Gaming card for £120?

[colinloves]

I only wanting to spend around 120 quid for a card (like most, I'm waiting to spend when D10 cards settle down)

I used to be an ATI fanboy until I got a 6600GT. But now with the X1950Pro, I'm just not sure if its time to sting back to ATI.
Its been a while since I researched the graphic card market and I know its a minefield.

So can someone give me a quick round up of the best card in my price range?

And if their are differences between the two companies? ATI (as far as I know) used to have a sharper look, while Nvidia gives a more punchy brighter look.

As usual, Thanks guys.

[Fabula]

X1950pro is a very good card for the money. But so is the 7900GS.

It may help if you state what games you will be playing, as each architecture has advantages with different games.

That said, at the moment I would go for a x1950pro.

[notsobig]

Yeah, for that price range the choice is probably between X1950PRO and 7900GS. I've only tested X1950PRO but it was a great performer. It scored 3dmark05 score of 9950, and 4300ish in 3dmark06 with my oveclocked 4000+.(the card is at stock clock) If you're going to upgrade from 6600GT, I think you'll see a huge performance boost. If you are overclocking enthusiast however you may like 7900GS better because I heard they overclock like mad. My Sapphire X1950PRO didn't overclock as much as I expected. But without overclock I believe 7900GS only scores around 7500-8000 mark in 3dmark05 so it has to be overclocked in order to much up with X1950PRO performance. Ofcourse this is just a benchmark so real game performance maybe slightly different story though. BTW, my 7900GTO only scores around 10100 with same cpu and cost me a lot more. So both cards are great card to be had especially for their asking price.

[Barrichello]

A vote here for the X1950pro (performance/price ratio is amazing)

[fishboy25uk]

...but they are in short supply at the moment apparently.

[kalniel]

Both are great choices for the money. If you play mostly openGL games (quake 4 etc.) then go for the Nvidia - it's also a bit cheaper. If you play Oblivion then go for the ATI as it performs a lot better.

In my recent experience, ATI do have better image quality settings, however Nvidia cards handle textures better, in terms of large sizes at least, especially if you go for a 512mb card.

[JimNastics]

I've got a 7900gto in my machine at the moment and a Sapphire X1950pro sat on the shelf waiting for a fix (VRM overheating issue). Sometime soon I'll need to choose which one to keep, and I'm having a hard time!

The only game I've tried with both is BF2142. The 7900gto performs noticeably better than the X1950pro in terms of FPS and that's at stock, it glides along without a stutter and rumour has it I could crank it up to 7900gtx speeds. Apparently the X1950pro's aren't particularly good overclockers. The extra 256mb on the 7900gto will undoubtedly start to come in useful in the near future especially considering I game at 1680x1050 on a Dell 2005fpw (except for BF2142 of course ). But, and for me this is a big but, I was gutted to find the 7900gto can't do AA + HDR (in keeping with the whole 7xxx series). I played BF2142 on the X1950pro first and it looked great, I'm a big fan of HDR and coupled with just 2x AA it looked lovely. On the 7900gto I have to go for one or the other, and at 1280x1024 having no AA is painful. Added onto that, the 7900gto cost £50 more, and I'm not sure it's worth that big a difference (when it was at £155 I'm sure it was worth it!).

So there you go, I dunno what to do now, I feel I'm leaning slightly towards the X1950pro. Certainly at the price range you're looking at I would go for the X1950pro over a 2nd hand card, just beward of a few driver issues at the moment and the overheating problem I mentioned earlier, see the last couple of pages of this thread when people start to figure out the problem:

http://www.sapphiretech.com/en/forum...ead.php?t=8522

[colinloves]

X1950pro is a very good card for the money. But so is the 7900GS.

It may help if you state what games you will be playing, as each architecture has advantages with different games.

That said, at the moment I would go for a x1950pro.

Would it help if I said Oblivion and BF2? - lol. Seems like I want best of both worlds.

[kalniel]

I think the X1950pro would be best for those game choices. BF2 is still good with a X1950pro, but the improvement in Oblivion with the ATI card is worth quite a lot.

[oralpain]

At stock, the X1950 pro really can't be beat in it's price range.

However, if you have a way to cool a 7900GS well, without paying too much, and are not adverse to tinkering, you can squeeze 200-250MHz OCs out of them.

[colinloves]

Is the X1950Pro the same size at the 7900 ??

Hope it fits in the case Im thinking of.

[notsobig]

X1950PRO is much longer(it's longer than my GTO) but if you are prepared to move your drive(which I had to) you should be ok I guess.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/vid...-gf7900gs.html

[colinloves]

Cheers notsobig.