My specs:Windows 2002 XP sp2 AMD Athlon 64X2 Dual Core 4600+ 2.40GHz ASUS M2A-VM 2GB RAM Corsair 250GB Seagate ATI Radeon Xpress 1250 (Yes my current graphic card is sad ) What I want to get: Geforce 7950GT XFX GeForce 7950 GT Video Card - 550M, 512MB DDR3, PCI Express, SLI Ready, (Dual Link) Dual DVI, HDTV, Video Card PVT71JYPF4 at TigerDirect.com or Radeon HD 3850 VisionTek - ATI RADEON HD3850 Graphics Card - 900203 Both cost $159.99 but the 7950gt is 512mb while the 3850 is only 256mb and doesn't come with "6pin connectors" which I have no ideal what that means. Or OPTION #3, I'm thinking of getting a super clocked 8600GTS(Or whichever is the highest 8600 card) which should cost about the same as a 3850? BTW I live in Canada and I just realized that it was the american bestbuy shop I was looking at, but I have friends down in America that can buy it for me so it won't matter anyways, but if you guys are going to reccomend a different video card then reccomend it from a Canada site because I'd perfer to pay for it myself then to ask my friends to buy it for me lol. Less hassle that way. Forgot to add, I'm also looking for a card thats less than $200 after taxes. I'm not looking to spend more than that, thats my limit line for spending on a new card. I plan on playing games like call of duty 4 and world in conflict when I get a new card so I'm just looking for a good decent card that can play new games with at least medium to high quality.
Thanks for the heads up. Just checked with a friend and he said that my current PSU of 500w does support 6pin cards such as the 7950gt and HD3850.
Hmm.. I would go with the ATI Radeon HD 3850 in this case. The smaller memory buffer may be a problem with games that use large textures though... Too bad the GeForce 8800 GT is out of your budget...
wow lol thanks. when i get the 3850 256mb its gonna own my friend's 7900gtx. the 7900gtx is only slightly better than the 7950gt so im gonna assume that the hd3850 owns the 7900gtx just like how it owns the 7950gt. only thing that i see bad with getting the 3850 is that i heard ATI drivers aren't as good as nvidia drivers. o well, i've been stuck with a bad graphic card for a while now, time to get that divx10.1 card
Oh, you would be surprised. ATI has improved their drivers quite a bit. For example, the new Catalyst 7.11 driver will give you a significant boost in performance over the 7.10 driver. I'm quite surprised myself. However, forget DX10.1. It will not be of any significance even in 2008.
There are many 7950s around in the auction markets, looks like those people are getting the 8800 series too, and selling their old one to get some more moolah for their new ones. Not sure of the 3850s but they are as good as the 7950s too.
If you are referring to the 7950GX2, it is still very far behind HD3850. No match at all. As for 7950GT, it is still slower than HD3850 even after SLI-ed.
I have the 7950gt and a very similar system. I love it. Having said that, I would probably consider the 3850 for future proofing. I also believe that card may have better performance in some more recent games.
The Radeon HD 3850 should be significantly faster than the GeForce 7950 GT. It is already significantly faster than the GeForce 8600 GTS.