The Graphics card thread

Now we have a nice shiny new forum, I thought to keep it tidy, i'd create this thread for all user's graphics card related questions and queries (seeing as they crop up quite often)

Me first though - I've given up with my ATi X1950 Pro, and i'm after a new card. Games i run are Medieval Total War 2, GP3 (which limits me to ATi cards) and Rfactor. However, I have hardly any case space (it's a very short mATX case), and also the card needs to be as silent as possible (the PC is on nearly all the time i'm awake, as it's also my TV).

Other system specs: Q6600 @ 2.4GHz, 3GB RAM, 250 GB Hdd, Windows 7 32Bit (which i'm only using because media center has some nice new features and better media compatibility - i hate the rest of the OS with a passion)

So GPGers, any help appreciated. Budget - as cheap as possible

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Team Japan Owner - GPGNC

harjinator Wrote:
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> However, I have hardly any case space
> (it's a very short mATX case)

How short (though we'll probably be limited by price rather than length)?

What's wrong with your X1950 Pro? Just too slow?

yeah, it's just too slow really. I'm not after super high res (my monitor only goes up to 1650*1080), but i was struggling to get rfactor to run nicely. plus it made a horrendous racket (i did replace the fan on it to no avail) and just caused some nice heating problems in my case - blocked the airflow front to back i think.

Length - my Ati is/was 23cm long and that only just fitted with much wire stretching and rerouting. i have tried to fit my mate's Zotac GTX260 in there (we were testing it to see if it was dead - it was) and i had to take the drivecage out (which then meant i had no space to fit a hard drive properly)

It's a Hewlett packard case if you've ever seen one - this PC in fact HP Site... i'll grab a picture of the internals as soon as i can find my camera

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Team Japan Owner - GPGNC

You're probably limited to the HD 4670. You'll struggle to go much cheaper without not being any faster than the x1950 Pro - the HD 4650 is quite a bit slower than the 4670. It's apparently 19.5cm.

The other option would be faster and more expensive. The HD 4770 is 21cm. The HD 5750 (similar performance to the 4770, but newer, lower power consumption, cooler and quieter) is around 18cm.

Is GP3 limited to ATI now, or is it just you who has problems with it?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/2009 03:54PM by gav.

cool, i'll have a look at those cards. Thanks gav!

With regards GP3, apparently for the dx10 cards, there is a huge performance loss with Nvidia cards (there was a thread about it on the gp3 forum a while back) - and it seems to be true as my laptop's 9600M GT struggles like anything with it, but is fine for everything else.

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Team Japan Owner - GPGNC