Help to choose a budget video card

[CreativeChaos]

Hi guys, apologies if this has gone in the wrong place. I'm sure you're all sick of answering these threads but I haven't built a PC in a long while and the choice is just mind boggling, so please help a newbie out.

I'm building a new machine for myself, on a budget, and have got everything decided (Athlon 64 3000+, 1gb DDR400 RAM) except a graphics card. I'm looking to spend about £70-80 on a PCI-E card. I'm wanting to get it new and am hoping to decide today so I can get it all delivered by the end of the week without gold plated delivery costs.

I'm not expecting huge performance (I'm running a GeForce 2 MX, so anything's an improvement), but I'd like to be able to run Half-Life 2 and Battlefield 2 etc. I also dabble in 3DS Max and Maya. I used to run a Gainward GF4 ti4600 which had the VIVO for video capture too, anything with that would be a great bonus as I miss that function.

I've been recommended the Sapphire Radeon X1600 and I see Scan have the overclocked version (GPU575/MEM1200) for just under £100, I might be able to stretch to that but definitely not any more. That sounds like a decent card for the money to me but I don't want to regret it a few months down the line.

Cheers.

[herulach]

x1600, is probably the best sub hundred pound card you can get, the overclocked ones arent worth the extra, itll take you all of 30 seconds to tunr the clocks up on a normal card, and id be amazed if you cant get such a mild overclock on any card.

[CreativeChaos]

Thanks a lot. So I guess I may aswell go for the 512mb version that Ebuyer have (that's where the other stuff's coming from) and tinker with it?
Thanks again.

[herulach]

looks like a decent price, although im not convinced about 512mb of ram on lower end boards, they dont really have the grunt to move such huge textures imo.

Might be worth holding off at least till scans today only offers change in about an hour, you might be able to pick stuff up cheaper, and youll definately get better service if anything goes wrong

[CreativeChaos]

Good advice on Scan, I'll keep an eye on that.

As for the 512mb, would having more ram than it can utilise harm the overall performance or will it just lay there unused? I see that a stretch to £100 on that site would get an 1600XT
Thanks for your patience, haha.

[muddyfox470]

for £100 you can get better cards than the x1600 series.

i would stick with 256mb for a budget card, as the memory will be redundant, definitely not worth the extra dough for this range of cards.

ian

[CreativeChaos]

I've stuck to looking no higher than 256mb cards and I keep coming back to ATI and the Sapphires. If I'm barking up the wrong tree let me know.

Sapphire Radeon X1600XT 256mb GDDR3 (Core 600/Mem. 700) - £93.05

Sapphire ATI X800GTO 256Mb Fireblade DDR3 (560/490) - £109.26

Xfx Geforce 6600GT 128MB DDR PCI-E (?/400) - £89.29

Is it glaringly obvious that out of those three the 1600XT is the choice to make or is there more to it than just those clock speeds?

[MadduckUK]

http://www.digital-daily.com/video/x...gt/index05.htm

should help you decide

[Merlin4458]

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/98063/rb/18881843405

clock that bad boy

[CreativeChaos]

http://www.digital-daily.com/video/x...gt/index05.htm

should help you decide

Thanks for that, I also checked out the X1600XT against the 6600GT link and the 1600 looked pretty hot.

I did see that 800GTO2 that Merlin linked but from what I gather that doesn't support HDR and Pixel Shader tech but has overall more grunt. I think I'm down to choosing between these two now but can't decide what's a better trade off. Am I better with more power (X800GTO2) or the features of the X1600XT? A little tweaking will probably be on the cards whatever the choice.

[trojan698]

http://www.ebuyer.com/UK/product/98063/rb/18881843405

clock that bad boy

This is definately your best bet and definately worth the extra £11. Alternatively you could buy an HIS X800 GTO from here http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatal...eries_407.html
They have R480 cores and can be flashed to an X850XT easily. If thats too risque, the HIS version comes with software that allows you to overclock by clicking a button without voiding the warranty. The cooling system on it is also amazing.