1280x1024 Vid Card Upgrade

Anyone got recommendations for a 1280x1024 resolution video card that can do all settings (FSAA optional) for a reasonable price yet? (PCI-E x16 is fine)

Ideally with low power consumption since our one machine has a pretty gimp PSU and being a Dell its a pain in the ass to shop for a new PSU.

$21 for a 7100 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130069
$30 for a 7300 with a fan (always a good idea) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130044
$33 gets you an 8400gs http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121240
$35 gets you a 7200 with 512MB of RAM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150345

Heh, I'm talking about completely maxing out - we're running x800 Pro and 2600 Pro ATM. From some quick benches those seem about equivalent.

4830 has got my eye for $90ish since it's DX 10.1 compatible, sounds like the power consumption is lower than the x800 in my machine currently and enough oomph to start using good textures in recent stuff as well as shadows/etc.

Speaking of a card in general (mostly for Fallout 3), I already peak numbers in EQ (barring shadows).

Tom's Hardware chart of all current video cards running Mass Effect (1280x1024, 8xAA, Game AF, Ultra Quality) here

I suggest a 4830 at the Egg for $80 after rebate

Heard any word on the wattage they pull compared to the x800? I'm 99% sold once we've got the scratch (in a couple weeks) at this point.

ATI Radeon HD 4830 System Requirements
PCI Express based PC is required with one X16 lane graphics slot available on the motherboard
450 Watt or greater power supply with 75 Watt 6-pin PCI Express power connector recommended (550 Watt and two 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX technology in dual mode)
Certified power supplies are recommended for ATI CrossFireX technology support. Refer to http://ati.amd.com/certifiedPSU for a list of Certified products
Minimum 1GB of system memory
Installation software requires CD-ROM drive
DVD playback requires DVD drive
Blu-ray playback requires Blu-ray drive
For a complete ATI CrossFireX system, a second ATI Radeon HD 4830 graphics card, an ATI CrossFireX Ready motherboard and one ATI CrossFireX Bridge Interconnect cable per graphics card (included) are required

skiming some boards I see the X800 Pro listed as using 56 watts & the 4830 as using 110 Watts

Review of the 4830

best I can do on short notice

Curious, how bad is a GeForce 8500 GT (with 1 gig of ram)

Picked one up real cheap a while ago to toss into a cheap boxing day special computer I picked up lil over a year ago, just haven't put it in yet since I need a better power supply x_x
Sad thing is, I think that $199 computer has better specs than this one that I use as my main comp, heh.

Phelkis wrote:

Curious, how bad is a GeForce 8500 GT (with 1 gig of ram)

Picked one up real cheap a while ago to toss into a cheap boxing day special computer I picked up lil over a year ago, just haven't put it in yet since I need a better power supply x_x
Sad thing is, I think that $199 computer has better specs than this one that I use as my main comp, heh.

Mass Effect scores (1280x1024, 8xAA, Game AF, Ultra Quality)

ATI Radeon HD 4870 .......... 62.7 fps
NVIDIA Geforce 8800 GT .... 51.9 fps
ATI Radeon HD 4850 .......... 42.7 fps
NVIDIA Geforce 8600 GT .....16.1 fps
ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro ..... 7.4 fps
NVIDIA Geforce 8500 GT ...... 6.9 fps <---
ATI Radeon HD 3450 ............ 1.0 fps

Wow, thats pretty bad.. lol.

Wonder if this ones better? GeForce 5700, lol. My comps are so outdated x_x

More dumb hardware questions - how much of a difference does PC2-5300/PC2-6400/PC2-8500 make in end result numbers?

Seems the price ramps up pretty drastically - not that it should be worse than any video card costs, but whats the point in paying nearly double for PC2-8500 if the numbers aren't really substantial.

And my 8400 has a 400W PSU, but Dell has a history of under-rating their PSUs - so I'd hope I'd be safe with racking up the wattage like you listed - is there any software means to check power draw? Or is that just done the old fashioned way with an ohm meter or similar somewhere between the PSU and the unit. (If they underrate by 15% it would be safe by the box specs - not to mention they tend to "worst case" box specs anyhow)

Or additionally - is 3-4GB still unneeded for the most part these days still? Was browsing around curious of priority between a new card for me or RAM for both of us, and although its cheap - reviews of the difference that I see basically say nothing besides Alt-Tabbing is effected for the most part. Which is certainly something I'd appreciate in the long run, since it's cheap - but as a priority seems silly.

unless your system is chewing through the ram you do have which it shouldnt' assuming 1-2GB is already installed, you aren't gonna see much of a benefit. 3-4GB is definately still overkill, but it is so cheap that getting there is easy enough. definately go for the vid card.

Overkill is relative. I'm running 8G and wouldn't mind more

Yea, probably unneeded for RAM ATM - I'm running sans page file with a Memory Boost 3 GB Flash Drive and don't even have Alt-Tab hangs I'm noticing.(except Fallout 3 - which for some reason I can either set up to a) crash when I alt-tab or b) flip to desktop fast as hell but never get a cursor)

Actually I'd say my performance is up since I remembered to turn off the pagefile. Had forgotten since switching OS to Win7.

