1gig or 512 GTS 250?

[revol68]

I think I'm certainly going to get myself a GTS 250 because I'm only using a 19 inch monitor and I like the fact it's low on power consumption, i've seen the Palit ones on Scan for £105 (512 version) or £127 (1gig version) and have been looking for benchmarks to show a comparison between the two, I've not found any so far, so basically I'm wondering if any of youse could shed light on the matter. From what I've saw the extra ram only really comes into affect at very high resolutions so isn't that useful to me on my monitor, however games in the future might make more use of the extra ram at lower resolutions.

Any thoughts.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Go for the 512mb version as for under £140 you can get a GTX260:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...tml?ZOT-GTX260

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/896MB...-x-DL-DVI-HDTV

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/160748

They are supposed to have low idle power consumption. The EVGA card has an excellent warranty too!

Novatech has free postage,as does Ebuyer for items over £49.99 and so does Scan for Hexus members!

[revol68]

yeah i've been tempted by the 260 however that would mean upgrading my power supply too and I'd rather do that later as it'll come to the guts of 200 in total. If I get a 512 gts 250 for £105 i'd be happy to only use it for 12 months and then upgrade to the next generation cards after.

Yeah I know about the postage stuff unfortunately I live in Northern Ireland, a dangerous third world backwater where couriers are routinely kidnapped and ransomed by spud munching tribes, or so you'd imagine from the fact pc companies seem to slap a massive surcharge for delivering to another part of the UK. They also don't seem to have heard of the Royal Mail, a postal service that somehow manages to do recorded next day postage for the same rate as on the UK mainland.

[HermansArmpit]

I have liberated your lovely description of our plight for my sig.

[mehmeh]

LOL thats class!

Your right, larger frame buffers currently only really come into play at insane resolutions, 1600x1050+ and/or when you pile on the AA and AF.. The trend is for them to get larger though and I can apprieate the idea of future proofing, problem with that is, it rarely works out, as by the time you need that 1GB of memory on a 1440x900 display, we'll be on GDDR10 and the technology will be leaps and bounds ahead and you'll struggle to run the game because you don't have Shader Model 7.0 or DirectX15 etc, etc.

So I'm with Cat, at this price point, save the cash and go with 512MB or invest a bit more and go up a level but tbh your gonna struggle to find the extra £££ invested on a 19in screen. Would actually make more sense to buy a 512MB GTS260 (if they make one???) over a 1GB GTS250, as its the raw performance you'll apprieate and need longer at 1440x900 than heaps of frame buffer.

Cat suirprisingly didnt mention it either, but you are aware the GTS250 is basically a rebranded and tweaked 9800 series card? Might be able to score yourself a nice "end of line" bargain if you look around.

[revol68]

cheers to everyone for the advice, however the offer of a second hand 8800gt that has fallen to me has somewhat scuttled any purchase of a GTS 250.

[Pob255]

cheers to everyone for the advice, however the offer of a second hand 8800gt that has fallen to me has somewhat scuttled any purchase of a GTS 250.

Much better buy

the 250gts is a 9800gtx+ with lower idle power draw (maybe under load as well cannot fully remember atm)

it's still a nice card and for that price but overkill for a 19" screen.
That's where I would sugest looking for a 2nd hand 8800gt 512mb or new a 9800gt or 4830 but you seem beaten me to it.