Best video card for games under £100?

[RedM]

I currently have an Nvidia GeForce 6200 Turbocache sitting in a PCI-Express slot.

 

What Nvidia based card can I get for under £100 that'll give a noticeable imrovement?

[michael]

Something like the 7600GS should do the trick and your budget should allow a 512MB variant. For a few quid more there is the 7600GT, mainly 256mb for the £100 mark.

 

You might also want to look at increasing the amount of memory in the PC itself, most modern games like 2GB in my experience.

 

I'm just about to do the upgrade thing myself, sadly I'm on AGP at the moment so will need to get a new motherboard and probably a CPU as well as graphics card(s)

[michael]

http://www.cclonline.com/ have the 256MB Foxconn GeForce 7600GT on offer at just over £80, just up the road from your office too so you can save on postage if you are back to work soon.

[Guest DaviE-K]

here is what ive just bought

 

Intel Core 2 DUO Conroe 2.40ghz

Wester Digital Raptor 74gb 10,000 rpm jobbie

Corsaid 2gb Dominator pc2 6400

Asus P5W DH Delux board

Enermax Liberty 620w psu

Antec 900 case

GeForce 7950 gt

 

bit pricey, weighing in at 930 quid, but fuck me is it worth it.

no game ive played upto yet really stresses it out. am a big BF2 fan and it just rocks

[Angarak]

According to Toms Hardware

 

Best PCI Express Card For ~£100

GeForce 7600 GT

 

Codename: G73, 90-nanometer technology 12 Pixel shaders, five Vertex shaders, 12 Texture units, eight Raster operations processors 128-bit memory bus 560-MHz core, 700-MHz DDR (1400 MHz Effective) Memory

 

The 7600 GT is an amazing card in this price range, sporting new SM 3.0 technology and very high clock speeds to deliver excellent performance. Its weakest feature is its 128-bit memory bus, but its high-memory speeds offset that disadvantage and make it competitive with 256-bit cards like the X850 XT. ATI's new X1650 XT is competitive, but more expensive, leaving the 7600 GT to keep its top spot in this segment.

[RedM]

You might also want to look at increasing the amount of memory in the PC itself, most modern games like 2GB in my experience.

 

 

I was thinking that too. We currently have 512mb in two x 256mb.

 

I was thinking of getting a further two x 1024mb units giving 2.5gb in total. Our current memory is pc3200. Am I right in thinking I can put anything up to pc4000?

[Thorin]

Definately 7600GT rather than the GS, I have one and impressed with it (also on AGP )

 

I found that 512MB just isn't enough and it crippled performance even with a decent graphics card. No need to go for PC4000 stuff unless you're overclocking a lot. Get some decent 3200 stuff rather than budget value ram. 1GB would probably be fine but would definitely go to 2GB if possible.

[RedM]

I can find 512mb versions of the 7600GS but only 256mb versions of the GT. Why?

[RedM]

oh, and what make of memory is good? Are Kingston still okay?

[michael]

I was thinking that too. We currently have 512mb in two x 256mb.

 

I was thinking of getting a further two x 1024mb units giving 2.5gb in total. Our current memory is pc3200. Am I right in thinking I can put anything up to pc4000?

 

512mb > 2gb+ will make you very happy

 

Have a look at the motherboard spec for details of how much memory it can handle, some will only cope with 2GB, others more.

 

To be honest I'd probably sacrifice the 512mb you have to the god of eBay and pick up a pair of 1GBs.

 

The memory finder tool on http://www.crucial.com/uk/ is useful for deciding the best your board can manage, their prices aren't always the best though.

[michael]

I can find 512mb versions of the 7600GS but only 256mb versions of the GT. Why?

 

They chuck cheap memory into the GS models to make them more appealing, the GT will still outperform one with 256mb if you have a decent amount of memory in the PC.

[RedM]

512mb > 2gb+ will make you very happy

 

Have a look at the motherboard spec for details of how much memory it can handle, some will only cope with 2GB, others more.

 

To be honest I'd probably sacrifice the 512mb you have to the god of eBay and pick up a pair of 1GBs.

 

The memory finder tool on http://www.crucial.com/uk/ is useful for deciding the best your board can manage, their prices aren't always the best though.

 

I've been on the Crucial site. According to their memory tool I have four slots available to me. Two are occupied by 256mb modules. I have a further two to fill and can go up to 4GB!

 

I figured adding two 1GB modules would be pretty good from a performance vs value angle.

[Keith C]

At least 1GB of RAM is wise these days - not sure 2GB is really required just yet, especially not if the money could be spent getting a more effective improvement elsewhere.

 

For gfx cards, I also recommend the 7600GT - I have on in my work PC and it runs very nicely indeed - UT2004 (admittedly an old game) runs just fine at 2560x1600 with everything on. Can't say for newer games (except Civilization 4 which is more demanding of memory/CPU than gfx) as I haven't tried them on the work machine.

[RedM]

Good point, Keith, although I'd like more memory rather than an 'even better' GFX card as I only have an Athlon64 CPU running at about 2Ghz. I'd end up strangling the GFX card because theCUP isn't up top the job.

 

More memory on the other hand would help to prevent those annoying little loads just as dozens of zombies appear out of a cupboard.

[Keith C]

Hmm - to be honest, I just don't think that the 1GB->2GB step would give you that much of an improvement.

