intel Core 2 Dou E6600 = approx $475

they have huge performance , low power consumption and overlcock like fdream .
mother boards aint cheap but! $250- 350 for something decent.

DDR 2 is now gaining mainstream in a big way with higher speed specs available, more so for overclocking! Intel 975X chipset is the best for the time being!

AMD stuff is pretty cheap too now !
basically if u want a new putey get a Intel Core 2 Duo . if u cant get one of these then go get and AMD X2 4200+[$265] /4600+ [$350] and overclock it ! motehrboards are vcheap $100-250

Hard drives - the new Seagate 7200.10 320 GBB drives are the fastest bar the WD Raptors and are a 1/4 the price . they even best the Raptors slightly in a couple tests. Seagate 7200.10 320GB = $135 Sata II

[disgracian]

I'm going dual core at the end of this year, sometime after exams. Got any good recommendations for a budget PCI express video card?

[GURU]

i guess it all comes down to price ad how much u can afford to spend!


currently
3 categories [ALL PCI-Express}

high end - i would err on Nvidia GF 7900GTX $650 but they are not quite as quick as ATI X1950XTX $700 although close! they are both very good but ATI runs a little hotter and also has slightly better image quality! nvidia has a better dual vid card set up!

cheapy high end - the best value by far is the 7950 GT 512MB is a round $450 ther is a 256MB version but dont get it . it is only marginally cheaper ! 512mb will future proof it a bit more ! some games are starting to use the extra ram!

mid price/performance - BEST is the 7600GT $230 is really excellent value ie it will play all current games at 1024res and medium settings! and u can also run sli dual vid cards for a boost ! IF u WANT something CHEAP and Half Decent then this is it !

i need to look into the really low end , cos i dunno what is the best value ther !

[disgracian]

Mostly cheap; I don't game much anymore, and even when I do, graphics don't play a huge role. Anyone who's seen my Q3 screenshots will attest to that. I guess something in the $250-$300 range should suffice.

[GURU]

well i had a bit of a look and i cant see n e thing that warrants less than a 7600GT! they are Super Minto value . they offer great performance for the price . at $220 or so there is nothing better in my book for the same price! ATI mid is crap at the moment! unless they have some huge price cuts i cant see n e worth recommending!

they are quoted as being of similar power to a gf6800ultra , probly slightly faster on all the newer games, and use about 1/4 to 1/3 of the power .

later on down the track if it ever took your fancy then you could run 2 together to boost ya graphics power !

i did look and the best ones that are in the next category lower, in price and perfomance are the super el-cheapo 7300GT [DDR3 version ONLY] and the ATI X800GTO ! around $125 or so !
they are absolutely crap compared to the 7600GT ! not even in the same universe !

[disgracian]

7600GT sounds good then. I wonder what sort of FPS I could get on Q3 with one of those...

[GURU]

well i would think that with n e thing half decent running it all, u shiould get 400+ FPS hehe haha

DONT BLINK or u will miss it! hehe

[blink]

dont what?

[GURU]

[GURU]

[blink]

[GURU]

ther appears to be a new agp card due out shortly around mid nov 06 from ATI or is that AMD these days . it is going to be the X1950pro ! be around similar performance to the Nvidia 7900GS available only for PCI-Express .

not sure on the proice but hopefully it wont be bloody stupid as have seen in the past cos high end agp ones are rare these days! ! compared to
PCI Express ones this is only a mid type card! but hey it would be a lot faster than what moat people have got in ther agp systems!

[GURU]

[GURU]

AMDs new 4x4 platform is getting close to release. basically it is a motherboard with 2 cpu sockets on it and they can both run dual cores and somewhwere down the track like Q2 2007 they will be able to run dual quad cores!

currently Intel has faster cpus and this seems tobe be ther to help make up the performance difference! but they dont quite get ther! the pricing is quite cheap for what it is, but they are still bloody expensive!
it is such a small market they are aiming at i still cant see why they bothered with it !

currently a single core will do for gaming although in the next 12 months a dual core will probly be better! after that who knows.
i read a little interview with John Carmack and he does not think that n e more than 2 cores will be useful for gaming ! but we will have to wait and see!

the new nvidia 680i chipset mother baords for Intel core 2 duo are starting to show up and they are expensive here in oz at around $300-400. they are pretty much the best that are currently available for Intel ! they are packed with a stupid amount of features and overclock like a champion!

Video card prices are slowly dropping for the current and older models also brought on by the newest Nvidia Gforce 8800 series!

nvidia 7300GT pci-express $125
7600gt pci-Express $200
7600GT AGP $285
7950 GT 256/512mb $375/$460
7900GTX $640
7950 GX2 $850
8800GTS $770
8800GTX $980

ATI x300se/x550 td pci-e $59/$65
x1650 pro PCI-e $170
x1950 Pro PCI-E $320
X1950 XTX $650-$750


DDR ram is all being fazed out in the mainstream and it is getting difficult to get 2x1gb sticks of any high quality brands eg corsair and ocz geil etc . so if u have a DDR mother board and want more ram i suggest u get in quick! for winsdows vista u will want 2GB of ram to play games! 1gb will barely cut it! it has been reported that vista by itself will eat up 800-900mb .

the move to vista is really only going to be a beneficial move when vista 64 is used. supposedly they say that it will be limited to only 2gb of ram which xp can already do no probs now! so Vista will be great and currently they have been saying stuff that is mostly good with ONE MAJOR FLAW,
the 64bit video card drivers [for vista 64bit ] from both nvidia and also ati, suck ass really bad ! especially for opengl !
nvida's work supposedly but really slow and ati's are just all fucked up. so as far as gaming goes Vista 64 is not looking very good at the moment! they have approx 2 months to get it sorted ! as far as ram goes vista 64 is capable of shit loads fof ram but so far they seem to think that 8 gb is quite reasonable to expect so the ram manufacturers have had to start ramping up 2 gb modules. 8gb = 4 x 2gb modules!

i still have not seen any ATI X1950 Pro AGP cards around! ie available to buy here in oz!

[GURU]

intel dual core ie core 2 duo is proving to be a very good overclocker ! 2.13ghz @ 3.20ghz easily!
on intel 965 chipset and good quality ram ! the 965 chipset runs fkn hot but the cpu runs pretty cool!

i had to give it to the owner and now i am core 2 duo empty!

i ripped a few dvds which were pretty much full dual layer discs and when re-encoding them they were doing it at 53% ! they took 18 mins start to finish! put movie in, scan and re-encode and then burn !
this seems to be getting towards about half the time it nornmally takes me on my own putey! single core!

i have had some dramas with a couple of games eg medal of honour spearhead and break through but they are cos of crappy nvidia drivers and Farcry has played up too! i have got5 them all working but Farcry was a stupid fkn thing!

i have read lots of stuff and nvidia say that if u r having probs with ther 90 series to go back and use 84.21 !

has n e one else out ther with dual core systems had playing some games cos of dual core setup?