Graphic card, what to get

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Well basicly my old Radeon 9200x 128mb ram card isn't up to date anymore, since it cant run neither oblivion or Nwn2. So it must be time to update, only i realise i know next to nothing about graphic cards.

with a little help i have narrowed it down to either
the Radeon 1650 pro http://www.edbpriser.dk/Products/Listprices.asp?ID=257304 whihc i can get for around 1000Dkr

or the Radeon 1950 pro, which I can get for around 1700kr
http://www.edbpriser.dk/Products/Listprices.asp?ID=263003

i looking for something that will last a least a couple of years and which can run the newest games.

 

Well...of those two cards, the Radeon X1950pro is vastly superior to the X1650pro.

Using Tom's Hardware's VGA Charts, you can see that playing Oblivion at a resolution of 1024x768, the X1950pro gets a FPS (frames per second) score of 20.8...while the X1650 only gets a 7.5.

Play around with the chart for a bit to get the cards to match up as close as possible to what you're considering, then select a game/resolution to see how the two cards stack up against all the others.

[ March 13, 2007, 18:30: Message edited by: Kitrax ]

 

Equester, what kind of system are you running it on?

 

nice point kitrax, i had checked toms hardware but just for a quick comparing

 

http://www.gph.benchmark.pl

Select "English" where it says "polski".

 

As Shadow Assassin said, System specs would be very helpful, mainly because the 1950 is quite a lot more expensive than the 1650, and if you're cpu bottlenecked there might not be too great a performance difference between them.

 

I have the X1900 GT and it plays Oblivion seamlessly on my Core 2 Duo, with a Gig of ram.

 

Don't make me jealous... please

 

If you can afford the 8600 or 8800 from Nvidia, this would be the way to go.

 

8800 is the best by far, but also a lot of money.

8600 is priced a bit too high for its performance, the X1950 Pro will beat it in most benchmarks, and tie with it in the others. The advantage of the 8600 is that it supports DX10. But DX10 games are few and far between.

If I was you, I would buy a X1950 Pro, then wait 18 months and buy a new DX10 card. that way, you buy a DX10 card when many games are out that support it, and Vista stability issues are solved.

 

while i would gladly post my specs i have no idea of how or what they are, i really dont know much about computers, i usually aply the Yoda ethode to get them to work (hitting them with a stick).

But as far as i can undestand on what Ironhawk has told me, i can only run AGP cards

 

or completely non-existent at the moment.
There's a 320mb version of the 8800GTS that is quite a bit cheaper than the 640mb version, but almost as fast, if you shop around a bit you could get a very fast future-proofed card for not an over-ridiculous price.

On the other hand if there are no upcoming directX10 games that you're really looking forward to and the rest of your system is the bottle neck, it may be better to settle for a slower card and upgrade again in a few years when some even crazier cards come out.

 

You can pick up a 8800 for under $300 if you look for it. I even seen some around $250.

 

uhm guys thats all nice about the geforce 8800, but its a PCI card and my computer can only run AGP cards.

 

If you have the money to spend buy a good 6800 or 7800 AGP card. They go for $250-300.

 

if you only have AGP, rather get a cheaper card now and save money for total system upgrade - motherboard, CPU, RAM and graphics card.

you could probably still get 7800/6800/7900gs cards for fairly cheap though.