Upgrading To A new graphics Card

[ngc1980]

Hi guys, first post here. Well I'm thinking about upgrading my GPU but have a few question's first. My current specs are Prescott P4 3.0ghz with 512mb ram and an AGP Fx5200. Right now I'm just worried about upgrading the gpu, 2 gb of ram will come a little later. My motherboard only has agp so that limits my choices right there. But I have narrowed it down to 2 cards in my price range. This is the first one http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...Fencoding=UTF8 and this one here http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150127
I really wanted a x850xt but the only agp version I could find were very expensive, and to be honest I'm not really sure that the xt is worth spending the extra dough over a pro. That extra money is needed so that I can get a wireless keyboard and mouse so I can play on my 57inch HDTV. Anyway which card do you guys think I should get? My hdtv only supports 1920x1080 and dosen't accept any other resolutions, and no, it woln't upconvert a 720p signal, so my games are probally going to be run in 1920x1080. I know that at this high res I am going to have to turn down some options like anti alasaing and shadows, but that dosen't bother me too much. Any help you guys can give would be very much apperciated. Thanks

[ultim8um]

If you don't want a slideshow, then yeah you will pretty much have to turn off everything! lol

Thats a hell of a high resolution tbh. I would have thought that you would have needed something pretty high end to get respectable frame rates at 1920x1080... Unless your talking about older 3D games?

The XT is worth it over the Pro due to the extra 4 pipelines that are available, but I'm not sure that will really matter for either card driving a screen of that res.

Given your current setup (CPU & Ram), I think you are going to really struggle to get good fps in most recent games.

[Syd]

I have been weighing up the dell 24" Widescreen monitor which runs at a similar native resolution and come to the conclusion that to run at this I would need to lay out on a 7800GTX 512MB or 2!!!!! To play modern games i.e COD2, FEAR, BattleField2 with acceptable framerates, and at that size you are gonna want as much detail and image enhancement as possible, tbh you would prob get a better image, for cheaper from a XBOX 360.

[ngc1980]

Actually 1920x1080 is only a LITTLE bit more stressful on the GPU than 1600x1200.

[shaithis]

Running 1920x1200 here and finding a 7800GT isn't quite cutting it at all times, and thats with AA turned off or set to its lowest setting!

High res gaming is VERY intensive on the graphics card.

[ngc1980]

well I can see that this was a complete waste of time. All I wanted to know was what was the better card to buy.

[Nox]

Sorry, i would always choose nvidia, due to their linux drivers. Which isn't what you were asking.

However, as far as I am aware, nvidia is the better card at most price points on more benchmarks, but realistically they are so close a driver update could shift the balance quite easily. If its any help, I used to have a 6800 ultra, it was superb, but that was when I ran things at 1280x1024.

Nox

[ngc1980]

Ok Thank you The only reason I am upgrading my pc is that I can play some of the following games, Urur Ages Beyond myst, myst 3 & 4, Splinter Cell, Doom 3, and Halo. If I just put one more stick of cheap ram (1gb total) do you think that the games above would run good in 1920x1080?

[ed^chigliak]

The better card is the 6800gs which is also cheaper however neither card will be good enough performance for new games at 1920x1080.

I suggest the 7800GT minimum or a more sensible 1280x1024 screen. It's unbalanced to have the high spec widescreen monitors with a mid range GPU. Having said that it will be a big improvement over the FX5200.

[Nox]

I wasn't aware they did the 7800GT in AGP form yet.

Nox