Anybody running x850xt pci-e?

[scrumpy]

I'm currently waiting on parts to play UT3 with ease.

Current specs:
AMD X2 6000+
2gig GSkill DDR2 800
Asus M2N-E mobo with nForce 500 chipset

Now my question is about my video card. I have a x850XT pci-e with 256meg. Will that be enough? I usually run games at 1280x1024 on my 19" NEC crt.

Any help will be appreciated.

[scrumpy]

need some advise here please before I purchase a new card.

[Obi_Kwiet]

Wait a week for 8800GT prices to go back down and buy one of those for ~240$

[3NVY]

ya, I have been a long-time ATI user and I also have an x1950 XT PCI-e and it is too weak for this game (any steady framerate below 60fps is unacceptable to me)...you are going to need either 1) nVidia 8800GT 2) ATi HD 2900 PRO or XT (same exact card just pro is clocked lower - you can O/C it or flash to XT) 3) ATi is releasing a newer card in a month or so - hold off for it (I would do that because UT3 final will be in stores around then)...

If you do a forum search for "Video Card Upgrade" you will see a long thread of my re: 2900 ...I average over 100fps with it.

[oldkawman1]

Wait a week for 8800GT prices to go back down and buy one of those for ~240$

yes, there is no other card worth buying anymore. Read the review and benchmarks;

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3140

Knowledge is power!

[<UT3>Arcalite]

Yes it will.

Yes. It will.

I've been running the beta demo on full graphics with NO FPS lag at all, to be honest I was quite amazed.

My graphics card is a ATI Radeon X850XT, I have 2gb of ram and my processor is an AMD Athlon 64 FX-55 ~2.6GHz.

UT ftw.

[Ultron]

It'll run it, but you're in a great position to upgrade your video card. You can get either the 8600GT or 8800GT - as both are great options for the price.

[scrumpy]

Thanks for the help guys. I just recently upgraded my proc from the single core AMD64 3500+ to the X2 6000+. Along with the DDR2 upgrade, I was just seeing if my card would be holding me back at all.

I bought the x850xt new and its still going strong. Its performed so well with FEAR, HL2 and didn't really do that bad with the UT3 demo.

I'll probably see when the game comes out, how it performs with the new stuff. Thanks for your help.

[oldkawman1]

The 8600 cards are junk!

It'll run it, but you're in a great position to upgrade your video card. You can get either the 8600GT or 8800GT - as both are great options for the price.

The 8600GT or GTS is a poor choice.
Look at the benchmarks;
http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3140&p=8
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/10/...out/page5.html

[Ultron]

The 8600 is not a poor choice, it's a mid-end card. The best choices are the 8800 series.

I have an Radeon X1800GTO and it's comparable to the GeForce 7600, and the game looks and plays decently enough, but it's my CPU that's killing me, as it's only an AMD 3000+ using DDR RAM.

I think there is a danger in forcing people to basically discard anything but the highest end graphics cards as being "poor" and "low end" - it's deceptive.

[oldkawman1]

The 8600 is not a poor choice, it's a mid-end card. The best choices are the 8800 series.

I have an Radeon X1800GTO and it's comparable to the GeForce 7600, and the game looks and plays decently enough, but it's my CPU that's killing me, as it's only an AMD 3000+ using DDR RAM.

I think there is a danger in forcing people to basically discard anything but the highest end graphics cards as being "poor" and "low end" - it's deceptive.

OK, it's good for 1024x768 at low-med settings, but, that's the one with 512Mb. The UT3 demo benchmarks usually use the high end 8600, the 8600 cards range in price from $129 to $250. Now the 8800GT is at $200-$250 with almost the same performance as the 8800GTX. So, for those with small monitors, 1024x768 with low to med settings may be fine. But not for a 19" or larger screens.

All the ATI 2600 and Nvidia 8600 cards and lower can be considered low end now that the 8800GT is out. The 8800GTS series, 320 and 640Mb, have been replaced by a $250 8800GT card. That is now the new standard. Nvidia dropped a bomb so big it not only destroyed all of ATI but a big chunk of Nvidia as well.

AMD chips are performing really poorly on the demo. The Intel C2D chips with large on chip cache really outperform all the AMD X2 chips and opterons even at much lower clocks. Intel really has a huge performance edge right now. I have a good socket 939 X2 4200+ chip, 2.2 Ghz with 512kb X2 for $44.95 includes postage in the USA. It's a Toledo, got it with a bunch of 939 stuff. Have a new AMD opteron cooler to go with it. Works fine, tested it myself. Maybe it will get you 1280x1024 at med or low quality. Better than you have now and cheap. But, in the long run, you will need to upgrade at least to an Intel C2D or newer setup.

My rig will do OK for now, but spring '09 will be upgrade time for me. Looks like Intel will get my money then. AMD performance compared to Intel is very poor right now and looks even worse at least for a year or so. Will have to see what the actual priceerformance looks like then. I will have lots more to sell on my web site then.

AMD Opteron 180@2.64GHz
4 gig G.Skill @DDR 434
7900GTX
demo at 1600x1200 @ 3-3 medium quality with 50-60 FPS

[Ultron]

The 8600 still fits the mid-range profile we've had for years, and the 8800 still fits the high end profile. Low-end cards are basically the 8300-8400 fits the low-end profile, whereas 8500-8600 cards fit the mid-range profile. The 8300-8400 cards have a 64-bit bus, the 8500-8600 cards have a 128-bit bus, whereas the 8800 cards have 256, 320 or 384-bit busses.

LINK

GeForce 8500 & 8600

On April 17th, 2007, NVIDIA released 3 new members of the GeForce 8 product family: the GeForce 8500 GT; 8600 GT; and 8600 GTS. These products are based upon the G84 and G86 cores which are much smaller than the G80 core used for GeForce 8800, for mid-end users that want low cost DirectX 10-capable graphics cards.

With regards to performance, the 8600 GT performs slightly worse than 7900 GT and the 8600 GTS is similar to an ATi Radeon X1950 Pro.[19] The GeForce 8 series midrange cards seem to take a larger hit on performance than same price competitors when AA is enabled.[20] Some graphics card manufacturers, such as BFG Technologies, Micro-Star International and XFX, are releasing factory overclocked versions of the 8600 series. Gigabyte Technology has released an 8500 GT "Turbo Force" models which has a core clock of 600MHz GPU and 700MHz GDDR3 memory (1400MHz effective).

[scrumpy]

Its not completely out of the question that I won't run 2 8600GTS in sli. I could get 2 MSI 8600GTS, 256m, 128bit cards on newegg for about $220.

I was a fan of sli when it first came out. I ran 2 6600gt, 128m each. I couldn't get over the performance boost I got with that set up. One of the cards finally quit on me so I sold the other one and bought the x850xt. And I've never looked back.....until now.

[Slyr7.62]

Saving up money for the new $240-300 8800 GT would be quite a bit better than those 2 8600's, the 88 GT is close to the 88 GTX yet costs about 1/2 as much and uses 40 or 50 watts less. I'm not upgrading for a good month, still playing UT2k4 while there's plenty of players to pwn, UT3 is a bit dizzying or how my PC's handle it and I'm not ready to play it yet anyways ^^