what should be my next graphics card?

[gh0st]

any suggestions?

[ed^chigliak]

That would depend on what you want to do with it. How much money you want to spend. What graphics card you have at the moment. What the rest of your PC sytem is like performance wise.

Myself... a galaxy glacier 6800gt but that's maybe not the right card for you.

[daniel_owen_uk]

Yeah the 6800gt seem pretty good price vs performance, most of them seem to overclock pretty well too.

I am ordering one later today so they can't be bad

[BUFF]

I bought a Galaxy Glacier 6800GT - slight factory overclock, Arctic Cooling Silencer as standard & mine came with Far Cry & Nascar as well as PowerDVD 5.
I'm happy .

[Kezzer]

I've got a galaxy glacier 6800GT as well. They're great, super silent and they can clock to Ultra speeds no problem! Mine came with Moto GP2, Chaser and PowerDVD 5.

[Spud1]

depends on a few factors

1)whats your current system and gfx card
2)how much bling you got to spend?
3)are you a gamer?
4)Are you the impatient type or one with more sense

unless you have an MX card or a 9200/GF5600 then I would say wait for the next lot of cards - wont be long until they are out now, a few months probably. The current cards just arnt that much of a step up from the 9800pro/XTs of this world to justify the huge price that is wanted for them. You really want to wait until theres a performance gap similar to the jump from GF4 to GF FX or GF4 to radeon 9800pro before upgrading. Plus these cards are all cpu limited to some extent at the moment so unless you have a top end A64 theres no point in getting the top end cards like the X800XT / GF6800ultra anyway

[Hanners]

The 6800GT is almost certainly the best bang for your buck right now, but as others have said, it all depends on what you are willing to spend and what you already have.

[daniel_owen_uk]

www.pcwcomponentcentre.com are cheapest with the bfg @ £260, just ordered one it should (touch wood) be here tomorrow (I am like a little kid on christmas eve )

[Tom]

depends on a few factors

1)whats your current system and gfx card
2)how much bling you got to spend?
3)are you a gamer?
4)Are you the impatient type or one with more sense

unless you have an MX card or a 9200/GF5600 then I would say wait for the next lot of cards - wont be long until they are out now, a few months probably. The current cards just arnt that much of a step up from the 9800pro/XTs of this world to justify the huge price that is wanted for them. You really want to wait until theres a performance gap similar to the jump from GF4 to GF FX or GF4 to radeon 9800pro before upgrading. Plus these cards are all cpu limited to some extent at the moment so unless you have a top end A64 theres no point in getting the top end cards like the X800XT / GF6800ultra anyway

:s i thought that the current bunch of cards was the first for a long time to offer a substantial performance jump...from Gf4 to the first wave of GF FX was really not worth it

[daniel_owen_uk]

You thought right tom, the current gen of graphics cards is substantially faster than the last gen.

Ok cpu may be stightly limiting but my xp mobile does 2.6ghz so if thats limited I will be surprised.

[gh0st]

any northwood over 3.2 ghz, barton over 2.4 ghz, and a64 2800 only limits the new gen graphics cards a whee bit

[Stewart]

dThe current cards just arnt that much of a step up from the 9800pro/XTs of this world to justify the huge price that is wanted for them.

Erm... no.

The current cards completely destroy the previous high end cards. I get 13,100 3D marks at the moment, as opposed to 6000 before. Yes, I upgraded my CPU at the same time, but the vast majority of that increase is due to my X800XT-PE over my old 9800pro.

The jump could hardly have been any bigger, to be honest.

[myth]

Erm... no.

The current cards completely destroy the previous high end cards. I get 13,100 3D marks at the moment, as opposed to 6000 before. Yes, I upgraded my CPU at the same time, but the vast majority of that increase is due to my X800XT-PE over my old 9800pro.

The jump could hardly have been any bigger, to be honest.

Vaul... what was your old GPU? that scored 6000?

[Stewart]

The system was a Tbred 2500+ (@3200+), 512mb Crucial DDR400 and a 9800pro flashed to stock XT speeds.

[myth]

The system was a Tbred 2500+ (@3200+), 512mb Crucial DDR400 and a 9800pro flashed to stock XT speeds.

I just ran 3d mark for the first time ever! I got 6120... I never relized that that score was normal so I started to OC it some more! The9800 pro AIW is at stock speeds. Well its nice to know its not as bad as I thought it was!

[Stewart]

6000 marks was a great score, a 'play anything with everything on high' score, pre FarCry.

FarCry changed the spec needed for a top class gaming rig, by using plenty of RAM, so 512 became a gig, and by not being playable or at least not smooth on the 9800pro \ 5900Ultra cards. I know it was the first game I played at 1280x1024 on my 9800pro.

But 6000 points or there abouts is a great score for any 9800pro based system. 3DMark 2003, by the way.