I bought my 3xs (i7, 2.93 GHz, 3GB RAM) for home recording but would like to play the odd game or two on it also, Call of Duty-type. I'm not a die-hard gamer and know zero about graphics cards, so would like a non-technical recommendation for a good graphics card that will be compatible with my 3xs and make games run smoothly etc. Budget - not a problem (within reason). Thanks.
John
Hi,
You can put in any card you want to, as can't think of any incompatabilitys with current cards. You may not wish to go crazy with the memory on the card as this will eat into physical memory when the machine shadows it into ram. I think the 260's would be a resonable cheapish card that will allow you to play everything without turning the settings down too much.
http://www.scan.co.uk/Index.aspx?NT=1-0-17-588-0
One thing to remember through. Any gaming capable card you fit will have a fan on it which may end up being quite noisy in comparison to the rest of the system. The plus point is that these may only really spin up noticably during gaming so you may not notice them whilst recording.
Maybe worth getting one and see how it runs. If it does prove noisy then you can always fit an aftermarket solution like http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Artic...ies-(260280285) to quiet it down again.
I think Ntune http://www.nvidia.com/object/ntune_5.05.54.00.html allows you to set up profiles so that you could have fans at 30% whilst recording and 100% whilst gaming but i've not used it in a while so can't be competly sure.
Wow Pete, that's really helpful! A number of things to consider there.
I've looked a the 260 series link. What's the benefit of buying one at the top of the price range? Even smoother graphics in games, or does the difference become neglible once you spend above the 'hot seller' model listed?
We are only about a month away from the biggest release in graphics cards for years, while you may not want one of these cards they are expected to have huge performance increases over the previous cards and this will almost certainly mean large price decreases in the current cards.
If you are desperate go for it but if you are in no hurry there is likely to be huge bargins to be had in the near future at least imo, scan will likely know much better than me.
ATI are currently the best value for money, unless you want to spend a fortune:
tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2387.html
(sorry can't post URLs' directly you can work it out)
Don't know about the noise, though, and I did hear a few complaints (although it was nearly a year ago when the 4870 came out) about the dreaded 'driver issues'. Also, you need a decent monitor eg.1920*1080 resolution, before the HD 4890 or nVidia 275 gets maxed out.
Forgot to mention you might need a beefier power supply if you fit the HD 4890. Bit of a monster.
Yeah, pretty much right on all accounts there. Pretty much everything above the £100 will play everything but with different features turned on or off.Originally Posted by Skyline
The most demanding features are stuff like Antialisising which can still cripple some of the top cards let alone the lower ones. Thing is even with it turned on it's rare in many games to be able to stand around and notice it so I don't consider it remotely essiential to playing a good game.
My gaming box is based around a 8800GTX and a 9550 chip and the's pretty much nothing it can't play still at a decent enough graphical level to make it worth while (I'm currently playing prototype with everything maxed out), which means anything over a £100 will have far more power than I have and should surfice.
The 260 draws with the 4870 in that benchmark comparison link in it's price range, except it uses less memory and thus will be better for the OP because the machine won't be trying to shadow as much into ram.
My resevations in using ATI in this system are:
1. Heat - This is key. I don't know which case you have your machine in but if it's the KL3 then I know I designed it to handle full load at about 70 degrees. That's with a passive card but giving off minimal heat. Putting a 260 in there will raise it 10 degrees under load and putting an ATI card in there that runs even hotter will cause heat issues. The machine if it's audio spec is designed to run close to silent. This means the's 3 or 4 fans in it shifting air at a flow rate i've spent hours ballenceing between speed and noise. A mid range card may run fine in it (and we've done builds with a 260 in running fine) but the ATI cards run much hotter and I don't know if it would handle it all that well. If it's housed in a Cosmos then you may have more luck, but you may have to add fans which will bring up the noise levels further.
2. Noise - OP's using it for sound recording and mixing. Gaming cards are loud and intrusive. I wouldn't advise going high end otherwise you may find it being quite noisy all the time.
3. Catalyst Drivers - I've seen issues between them and all sorts of 3rd party audio hardware. To be honest i've seen Nvidia drivers doing some crazy things with various audio hardware too, but I know that we can come up with work arounds with most of those, where the Ati ones tend to stump us a whole lot more. With Nvidia it's normally incompatability brought by companies such as UAD using nvidia processors to power plug in cards, but the are updates to fix these kinda of issues. Catalyst however I've seen creating issues with audio software configurations on different revisions and I've been stumped for solutions a few times.
Neilus refers to the "dreaded driver issues" above. I couldnt' agree more. Hence why I still stand by my previous recomendation.
OP's spec should be around a 650watt which will see it put under a high load and see it generating more noise too. To move upto a resonably quiest 850/1000 watt psu will cost about another £100/150 on top of the graphics card.
For me this is a great example of why to wait. Had you brought a month before the 8800GTX was released you wouldn't have a card 3 years later that still runs games damn well. It was a massive jump over it's predessor and we havn't really had a proper jump since though everything suggests we are about to next month. Wait an extra month or so before buying get 18 months more out of the card, it's a no brainer imo.My gaming box is based around a 8800GTX and a 9550 chip and the's pretty much nothing it can't play still at a decent enough graphical level to make it worth while
The new mid range 5850 is said to have around double the performance over 2TFLOPS vs just over 1TFLOP for the high end gtx285. So the difference in value could well end up being as much as 100% more performance for 30% less price. Also being made on a 40nm process instead of 55nm means they really should have significantly more performance per watt and produce less heat, not to mention the fact they will be dx11 too. Of course maybe we will be disapointed but it really seems the worst time to buy a graphics card in years. Even if you don't want the new dx11 cards the price of the current gen must surely crash otherwise they arn't going to be selling any.
We won't know the exact specs for 2 more weeks but the fact that the mid range model is over 2TFLOPS seems to be fact.
There is nothing wrong with buying now though prices have already started to fall because of the coming new cards and the mid range cards will play everything very well indeed but alot of extra performance/value and longetivity should reward the patient.
Do you have a link that proves this?
Im not suggesting you're wrong, but every report I am reading is stating a different performance difference. On another forum the other day someone swore they had read the top end 5xxx series will only be 50% more powerful than the 4890.
Different figures being quoted depending on what you read it seems.
I can't find the link sorry, but no it wouldn't have been proof anyway as everyone is under NDA atm but I've seen multiple places that the info going to partners for boxes and marketing amoungst other bullet points is the greater than 2TFLOP performance.
But it's only 2 weeks till the launch (though it will almost certainly be a paper launch) so it's better to assume it's right and find out in 2 weeks and wait than assume it's wrong and get bad value for money. It's certainly possible I'm wrong no doubt but it's only 2 weeks to find out.
Honestly even at 50% it would be well worth waiting, thats still a massive jump.
Hmm a 50% jump would be nice, but I would really like to see the top end 5xxx card outdo the 4870X2 or the GTX295 at the moment.
If I remember right, the jump from 7800gtx to 8800gtx was over double and the 8800GTX to 285GTX roughly double again (give or take a few frames) so I would like to see double again but this time from an ATI card.
I do fear that ATI will play it safe again and go for £/performance rather than flat out supremecy.
If it turns out the 4870X2 etc are outperforming it on modern games I think a lot of people will be upset.
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