Hi All,
My trusty old box is now showing it's age, and so it's time for an upgrade, but for various reasons, it's going to be graphics this month, and then mobo/cpu/ram next month.
I'm currently running a geforce 6800 on AGP, but I've got one of those odd mobos that also has a PCI express x16 slot along side.
Unfortunately I'm quickly learning that if you stop reading all the hardware reviews on the web for a mere 2 years, it's a royal pain to get your head around the current cards, with a view to figuring out the best value.
So, for 60-80 pounds what can I get? It needs to see me through for the next 18 months at least. The box is mostly used for desktop work these days, with only casual gaming (I'm still playing Half Life2 and the original far cry as often as anything else). I also (very) occasionally use Linux, and ought to use it more.
A quick peruse of Scan this morning suggests an Geforce 9600/9800 or GTS250 could all be on the cards, I confess I haven't really got my head around the ATI naming conventions, but 46** series seem to be about 50quid, and 48** about 100 plus (so too expensive).
Final question, which generation of cards was it when they switch from having specialised processing units, to a shed load of general purpose cores?
Cheers (and standard apologies for rambling post)
Andrew.