Damn I dont think Ill have a good enough video card!

(Ragnar_40k) #21

http://geizhals.at/eu/?fs=6600+gt&x=0&y=0&in=
(even if it says “EU” mainly German speaking shops)

(Hakuryu) #22

I would wait until like a week before the game was released before buying a new video card. Prices continually drop on good cards, and something you buy now may be alot cheaper then.

I have done some upgrading, but on peripherals mainly - got a new G7 mouse, 20" LCD, and a nice backlit keyboard so far (about $500 spent).

AnandTech is the best site to compare and find a good deal imo. They break down midrange/high end solutions and give in depth stats on them, and in their ‘deals’ forums the users post about good sales and rebate offers. Spend a few hours there and I guarantee you will learn something.

(ParanoiD) #23

Id say 6800GS by now. Ive seen a benchmark in Q4 where an 7800GS AGP gets pwned by an 6800GS by 10+ fps. The 6800GS was the PCIe version I guess so AGP should be a bottleneck.

So you have a Radeon 9600. it should run ET:QW i guess. i got stable 30+ fps on doom3 and quake4 800x600x32xlow with an Radeon 9600pro EZ 256 MB. Still its not great tho.

(mortis) #24

For trustworthy internet sales…
I usually find the best vid-card best prices @
http://www.tigerdirect.com
&
http://www.newegg.com
&
http://www.geeks.com

an Nvidia 6800/256MB/agp is a nice card for $100 US

especially if you unlock the hardware masked pixel pipelines, most people can unlock 4 additional pipes (only applies to AGP 6800)

(ouroboro) #25

I wasn’t aware that there were any CPUs currently on the market which would not bottleneck a 7 series card. Unless you have a spy at AMD, I’d say the 6 series were plenty of GPU for the forseeable future.

(Etnies) #26

Same happened to me, it played fine the first time no lags nothing next day i came back to play it and i got blue screen crash. so maybe it wasnt ur pc if it happened to me also

(Rhoades) #27

I hope my 9800pro will be able to handle this. What would be a relatively cheap good card for me to buy? 6800GS?

(Isabel Lucas) #28

I wasn’t aware that there were any CPUs currently on the market which would not bottleneck a 7 series card. Unless you have a spy at AMD, I’d say the 6 series were plenty of GPU for the forseeable future.

Yeah it always makes me laugh this when people go out and spend a fortune on 2 kick a$$ video cards and put them in sli and then get a 10% performance increase!

Sli and kick a$$ cards will have their day, I predict 2007 when quad cores come out (because then each card can have its own dedicated core with 2 cores left over - 1 for Vista and 1 for the game). However in the meantime, DX10 might help somewhat as I believe part of shader model 4.0 is concerned with moving the processsing aspect away from the CPU to the GPU to help alleviate this bottleneck.

In the meantime, my advice is wait as late as possible before ETQW is released as you may be able to get a DX10 Shader 4.0, HDCP, HDMI, card by then (takes a breath!!!). Alternatively if not available or if you have to buy now, look at a good but not top of range card (unless the rest of your system is kick a$$ processor wise), as otherwise you may be spending a lot of money for little performance over a more modest and much cheaper card. The 6800GS is a good suggestion as its more powerful than a 6800GT but very reasonably priced - however check its not using system memory rather than onboard memory as some cut down cards are doing that these days and that can be bad for overall performance!

The 7800GT is a good card but I think only the GS is AGP and as I think someone else pointed out, the GS has a bit of a bad reputation. I have friends who have the 7800GT and for anyone with PCI-E, that is a worthwhile investment as you will see viable gains on a good system.

Al.

(Lanz) #29

You know much of that talk got stuck in ATI card owners throats when ATI released drivers worth a damn for OpenGL. I also have a hard time seeing what performance between game x and game y has anything to do with it.

(ouroboro) #30

http://www.steampowered.com/status/survey.html

Nvidia = 52.11%
ATI = 41.09%
Other = 6.80%

That can be taken as much as a “Gamers Survey” as it as a “Valve Survey.”

If you think Valve doesn’t have an Nvidia development box, you’re nuts. By the same token, id Software certainly has ATI boxen. That whole GPU brand loyalty thing is a load of crap. They may very well prefer NV/ATI over the “others,” but they don’t show special treatment to either of the big boys unless they’re out to lose money.

IMO.

(Societal Eclipse) #31

I’m disappointed my 6800GS couldn’t unlock the fourth pixel unit without artifacts but it’s still a very good card. At over $100 less than most 7800GS cards I would recommend it to anyone that wants to keep their PC going for say another year as opposed to two or more. Right now I’m playing through Doom 3 at high detail and 1280x1024 and it’s plenty smooth for me. As long as I can play ET:QW with the detail turned down to crap like my ET config is then I’ll be happy.

(Baiten) #32

Will a 6800 GT 125MB be able to handle this game?

(Nail) #33

no, you’ll need a complete computer

(mortis) #34

Will a 6800 GT 125MB be able to handle this game?

125MB? Are 3MB of VRAM on vacation, or something? :wink:

(Hakuryu) #35

Doh!

(corvey) #36

sweet :lol:

LOL :lol:

No man, he’s got one of those raid parity video cards so that all pixels will be redundant and will never fail on him. :lol:

(Baiten) #37

Rrrright,

errrr it’s a Geforce 6600GT, 128MB, DDR3, AGP 8 slots.

Thats all info I can get from the box…
I only need a yes or a no, it’s not that hard you know.

(mortis) #38

Your card should be fine, most likely the CPU will be your system’s bottleneck.

(Tron-) #39

Funniest post I have read all day. :slight_smile:

(Dazzamac) #40

My old system running a 9800Xt got 50 fps with decent settings. I’d call the 9800 to be the bare minimum really. 6600 seems to be the way to go really.