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Inexpensive video card

H

Helldiver

Charter Member 09
About a year ago, Txnetcop told us that the Zotac 8800 card was the best one. I put one in and never regretted it. It was so much better than all the other 8800 cards, even the e-system over clocked one. I have three computers, all with 8800 cards in them.
But cards have changed and so are the demands made on the GPU. I wonder what is the card of choice now? Would it be Zotac's 9800 GTX with 1GB of memory? Or would it be a Radeon HD 4870?
I'd like your views on this.
 
I bought the Zotac 9800GTX for my sons rig based on the performance I am getting from my old Zotac 8800gt - and he seems very happy with it.
 
My PC guy fitted a 9400GT card (about 50 US dollars?) and I run FSX at about 30 FPS (all maxed, except traffic), he plays a lot of games and said it was the best 'value for money' card out there. I do have a good quad core CPU though.
 
FSX has not many concerns with graphics cards..

I run a 3850 ATI in two machines no problem...

The 4870 and 90 are both great..

But.. Any 8800 is more than up to the job too...
 
Kiwikat said:
A 9800GTX+ or GTS250 would work great for FSX and other games.
Click to expand...

Yep.

Make sure to have the "+" after the "GTX" though. It indicates a 55nm core (instead of a 65mnm one), which either means more power or less heat/power consumption.
 
HD, I have found at least on my builds that the processor and memory plays a bigger part than the video card. Even though the video card helps some I would put my money on the first two...Mike
 
I am using an 8800gt 512mb and it is adequate, but using Memstatus I see that I am using 99 % of video memory and there are occasional flashes of video tearing. I think it may be time to go to 1 gb on board memory. I have most sliders maxed out and except traffic. From what I have read the 9800 gtx and the gts250 share the same core.
 
Ive got a box of cards mainly only used a few times including a 1 gig 8800gt oced. The vid card for FSX is probably the less important piece of hardware. Very little if any difference betreen 1 gig and 512 IMO. I am currently using a 4870 1 gig and feel the Nvidias are a little faster with clouds and heavy weather. I seem to have less problems with the ATI but there are more programs that you can tweak the Nvidia with. Concentrate on the proccessor,ram and if all you do is FSX, then any of the current or even older cards will be fine. Dont waste your money on the sli cards or the high end cards as they do not really give you any bang for the buck.
 
Good question. I still have the stock 768MB 8800GTX card in my system (still a very good card), but am thinking about a (relatively) cheap upgrade as well. I'm wondering if there's a card with 1 Gig of memory with HDMI for less than ~$150.00? I know there are 1 Gig 9800GTX's out there, but am having a tough time finding HDMI cards. Thinking $150.00 is still too low for such a card.
 
DaveKDEN said:
Good question. I still have the stock 768MB 8800GTX card in my system (still a very good card), but am thinking about a (relatively) cheap upgrade as well. I'm wondering if there's a card with 1 Gig of memory with HDMI for less than ~$150.00? I know there are 1 Gig 9800GTX's out there, but am having a tough time finding HDMI cards. Thinking $150.00 is still too low for such a card.
Click to expand...

Not a recommendation, just information, but see http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814187056.
 
The 4890 is HDMI ready ..It sells for just under 200 if I remember right..i just bought two and love them...
 
HI
would you trade a 9800 gtx for the 250? or 260? Saw specs and the 250 comes without a "shader clock" Anyone knows what is a shader clock and what it does?
Thanks
 
Memory clock is speed or data rate of the graphics memory. The graphics memory chips usually surround the GPU chip:
http://www.techreport.com/r.x/geforce-88…

Shader clock is the clock speed (gHz) of the numerous shaders or stream processors inside the GPU or graphics processor chip. The shaders are the green squares in blow-up diagram below:
http://www.techreport.com/r.x/geforce-88…

The other parts of the diagram form the GPU core that is clocked at a lower rate (mHz) than the shaders.

There is a direct correlation to how fast and how well the video card performs and how fast the shader clock is set.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2931&p=5

Helldiver:

I have owned a GTX 285 OC, and ATI HD4870, and ATI HD4850, two 8800GTs, one GTX+9800. I have worked with Intel engineers, ATI engineers, and Nvidia engineers and all have said the same thing about FSX, but I can't repeat it here. So to keep it polite I simply say that it was not Microsoft's shining hour when they made it. However I love it compared to other flight sims most of the time!

I have tested over 50 various video cards at TechCorp in the last six months and here is the conclusion I came up with based on the above paragraph and my testing:

If you have a quad core or and i7 Core get a card like a GTX260 or GTX 275 for the bandwidth and clock speed you will get amazing background textures if you set it up like Nick Needham has his. Don't be over agressive on the eye candy at first-inch your way up little by little and use nHancer even though the newer drivers include better AA.

If you have a Core 2 Duo (make sure it is an E8400 or faster) stick with your 8800GT and load Windows 7 64bit OS on your system and buy fast RAM. If you just have to upgrade the 9800GTX+ 512 MB is just fine-get the fastest you can afford. If you have a Intel board and are not interested in running SLI some day the HIS ICE Q4 HD4850 Turbo is nice and so is the Sapphire HD4890. I would not waste my time on the HD4870 for now since the HD4890 is out there if you want ATI. Be careful trusting reviews on the Internet some people just have an axe to grind and skew the results just to prove a point-no names mentioned.

I've been testing all day and I'm tired I hope I type all this correctly I will correct any mistakes tomorrow night.
Ted
 
Given that my computers are all Windows XP and I expect them to be that for whats left of my life. The CPUs will stay pretty much the same. Single CPUs. They all have nVdia 8800 but one has a Zotac 8800 and it goes like blazes. What I want to know is what kind do I upgrade to? Is there any better than the Zotac? Multple choices only confuses me.
 
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