GFX Card for £205 or Monitor for £186?

[Tel_Tech]

Slight dilema for me. I have an EVGA 8800GTS 320mb which is a nice little performer (Warranty swap, I would have bought a 640mb personally).

Problem is my Dell 24" LCD runs at 1920x1200 which is bit too taxing on the card when you enable FSAA and AF.

I have 2 options at the moment:

1: EVGA Step Up to an 8800GTX 768mb which will cost me about £205.

2: An LG 22" Widescreen from Scan, currently on special @ £186.

Now, the cases for and against both:

GFX Card: I have an SLI capable board, so I'd potentially be able to run 2 GTX's in the future when prices drop. My 24" Dell has pretty much perfect backlight, excellent colour reproduction and no dead pixels, plus S-VIDEO, Component and built in USB/Card Reader. Plus it cost me £600 a while back.

Monitor: Cheaper and the slight reduction in resolution will allow my existing card to play happilly. Also I can SLI 2 320mb GTS's if the time comes, or just get a second gen card. It has built in speakers so I can hook my Xbox 360 directly to it rather than running sound through my PC's Line In. The LG has a 3000:1 Contrast Ratio and 2ms response time vs 700:1 and 16ms for my Dell.

So common guys, help me out here, give your opinions and help me spend some money

[Flewis]

No point downgrading your monitor, you will almost certainly regret it. The step up would be the best option imo.

[staffsMike]

It's not really 3000:1 Contrast Ratio afaik it uses some trick to get that but it isn't bad on my LG..

If you're happy with your monitor at the moment swap the graphics card.

Could you step up to a 640mb GTS? Some step up's are extraordinarily cheap and other's are very expensive.

[Flewis]

Also the response times probably arent very different even though the stats say otherwise. The dell measures its response times from black to white whereas the LG is probably from grey to grey.

[Tel_Tech]

Currently it's be about £72 to go to a 640mb GTS. I'm reluctant to do that as the 8800GTS I have is an OC'd ACS3 Edition 580mhz Core 1800Mhz memory

[sp3n]

Could you step up to a 640mb GTS? Some step up's are extraordinarily cheap and other's are very expensive.

i am considering stepping up my EVGA 8800GTS 640mb to a GTX with ACS3, which will cost me £176 - I too have a dell 24" monitor and would like to make full use of the 1920x1200 res with some FSAA/AF. therefore i wouldn't recommend stepping up to the 640mb.

[kalniel]

Run the dell monitor at a non-native resolution - it's not quite as sharp, but you can just say it's FSAA for free And to be honest on good monitors it's virtually impossible to tell.

[Tel_Tech]

Dell 2405FPW users of the world unite!

[PieEater]

No point downgrading your monitor, you will almost certainly regret it. The step up would be the best option imo.

Quoted for truth, also are you sure that the 320mb card would run the 22" monitor with the filtering you want? I think it would be borderline personally.

[DratUK]

The old truism cut your nose off to spite your face holds here I think.
I have the same dell and a GTX it runs all games at playable framerates with all the goodies. It makes sense to run the GTX with this size monitor. Sell the 320 OC and get the GTX.
I also have a second GTX in reserve for when it does begin to struggle.

By which time a new revision/chip will be out so I'll end up flogging both

[Tel_Tech]

The old truism cut your nose off to spite your face holds here I think.
I have the same dell and a GTX it runs all games at playable framerates with all the goodies. It makes sense to run the GTX with this size monitor. Sell the 320 OC and get the GTX.
I also have a second GTX in reserve for when it does begin to struggle.

By which time a new revision/chip will be out so I'll end up flogging both

Can't really sell my GTS as it's already registered with EVGA, so the warranty is with me.

Still, even if I did sell it second hand and say I got £180 for it, that's still close to £200 for a reasonable make GTX.

Looks like EVGA Step Up is the way to go.

[OilSheikh]

Get the 8800GTX , IMO.

[Tel_Tech]

Well, my Dell 24" has started manifesting some irritating ghosting problems, if I can't resolve it (and since Dell have told me to GTFO) I shall look at a 22" LG and cancel my step-up.

[shaithis]

I have the same monitor with a 640MB GTS and everything is fine.


Although, DX10 games will be here soon, if you want to play them with all the goodies, best get a GTX now or run your games at a lower resolution and see what happens in the next 6-12 months (while banking some cash for a new super-duper gfx card)

[Tel_Tech]

Kinda stuck with the lesser of two evils, while my Dell is working admirably with static images, it seems to be having real ghosting problems when mid-tone backgrounds are in use.

If I move a white cursor over a black background it's fine, same if it's black on white.

Move white over a grey background and I get a black trail, move black over a grey background and I get a white trail.

Very very weird.

[kalniel]

Have you changed video modes somewhere?