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Geek Culture / Good $100 or less graphics cards?

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Le Shorte
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Posted: 19th Apr 2010 06:12 Edited at: 20th Apr 2010 22:52
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Hi, I'm looking to upgrade my 9500 GS without upgrading my power supply(if that's possible...). I've been looking around and I found this one: http://www.geeks.com/details.asp?invtid=SX96GT2048D2GVP&cpc=SCH It seems great for $100, but I'm not quite sure. Is this a good buy and would I need to upgrade my PC's power supply to have it run?

Good cheap graphics cards for anyone who needs to know good ones from experience:
-nVidia GeForce 9800GT-$80-100
-Radeon 4700 or 4800 series-around $100
-Geforce 200 series-around $100
-GeForce 9500GS-$75 or less
-GeForce 9500GT-$100 or less
-GeForce 9600GT/GS-$95 or less
-[joke]GeForce 4MX-$20 or less(but seriously this one can run HL2 at 30FPS on low-medium )
-GeForce 2MX-$5[/joke]
-Ati 4650 LP 512mb DDR2

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=166194&b=25
RADS, X10 Game. Still in Development as of 4/6/10
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Lemonade
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Posted: 19th Apr 2010 07:10 Edited at: 19th Apr 2010 07:11
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You might wan't to tell us what your power supply is first.

But, if your power supply can handle 350W, which it should, then you can do much better than the one you posted:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814143186

Or go with a similar card with HDMI:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130535
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Le Shorte
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Posted: 20th Apr 2010 00:18
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The power supply for the outlet that my compy hooks up to or the wats in my compy? If it's the watts in my compy, how would I go about finding that out? So even though the one I put up is 2GB, the 9800 is better with 512MB?

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=166194&b=25
RADS, X10 Game. Still in Development as of 4/6/10
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bitJericho
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Posted: 20th Apr 2010 01:20
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The 9800 is much faster. The 2gb is nice if you want to play with higher resolutions and/or higher memory intensive games.

For example, GTA4 with a quad core processor would be awesome with that 9600, becuase maxed out GTA4 uses something like 1400mb and is more cpu intensive. For the bulk of games though, the 9800 would give you better performance at the loss of texture quality (you may have to lower your texture quality or resolution).

You'd be better off with this card, in my opinion:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814134095

Gives you the best of both worlds. Faster card and a good amount of memory.

I personally bought a sparkle (a gtx 260 w/ 2gb ram) it's awesome.

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bitJericho
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Posted: 20th Apr 2010 01:43
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Ps, unless you've changed the psu, your computer comes stock with a 300watt psu. You'll need to upgrade it for any proper video card.

Here's a great one for the price:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817709012

Here's the cheapest you could get by with:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817709010

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Le Shorte
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Posted: 20th Apr 2010 03:45 Edited at: 20th Apr 2010 03:46
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All right. So would you recommend going a bit higher than $23? I noticed people said it fried after 1-2 months and SunBeam has awful customer support. Someone else also said to get another one if you're looking for gaming.

I did find this one with free shipping, 585W, and $30. So as far as my novice-geek eyes can see, that's better since the first power supply you gave me is $23, $8 shipping, and 580W.
Here's the link: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817339012



Would this be better than the first one you gave me?

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=166194&b=25
RADS, X10 Game. Still in Development as of 4/6/10
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bitJericho
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Posted: 20th Apr 2010 04:48 Edited at: 20th Apr 2010 04:56
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double post :S

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bitJericho
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Posted: 20th Apr 2010 04:55
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Aye, basic rule of thumb is the more you spend on the power supply, the better off you'll be. The nice thing about the psus I linked to are they use a single 12 volt rail, meaning that it's not however many watts spread across multiple rails, but all the power is on a single rail; you can more greatly utilize the power it provides.

If you're concerned about support though, go for the one you linked to, it'll probably be superior anyway.

And actually, on closer inspection, your PSU when you combine both rails offers 40 amps, much better than the 25amps the better one I linked to has on the 12 volt rail, it cuts things pretty close at 25amps.

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Bugsy
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Posted: 20th Apr 2010 05:39
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considering NO single 3d application currently released ON EARTH (save 3d modelling programs like autoCAD) uses more than 512MB of Vram I think you'd be better getting a 9800 with WAY more CUDA cores, and a higher GPU clock rate
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bitJericho
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Posted: 20th Apr 2010 07:07 Edited at: 20th Apr 2010 07:17
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Quote: "considering NO single 3d application currently released ON EARTH (save 3d modelling programs like autoCAD) uses more than 512MB of Vram"


Eh? As I said, GTA4 uses something like 1400mb at max graphics with 1280x1024 resolution. Here's a couple links with some memory usage of some games:

http://www.yougamers.com/articles/13801_video_ram_-_how_much_do_you_really_need-page7/

http://forums.anandtech.com/archive/index.php/t-34748.html

So really, 512mb-1gb should be enough. Keep in mind modern games will continue to use more memory as they will continue to use higher resolution textures. I'd say, for a card that you'll have fun with for the next 1-2 years (at least), go for a 1gb vram card at a minimum.

I do want to say, from personal experience, vram makes a huge difference, when you don't have enough. Having too much is a waste, but not having enough is detrimental to fps. For example, I had a 8800gt when I got tomb raider underworld. That card could easily, and I mean, easily dominate that game, but since I had only 256mb of vram, I could only run with low to medium textures, otherwise it would easily kill the frame rate. It'd go from a cool 100+fps to 20-30.

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Bugsy
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Posted: 20th Apr 2010 07:52
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yeah, you need a high texture fill rate for stuff like texture filling like your talking about. also, GTA4 uses multiple splinter programs (I believe) to run the graphics in the main game. so it's more than 1 singular 3d app.

skype = isaacpreston. I want to talk to YOU
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Shadow Blade
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Posted: 20th Apr 2010 20:22
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You could get a low profile card and avoid getting a new power supply, because I have such a small form-factor case, I have researched these thing a fair bit. The best Low Profile card to my knowledge is the Ati 4650. Which is almost as good as a 9600 GT, it's better than the 9500. But getting a new powersupply will probably be worth it if you want a better graphics card.

Though I got a Ati 4650 LP 512mb DDR2 for around £50 ($70?) and I'm really pleased with it.

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charger bandit
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Posted: 20th Apr 2010 21:07
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Go for a Radeon 4700 or 4800 series,they are pretty cheap and easily run GTA4 on High details,even works on Very High on my pc with slight lag(Radeon 4770 1gb,AMD Athlon x2 3GHZ,2GB RAM).

Go for:

-Radeon 4700 or 4800 series
-Geforce GTX275 or higher


A.K.A djmaster
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Le Shorte
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Posted: 20th Apr 2010 22:43
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Thanks guys . I'll start a list in the first post so other people can also get a good list if they want a new one

Personally I think I'll go with the 9800GT. I like ATIs, but they can't run FPSCx10 well and I use X10 a lot. But for the games I'm currently addicted to() a 9800GT should be absolutely fine.

http://forum.thegamecreators.com/?m=forum_view&t=166194&b=25
RADS, X10 Game. Still in Development as of 4/6/10
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