 

If you're short on CPU power, consider maybe upgrading that? To be honest though, given that there seems to be insufficient games taking proper advantage of dual-core CPU's, and you have a decent single-core CPU, I don't know if you're going to be that CPU limited.

 

I have an Opteron 175 (dual-core) in the work machine, which for single-threaded games (again, UT2004 is my only example) is no faster than a single-core Opteron 248, which at 2.2GHz is probably not majorly faster than your 3200+ - you could probably mildly overclock your CPU to be as fast.

 

If you went for 1GB RAM and a 7600GT, you'd be pretty well balanced IMO on the components, and if you have a mobo that would support a dual-core CPU you can always upgrade that at a future point. Even if not, by the time you would be being significantly CPU limited, a cheap dual-core CPU and mobo, onto which you could transfer your RAM and GFX card, would probably be very affordable.

[michael]

Maybe it's just BF2 that benefits from 2GB (it's the only PC game I play) but those of us with that much can load the maps, get on the game and take the first flags before the 512mb and 1GB guys have even spawned, I'm going for 4GB in my next system.

[Sheefa]

Running AMD Dual Core 4600 on PCI-Express mobo here. Got a X800 XL 256 card that I boguth about 1 year ago now for £200 odd. It's silently cooled and handles anything really wel from Oblivion through to COD3. Even with the settings ramped up to 1920 x 1600 on my nice Dell 2405FPW.

 

I'd take a look at them too mate, but AGP obviously or upgrade your Mobo.

[Sheefa]

When I think about it, the money I've spent on my Sup that is, I could have a bloody supercomputer by now!

[Daston]

if your lucky you may pick up a new 7900GT on ebay for that price (my bro managed it the lucky git)

[Keith C]

Maybe it's just BF2 that benefits from 2GB (it's the only PC game I play) but those of us with that much can load the maps, get on the game and take the first flags before the 512mb and 1GB guys have even spawned, I'm going for 4GB in my next system.

 

I wouldn't necessarily bother - I put 4GB into a machine I built for the bosses brother, and it loads UT2004 maps only momentarily faster than the 2GB I have in my work machine, and most of that advantage is probably down to the SAS disks (mine has SATA). Even then he complains that sometimes other people load even faster than he does!

 

To be honest, that also smacks of poor adminning for the BF servers - I have a start delay on all my UT2k4 servers of about 30 seconds, which allows even those with older machines (like me - my home machine is a P4 2.66 and 9800 Pro - 4 years old!) to have the map loaded before the game starts. I'd be surprised if BF didn't have that option.

 

RedM - you've already told us how poor your gfx card is, so my upgrade priority for you would be:

 

1. Gfx card - up to a 7600GT

2. RAM - up to 1GB

3. CPU - up to dual core. If this involves a mobo change, consider Core 2 CPU's. This is also a good reason for limiting how much you spend on step 2., as you may have to replace the RAM with different type (DDR2, FB-DIMM, blah blah) if you change architecture

4. Second gfx card

5. More RAM

[Daston]

2GB ram is nearly a must for online play put it this way my girlfriend has 1gb I have 2gb and her bro has 512 when playing everquest 2 I zone in at around 15 seconds my girlfriend in around 20-30seconds and her poor bro in 10min!!!! So Ram is quite a nassasity in online play. However I dont think XP can use more than 3.7gb or somthing silly like that

[Angarak]

With regards to increasing system memory, I've noticed huge improvements in the time taken to load levels on the likes of FarCry, F.E.A.R, BF2, COD2, Half-Life 2 and GTR2. Its also reduced the amount of stuttering within games (such as HL2).

 

If your using XP, you can tweak it with "Tweak XP" to squeeze more performance out of it.

 

With regards to CPU's, the Intel dual-cores are better for gaming, but being Intel they are more expensive too.

 

I've used Crucial memory before, never had any fail on me, and they deliver for free in the UK

[Guest DaviE-K]

Maybe it's just BF2 that benefits from 2GB (it's the only PC game I play) but those of us with that much can load the maps, get on the game and take the first flags before the 512mb and 1GB guys have even spawned, I'm going for 4GB in my next system.

 

 

 

Hey there mate iam big into my BF2, and ive found the biggest improvement with map loading times ito be down to your choice of hard drive. the extra ram helped a fair bit, but when i stuffed my WD in it blew me away how fast everything loaded! i know its a lot of money for what you get, but the western digital raptor is one of the best bits of hardware ive ever bought. iam always first in the server and always get my pick of vehicle

 

and someone else said scour ebay for bargains?- i paid 100 quid for a 7950 gt. unopened and brand new! some guy had bought 2 with the intention of running an SLI setup, but bought a x-fire board lol

 

 

and in response to this..

. However I dont think XP can use more than 3.7gb or somthing silly like that

 

i was told the same, altho i was told 3gb. so Michael if your thinking about building a new system id probably look further into it save you wasting money!! unless your waiting for Vista? i dnt know how much ram this can support though

[Thorin]

The memory limit in 32bit XP is 4GB, but it's also limited to being able to use a maximum of 2GB for kernel stuff and upto 2GB shared application space.

 

So if you've got 3GB in your machine with 2.5GB free memory, or 4GB with 3.5GB free memory each individual application can only utilise up to 2GB of address space so you'd see no difference.

[RedM]

Well, I nearly bought a 7600GT today but got confused by all the minimum requirement shite on the back.

 

Min 300w PSU,

Two something dongles - not floppy based (WTF?)

...and something else too.