From 9800pro to .....?

[sawyen]

Smokey, calm down. This is a friendly forum and I for one would like to see it stay that way.

Listen to the guy... Smoke-ey's coming out of your head m8..

[DArK-aNGeL]

5200 fx, low profile and you cant do better for raw power
lol.
i'd go for a 6800 gt or an x800 xt, they'll both run anything out there at full whack.

[rick1967]

One question...is there anything that the 9800 pro won't run happily, or does he just feel like upgrading for the sake of it?

If the answer is the latter I'd wait till the next generation of cards come out and then pick up a cheap 800xt or 6800gt.

And yeah, you're not going to get anywhere near either of these cards potentials unless you've got a serious CPU in there.

Tom's Hardware ran an article showing how much these cards were choked by low end
"cough" CPU's, ie Athlon XP's and Intel 3Ghz chips. Have a look and I'm sure you'll find it.

[ed^chigliak]

Graphics cards hold their price despite the introduction of newer cards and there is no sudden drop in price. Eventually yes but suddenly no. Compare the price of the x800pro with the newer x800xl and it's still more expensive for a card which is slower. Retailers won't lower the price if they can still shift old cards at the full price and they can do this quite easily because most people aren't sufficiently clued up.

Also how long did the 9800pro stick at £120... flipping ages and only recently has it dropped to <£100. Don't count on any big price drops.

An x800xt at £234 is probably cheaper than most 6800GT although I've seen both the 6800GT and the x800xl for less than £200.

[sawyen]

9800pro.. I guess you might get it a little tired on stuff like DOOM3 or UT2k4 when the icing's are all turned on. AA and AF would probably hurt 9800pro pretty bad as well..

x800xl is definitely a deal, probably 20-30 quids cheaper than most branded GT's. Performance on stock are also very very convincing, probably outgunned GT on most if not all DX9c games. I guess OC would be the deciding factor, since GT can clock pretty far before toasty temps and rubbish artifacts start coming out... ULTRA clock speeds went by like a breeze, would potentially clock pass 450MHz GPU 1180MHz DRAM if you have one of those VERY GOOD VGA coolers. I havent heard anything on OCing and XL... but my guess is it might not clock as well as a GT or it has just decent enuf coolers...

[schmunk]

I havent heard anything on OCing and XL... but my guess is it might not clock as well as a GT or it has just decent enuf coolers...

I was led to believe that X800XLs overclock very well...

[sawyen]

ahh... okay... ahahaha... then by all means get the x800xl... but I've always tot the GT name sounded really kewl.. and I'm a big fan of Nvidia... ati's x series just didn't gave me the wow factor that I initially saw with the 6 series on DOOM 3's release. But hey!... that doesn't dilute the fact that ati produces very good cards.. 9800XT spanking 5950Ultra's sissy backside is a legacy event not easily forgotten..

[Smokey21]

eheheh, love it.

Lets all base our GPU buying decisions on how kewl the name sounds.

*goes off to look for a 3dfx voodoo*