Another GFX card dilema

[s29feb]

Okay I'm about to upgrade from my Gigabyte x800xl silentpipe and I've been looking at deals till my eyes hurt and narrowed it down to 3 choices. Eachis a differnet card at a different price and I wan to know what is best for the cash now and for the future?

System: Abit AN8 Ultra with an AMD 3700SD at 2.8 MHz 1:1 with 2GB Ballistix @ 3337 74GB Raptor so fast enough there?

Monitor is just a 17" Gigabyte DVI with max res of 1280 x 1024, however I want to upgrade this in the coming months to a 20" widscree wuxga monitor

So choices I have made with price I can hopefully get them at if and when in stock:

XFX 7800GT 256MB extreme for £225.25

OEM 7800 GTX 256MB XXX desgn (double slot) for £276 (bargain and if I get it I'll pass on the details )

Gecube Radeon x1800xt 512Mb for £320

So considering everything what should I go for?

[ilikeoatmeal]

i'd get a single slot 256mb GTX and then get another and SLI them when the prices go down in 6-8 months.

personally i stay away from ATI no matter what their numbers are. getting a GT for that price doesn't make sense unless you get two. GTX is more for your money there imo.

[BUFF]

i'd get a single slot 256mb GTX and then get another and SLI them when the prices go down in 6-8 months.

Hard to do SLI on a board with a single PCI-E gfx slot ...

[ilikeoatmeal]

Hard to do SLI on a board with a single PCI-E gfx slot ...

LOL i'm a noob, but i'd still go with a single GTX over ATI

[s29feb]

Got the GTX OEM card from Scan

Now all I have to do is sell my x800xl Silentpipe

[Smokey21]

personally i stay away from ATI no matter what their numbers are .

Why? Thats seriously retarded.

[ilikeoatmeal]

I've just never had good luck in the 4 cards i've bought from them since 1999. nvidia seems to have better support, but that's just my experience. i know many others who would never buy an nvidia.

[NightshadowUK]

You can't just stay away from a whole range of cards because of who the chipset is make by ... that's so stupid.

[GDVS]

You can't just stay away from a whole range of cards because of who the chipset is make by ... that's so stupid.

Why? It's only the same thing as preferring AMD to Intel.

[arthurleung]

IMO ATI cards are much better built than nvidia cards (component wise), might not be the case for 6800GT upward but my 6600GT looks much far crappier than my Radeon 9700 component wise.

I used to like ATI's control panel but not now. The new ATICCC is so freaking slow. It just keep reading my harddrives and pulling my CPU for 20 seconds before it shows up, not to mention eating hell lot of ram. On the other hand the nvidia image quality is not very good.

[StormPC]

Why? It's only the same thing as preferring AMD to Intel.

No it's not.

AMD offers better value ALWAYS, because they have to. nVidia and ATi are always trading places depending on price bracket and features needed. Not so cut and dry.

As a system builder I have experienced far fewer compatibility issues with ATi, but both nVidia and ATi have driver problems. That's why Omega exists.

[ilikeoatmeal]

You can't just stay away from a whole range of cards because of who the chipset is make by ... that's so stupid.

Well, the point is that I haven't stayed away from ATI. The way it has gone in the past is that I have bought nvidia, then ati, then nvidia, then ati, etc. Each time i get an ATI card something goes wrong or I'm otherwise displeased. So from here on out I'm not disappointing myself. I know many would think the exact opposite, but that's why there's a competitive market for this stuff.

[NightshadowUK]

No it's not.

Damn right.

Well, the point is that I haven't stayed away from ATI. The way it has gone in the past is that I have bought nvidia, then ati, then nvidia, then ati, etc. Each time i get an ATI card something goes wrong or I'm otherwise displeased. So from here on out I'm not disappointing myself. I know many would think the exact opposite, but that's why there's a competitive market for this stuff.

I can understand where you're coming from if you've had bad experiences but logically, if someone recommends that you go for a ATi card for [insert reasons here], don't just say no because of this. I think you've just been unlucky. Hell you must have been, how else could literally hundreds of thousands of people be quite happily using ATi cards as I type this. Try to keep an open mind, who knows, you may just be pleasantly surprised.

[Nox]

If you ever want to dabble with linux, get an nvidia card.

Nox

[Kef9]

Was the gtx oem card this one. If so does your one have the 512GTX cooler as shown in the piccy?

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Produ...oductID=308050

[s29feb]

Yep thats the exact one, I had seen it on another site for the same price but when Scan done it I went with them