The 4830 is so ridiculous for the value right now - 10% less on the numbers compared to the 4850, but literally half the price. I'll just have to cross my fingers in a few weeks when we get it that my PSU will manage it - of course even worst case, Laura can use it and I can take hers - from what I'm gathering her card is lower power consumption than mine.

Are you playing other games besides EQ? Unless they're planning some radical changes, I wouldn't think you'd need anything huge to run it. I think my GPU is 4-6 years old and doing fine.

Yes, for other stuff as well - my vid card is dated enough I couldn't play Bioshock and a few other titles - and comparing Fallout 3 on my machine to Laura's is just horribly bad on my side of the equation.

Zuth wrote:

More dumb hardware questions - how much of a difference does PC2-5300/PC2-6400/PC2-8500 make in end result numbers?

Seems the price ramps up pretty drastically - not that it should be worse than any video card costs, but whats the point in paying nearly double for PC2-8500 if the numbers aren't really substantial.

And my 8400 has a 400W PSU, but Dell has a history of under-rating their PSUs - so I'd hope I'd be safe with racking up the wattage like you listed - is there any software means to check power draw? Or is that just done the old fashioned way with an ohm meter or similar somewhere between the PSU and the unit. (If they underrate by 15% it would be safe by the box specs - not to mention they tend to "worst case" box specs anyhow)

5300 / 6400 / 8500 etc are the bus speeds the memory is rated to run at ....

5300 = 667 bus speed
6400 = 800 bus speed
8500 = 1066 bus speed

you need to find out what your motherboard FSB speed , if you plan to overclock I recomend getting memory that is rated faster than the motherboard FSB , (example if overcloaking a 667 board look at 800 speed ram ) if not just go the the same rated ram

also the amount of ram you need depends on the operating system you use ... for example winXP can not use more than 2gigs ( 2gigs per program using bootstrap ) .. I recomed 2gigs
vista 32bit is the same way , but can handle it a tad better I recomend 4 gigs max here
vista 64 bit is up to 16gigs (if I remember correctly) ... I recomend 4+ gigs

also when adding more memory you want to to look at the timing & voltage

timing will be marked like this 5-5-5-15 or something like that .. you want the same or faster (lower) timings if you adding more memory to what you are currenty using.

voltage ... will be marked like this 1.8v , 2.0v , 2.5v etc .. you MUST match this to the current memory you are using

with PSU the wattage ratting is bit of a misknowmer (sp?) what you need to look for the is the ampage per power rail , for example I have a 550watt antec PSU than is better than many of the 1000watt PSU's out there because it pumps more amps thru its 3 power rails


let me guess your completely lost now LOL

post your exact computer stats ..

what motherboard , what ram (including settings) , & what PSU .. I'll try to help out more

It's a Dimension 8400 for the base - pretty sure I'm just gonna gut the hard drive and such out of it in the next year or so. (sooner if disability kicks in and/or we bull's-eye my health issue to get me back to the world of the working)

Can't take a Dual Core or anything, so it's dated enough to be worth upgrading out of once money for it's a non-issue.

Zuth wrote:

It's a Dimension 8400 for the base - pretty sure I'm just gonna gut the hard drive and such out of it in the next year or so. (sooner if disability kicks in and/or we bull's-eye my health issue to get me back to the world of the working)

Can't take a Dual Core or anything, so it's dated enough to be worth upgrading out of once money for it's a non-issue.

ok for now I'd just worry about replacing the video card

later on .. if you want to do more you're gonna need a new PSU motherboard cpu memory (Dell uses its own connecters for the mother / psu ) so you wont be able to use either of them if you upgrade.

good thing is prices on compents have bottomed out for a while now & I doubt they go back up with the country in the shape its in


let me know what you like to do upgade wise in the future & I can give you a "wishlist" for it (keep in mind windows7 too)

Already ready for Win7 with this machine actually - it's my OS I'm running on this machine currently. Actually performs better than XP enough that I never load that partition outside of the rare thing that just doesn't function on it.

You like Windows 7 better than Vista?

I am almost to the point of yanking Vista off our lab machines -- the only thing holding me back is DirectX 10. Between UAC and the
fact that I cannot run unsigned drivers Vista drives me up the wall. I honestly expect Windows 7 to be a minor change to Vista, and
haven't taken the time to load the beta.

XP still does 99% of everything I need.

Win7 is all the good things from Vista without the performance hit and the annoying shit dialed way, way back - it's really nice.

The public beta signups ended though, although if I didn't toss the paperwork we've got a 3rd key lying around.

Our lab has special arrangements with Microsoft, getting a key for Windows 7 takes no effort. Finding a machine to lobotomize er test on is a tougher problem. Finding the time to do the install is going to be almost impossible.

The installer is ridiculously fast - I was shocked at it being under 30 min - I honestly want to say it was under 10 even, but that might be bending reality a little bit considering I wasn't stopwatching it.

I have some PCI-E cards I don't use anymore... If anyone needs a new gfx card.

2x GeForce 7800-GT OC
2x GeForce 7900 GT