Upgrade advice?

A

Anelysium

Geek Trainee
Well, with the slew of new games coming up, I thought it was finally time to upgrade the ol' girl.

I am currently in possession of:
Two 6800's in SLI
Asus A8N Sli-Deluxe mobo
Antec Sonata silent case
Antec True550w PSU
Seagate 120gb HDD
SB Audigy 2 ZS
2GB DDR Kingston dual-channel ram
Athlon 64 X2 4200+ (dual core)
One cd, and one dvd burner.
19" gigantic flat-screen CRT

I am currently attending college and moving into a new apartment in the fall, so I'm a little tight on money, and I'd like to keep it around $500...

I would really like to replace the video cards, and I've been looking at putting in an 8800 (GTS 640mb in particular), but they've been out almost a year now, and we all know how fast technology moves... I'm almost paranoid about buying one because when I bought the 6800's, they were top of the line but Nvidia released new cards a month later and the prices dropped off a cliff. But the GTS really isn't too expensive, and the benchmarks aren't bad - and I figure I could put a second one in later on if I really wanted to. However, I really want to be able to play this fall's game on high settings, and I just don't have confidence in the GTS to do that.
(EVGA 640mb GTS - Newegg.com - EVGA 640-P2-N821-AR GeForce 8800GTS 640MB 320-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 HDCP Video Card - Retail )

The video card is my main concern.

But I also would like to replace the RAM, as it's fairly nasty as far as quality goes... I would really love to go DDR2, but my mobo does not support it, and to do a new one would just keep adding on prices I'm not sure I want to deal with - of course I'm just waiting to be convinced >.>

For the HDD, I use a ton of space so I wanted to go 500GB - would last me a good long while. Seagate always seems pretty solid to me, so I was thinking of this - Newegg.com - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 (Perpendicular Recording) ST3500630AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Hard Drive - OEM

I may go Vista in the fall, as I can get the upgrade for free, or the full version for $8 at the University...

I oh-so-desperately want to go into the realm of the 22" widescreen LCD (weee - Newegg.com - CHIMEI CMV 221D-NBC Black 22" 5ms DVI Widescreen LCD Monitor 330 cd/m2 800:1 - Retail )
But, another expense, paranoia of dead pixels, and a CRT that I think will get the job done, I suppose (the thing is just enormous, it takes up the entire desk - not the screen, but all the plastic)

I also figure that the X2 4200+ is still pretty nice, and will keep going for a while yet.

Anyways, I would really appreciate your thoughts on this! Especially on upcoming video-card options (I can't find any info anywhere)... Thanks!
 
Well, the only reason you should be upgrading your graphics is the directXversion suppoted by your graphics card. By the end of this year, most of the new games would support DirectX10, and you are getting vista soon, more of a reason to get a card that supports DirectX10.
8800 GTS Ultra is a very good choice, if you are ready to spend that much, and it also supports SLI is case you decide to upgrade in the future. It supports DirectX10. Memory Bus is more than any other card at 320 Bit. 8600 Series has 128 bit and ATI X1950 pro has 256 MB. But X1950 doesnt support DirectX10.
Your processor is not an issue at all, as GPU will be taking most of the load, freeing your processor to do regular processing and its powerful enough not to bottle neck your computer's graphics.
Dead Pixels is a normal thing in LCD monitors. A few dead pixels in millions and millions is not a big deal. But check their replacement polcies before you buy anything. Read the fine prints, and if you can't find it, ask them. They replace only if the number of dead pixels is over a certain number. I have one dead pixel in my HP 19" Monitor, and it doesnt bother me. I dont even notice that while doing something.
Change your PSU, i dont think 550 Watt would be enough to support 8800GTS, 2 optical drives, 2 HDD, MOBO, Fans, your sound card, Dual core processor and USB devices you might have attached.
 
Haven't much time, so couldn't check out if this mobo supports Crossfire. 2900XT > 8800 GTS 640 MB. More noise but 2900XT is way better than it. An if 8800 beats 29XT, it's only because of its unfinished drivers. And of course 29 is cheaper than 8800 GTS 640 MB.

Many people are offerin 8800 gpus here ? Why? Because guru gave us superior 8800s tests where it outperforms 29XT? Heh..
Íåàáñîëþòíûé ëèäåð: îáçîð âèäåîàäàïòåðà XFX GeForce 8800 Ultra Extreme | Âèäåîêàðòû | Ñòàòüè Hardware | Ñòàòüè, îáçîðû | Íîâîñòè è ñòàòüè | Ô-Öåíòð take a look here. If 2900XT looses for 8800, just coz their drivers are not finished yet. I would go for 2900XT, coz 8800GTS is past and 2900XT is good investiment for future - better performance in DX10.

If 2900XT looses for 8800 GTS - looses for 1950XTX too. It's all up to drivers.
 
Well, another thing is that you're limited to SLI if you're looking at multiple-GPU support. nVidia currently limits SLI to it's own nForce SLI-specific chipsets. ATi/AMD Crossfire is available for Intel and ATi/AMD chipsets.

nVidia probably won't have something new for awhile, but you can wait. Just keep in mind that there's always something bigger and better, so you can keep waiting and waiting.

If you're considering 8800's in SLI, then you may need to upgrade the power supply to something in the 750-850W range, although the Corsair 620HX is an exception. The 8800's draw a lot of juice, so while that power supply should run an 8800GTX just fine, running a pair of those or the 8800GTS in SLI is asking for trouble.
 
On the bench, 2900XT is not blazingly fast as it sounds on papers..this card is capable of much more, but would they ever come up with the drivers that can take maximum out of this card?
nVidia writes excellent drivers and you can always count on that. Also as far as pricing goes, 2900XT would be a better bet if you want to keep waiting for better drivers to come up.
 
They have already released Catalyst drivers which boosted 2900XT GPU by 10% of its performance on OpenGL based games.

Since when nVidia's drivers are better? I hear more problems about nVidia problems than ATi. I don't really remember many times when someone had any problems with ATi drivers. Do you remember 6600 GT GPUs ? :) It is only one from many examples. ATi drivers are not completed, but they are stable and does not have any conflicts with Mobos/other applications.
 
In the past, the ATi driver arguement was true, but for the past several years, they've been fine. nVidia's gotten the most complaints because of Vista, but only if you ignore they had about a month to work with the final version before Microsoft launched the OS.

The ATi conflict (if you want to call it that) isn't really so much a conflict as a little war betwen them and nVidia. They're artificially limiting which chipsets they allow Crossfire or SLI to work on.
 
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