24" screen - what graphics card?

[Andeh13]

As the title says, im soon going to be the new owner of a Samsung 24" screen, however i dont think my poor 6600GT will cope with it very well.

Whats the cheapest graphics card i could get that will allow me to play games at native res with medium settings? Is there a reasonably priced card that could do the job? I dont fancy shelling out too much & wouldnt know where to begin with a budget but ideally, not too far into the triple figures.

(I also run dual screen with a 17" sony monitor)

thanks guys

[directhex]

8800gt is great value

[staffsMike]

£95 - £110. ATi HD3850pro
£150 ATi HD3870
£115. (if you are lucky) - £160 Low end 8800GT 512mb (don't bother with the 256mb..get the HD3850pro instead)
£180. High end 8800GT
£205. 8800GTS

In order of performance (and price lol)

HD3850pro will do the job but you are going to be losing some eye candy.

EDIT: medium settings will be fine for the HD3850pro I'm sure.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You can get the 512MB HD3850 for around £120 delivered. Since the HD3850 is essentially and underclocked HD3850 with DDR3 memory it will be a decent performer.

PowerColor HD 3850 Pro PCS 512MB GDDR3 256bit Dual DVI TVO PCI-E Graphics Card - Ebuyer

OcUK ATI Radeon HD 3850 Pro 512MB GDDR3 TV-Out/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) - Retail

Computer hardware and software at amazing prices, available online from Scan Computers UK

Sadly you just missed out on the £90 HD3850 256mb that Ebuyer had on offer for a short period.You should be able to still get the HD3850 for around £100 delivered if you are on a tight budget. However 512mb is a must if you want to game at the native resolution of a 24 inch monitor.

The HD38** series have superior media encoding and decoding capabilities when compared to the G92 8800GT/8800GTS.

[Jay]

if you want to play Crysis on full detail then 1920 x 1600 is a no go for any card. 24" are just not really made for gaming.

[TooNice]

It's handy to know what games you play and your budget. I am one who believe that the well priced 8800GT (512MB for 24") provides the best bang for buck. But I definitely would not pay £180 for one (that's too close to a 'cheap' GTS).

[Andeh13]

Sorry, forgot to add my games. I dont play much these days but when it takes my fancy i play Half life 2, a bit of battlefield 2 and a few others aroud that sort of genre (might give Cyrsis a go one day).

My budget is as cheap as is reasonably possible, iv considered a 8800GT 512mb but was curious about what else i could get, especially as i have no idea about the new ATi cards.

With the 8800GT 512mb on native res, what rough sort of settings could i run with HL2 & BF2? medium/low/high etc?

thanks again

[staffsMike]

With those two games i'd imagine you would be playing on very high settings. But the HD3850pro would handle them to.

[TooNice]

I don't know about BF2 (I believe it's a bit more demanding), but HL2 is really easy to run: even a X1800XT doesn't break a sweat at 1900x1200 with all eye candy on so I agree that even a HD3850 will handle it. Crysis is another story though.

[Syd]

I have been running a Dell 2405 for 18months and LOVE the size and desktop real estate it gives.
I had a 6800GT initially, which I upgraded to an X1800XT256 until a couple of weeks ago when it died

The X1800 ran BF2 pretty well, Oblivion was fine unless you enabled HDR and this was at native res, WoW was great at full tilt(which is 90% of my gaming) HL2 was no problem really with most eye candy on.

So I am pretty much in the same boat as you - I need a card but don't want to spend too much.
TBH I am kinda waiting for for the 9*** or whatever comes nxt to see how that will affect current pricing as I think the way forward would be a 8800GTS512 but I'd like to pay less than £200 for it!

Whatever you decide upon just make sure it has 512MB of RAM as It is much more important at 1920x1200 than at lower res's.

But all that aside you are gonna LOVE that 24

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The 256MB HD3850 has dropped down to £91 delivered again at Ebuyer. This is excellent value if you have a tight budget!!

Ebuyer also have the 512mb 2900pro for just under £100.

[this_is_gav]

if you want to play Crysis on full detail then 1920 x 1600 is a no go for any card. 24" are just not really made for gaming.

1) As a game Crysis is **** (eye candy is good though).

2) Do you know of a 24" monitor that will output 1920x1600?

[Syd]

1) As a game Crysis is **** (eye candy is good though).

2) Do you know of a 24" monitor that will output 1920x1600?

That would be the new updated 4:3 24" lol

[MSIC]

Whats the cheapest graphics card i could get that will allow me to play games at native res with medium settings? Is there a reasonably priced card that could do the job?

As mentioned by some above, the one card that you want is easy:
AMD Radeon 3850 512MB for £117 from ebuyer, or £105 here (but feel free to read around about different shops)
There is no other recommendation. Enjoy!

[2Cold Scorpio]

I'd recommend either a GeForce 8800 GT, the new 8800 GTS, or if you have the wampum, a 8800GTX. Honestly, with the 9 series around the corner, I'd just go with the GT unless you plan on playing something like Call of Duty 4 on max specs at your highest resolution, in which the GTS would suit you fine.

Speaking of Crysis...I'm running the demo with my 8800 GT SUperclocked and C2D E6750 OC'd to 3.4 GHz with the max settings allowed in XP (meaning, everything on High) with 4x AA @ 1680x1050 at between 19-25 FPS (actually playable O_o; and about 30 FPS with 2x AA: quite playable.

[TooNice]

I don't think that it makes much sense to pay extra for a GTX these days. If priced the same, I'd probably still go for the cooler GTS Rev 2 anyway though it probably won't matter much performance wise.
At some point, I'll have to work out the bang for bucks of the 3850 / 3870 when compared to the GT. The problem I have now is selecting a 'fair' price for the 8800GT. Some have managed to get the Palit for £138, but it right now, the averages at around £170-ish (including those overclocked / with custom fans equipped which cost almost £200) and is definitely not good bang for buck. I don't think any other card vary so much price wise.