Card Comparisons

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nerfherder23

Geek Trainee
I have an nVidia Geforce 7900 GT. At some point, the built-in fan stopped working, producing visual errors such as pixel noise and "render-stretching" in games (some of these are bad enough that the game cannot be played competently). My dad and I bought a large Zalman fan, but the visual errors persisted. We've guessed that the card took heat damage. :(

(
My computer is built by Aspire, stats are as follows...
Processor: AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+, MMX, 3DNow (2 CPUs), ~2.0GHz
Memory: 1.5GB RAM
Hard Drive: 149 GB
Video Card: NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GT/GTO
Sound Card: SoundMAX HD Audio O
OS: Ubuntu Linux 7.10 *and* Windows XP Home Edition
)

So I wanted to get a new graphics card. I'm looking for something equivalent to or more powerful than the 7900. Price doesn't really matter, but anything below $250 is best. My dad suggested staying with nVidia. :rolleyes:

I did a little research, and came up with the following cards as similar to the 7900 (for a fair price):

nVidia Geforce 9800
nVidia Geforce 9800 GTX
nVidia Geforce GTX 260

I'm not too experienced with hardware, so I wasn't sure that my search yielded good results. I was hoping for some confirmation, or maybe other suggestions. :)

All help is greatly appreciated.

(PS: Here are a few pictures of the problems I typically see in a game. The errors have gotten worse recently, these pictures are a few months old.)
halo-20071211-201437.png

halo-20071209-214822a.png
 
It really depends on the games that you are playing. Can you give me some examples of the games that you play? The XFX GTX 260 right now is a good choice both for its performance and price. Have it right now in my rig, and it can play Crysis Warhead with high settings without any lags. Or you can also get the HD4870, it's a bit more expensive but it's also worth it.
 
Sure.

I have Crysis, Halo, Bioshock, Spore, Doom 3, Assassin's Creed, Star Wars Battlefront 2, the entire Half-Life series, Serious Sam, and Serious Sam 2.

Spore, Assassin's Creed, Battlefront 2, and the Half-Life 2 games have the worst of the problems.
Halo, Bioshock, and Serious Sam 2 have minor problems.
Serious Sam and Doom 3 have the least of them.

Crysis doesn't even start up, but that's an error in the executable file, and most likely unrelated to my graphics card (or at least, that's what my dad and I think.)
 
Getting the GTX 260 or a higher video card would solve this problem if the only problem is you video card. The GTX 260 cards and higher cards can heat up pretty fast when playing games, especially Crysis. So make sure to have a good cooling system or someway to keep your GPU from temps that are too high.
 
Well, I was actually going to ask you about that.

My dad has taught me to be a "smart consumer", so I always read customer reviews before buying anything electronic. There are a few reviews that are very bad for both the cards you mentioned. Have you had any trouble with your GTX? Heat-wise?

As long as I can switch to a better fan (like my Zalman) with the GTX, it will probably be the one I get.
 
Yeah, temps when using higher cards like the GTX 260 are a bit high.In my case during hot days its around 49C-52C and that's just while surfing. When the airconditioner is on,it's around 44C-47C in idle. When playing, it depends on the game. As for the heat problems just try your best to have enough airflow and fans from what I have heard, anything below 50C is good when idle and anything below 90C when gaming is good,but I try to prevent it from getting near 90C (Highest I got while gaming war around 70C-80C I think). Also try to use programs like SpeedFan or RivaTuner to check the temps and change the fan speeds.
 
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