DrEvil

One of the guys at work is looking for a decent graphics card as he just got 'call of duty' and wants to be able to wack the resolution and detail up.. Hes looking at the ATi 9800s at the moment, but what one would you recommend and where from to get the best deal?

Cheers, Alex

andymar00

the cheapest and fastest to deliver i use are www.dabs.com, www.ebuyer.com or www.overclockers.co.uk

Andy

UHF

But if its just Call of Duty you want to play then its not worth buying a 9800, get a 9700 pro, they offer best bang for the buck and arent that far off the top end cards.

I have the Asus 9800XT 256Mb Bring on Halflife 2

DrEvil

Thanks guys - anyother recommendations on type/model/make etc welcomed.

UHF

what pc does he have, with modern graphics cards its not so much of an issue but if its really old he wont benefit from certain cards as the pc will be the bottleneck.

If its low end you might be best off with a 2nd hand geforce 4 from somewhere which will run COD fine since COD is really just Quake 3 with tweaks, but no doubt he'll wanna play bigger and better things so its worth getting something more powerful to save upgrading later.

DrEvil

Rough spec is: 2.4Mhz Pentium 4 (intel motherboard), 1GB RAM, Creative 5.1 (standard card) soundcard.

Cheers

Monkeh

www.crucial.com/uk lifetime warranty = best quality. mine works perfectly with call of duty with the 3.10 drivers.

UHF

Definately worth getting something nice then.

Really for price and performance the choices are radeon 9700 pro, radeon 9800 pro or radeon 9800 XT (bit pricy but offers the ULTIMATE performance at present).

Little to choose between the brands, all more or less based on the ATI reference design, slightly better memory on some than on others but there is nothing noticeable unless you're going to be benchmarking them.

Tell him to buy the best one out of those that he can afford, its also worth mentioning that when you get very high end that the extra money doesnt usually buy you much, a 9700 pro is pretty much half the price of a 9800xt but the xt isnt twice as fast!

Steve Perriam

deffo recommend overclockers.

got all my bits to make my new pc from them

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/acatal...ics_Cards.html


all depends on budget and how many games he plays/ buys.

if its a one off for COD then i agree a 9700 pro or even a 9600 pro/xt would do the job and for less cash.

i got a 9500 pro and its copes with turning the detail level up really high on stuff like CMR3 / MP2 etc

however if u want the best get a 9800xt 256mb

DrEvil

Cheers guys - he has mentioned HL2, so I guess the 9700 pro if hes feeling tight or the 9800XT if not

UHF

if he's feeling tight but wants to play hl2 it'll be worth stretching to a 9800 pro, its faster than the 9700 pro by more than its slower than the 9800xt so its the ideal compromise, £250 i think tho, which is a bargin compared to £350 for the XT (I paid £380 2 weeks ago for my XT, DAMN!)

UHF

Oh and if he's gonna be buying HL2 anyway, then the XT's come with a voucher for HL2 to be downloaded when its finally out, so he'll save £30 there for a start! I think some of the 9800 Pro's come with that voucher too, dunno look on OCUK

DrEvil

Thanks guys, I'll let you know what hes (so we can gauge how tight he really is - contractor bod ).

HHxx

Is the voucher for the multiplayer version of HL2? I'm sure I heard that you only get the single player version

UHF

thats a bit of a sore point at the moment, it plainly doesnt say, its a scratch and sniff style thing, you get a code to type into the website and download from there, i'm hoping its the multiplayer one cos the single player one is no good, can get that anyway

Daz34

This one