Allan

iTrader: (1)

Need some help here, I’m specking up a new PC and can’t choose which Graphics card would best suit my needs.

PC spec:
Asus P5B
Intel Dual core E6420
2048 MB of corsair DDR2 800Mhz
20” widescreen monitor.

This is for a home PC and will be running Vista. I don’t do a lot of gaming but would like the card to be reasonably capable. My budget for the whole system excluding monitor is about £600.

Choices so far:
512MB Radeon X1950 Pro
256 MB Geforce 7600GT

Any others which I should be considering ?

Also any views on that mobo.

Cheers
Allan

doeboy

First post.

Remember that Vista is more resource hungry than XP and that, at least a month or so ago there was still a good deal of software that A) the vista drivers wen't ready B) were out but need revision.

If i were you i'd consider again what i was using the PC for. Don't forget that an XP pc will run better and faster by upto 15% over Vista. It might be shipped with all PC's but the general community has yet to fully accept it.

If your not playing games then you probably don't need such high spec ram and not 2GB. If your planning on using editing tools and CAD then yes but if it's everyday use then probably not. Unless you stick with Vista ofcourse.

With graphics cards, again it depends on what you want it for. If it's NOT to play games then something around the £50-60 mark will do. The X1950 is the obvious choice of the 2 you've chosen. Again with Vista being DX10 compatible if you do decide you want to play games you might want to consider the next gen cards, something like the 8800GTS 320mb version which will trump the X1950.

you've chosen a decent mobo and the CPU can be easily overclocked. I have a 6600 clocked from 2.4 to 3.4Ghz you may well reach 3.2 if you wanted to with yours.

Hope this helps.

Andy.

Iain Young

Both my laptop (32 bit Vista home premium) and desktop (64bit Ultimate) run significantly faster with Vista than they ever did with XP. Neither are the latest hardware either (the laptop is just over 2 years old, and the desktop is just over a year old).

I personally wouldn't consider anything less than 2gb ram these days, especially if you are doing any photo / video editing etc. For general web browsing and email 1gb is ok, but stuff will generally run much better / quicker with 2gb.

Allan

iTrader: (1)

Thanks doeboy and welcome the SN.

I've pretty much made up my mind on Vista, I know there's going to be some problems but would rather try and overcome them, than not give it a go. PC will be used for photo editing and I don't tend to upgrade often, so want the best for my budget, hence the 2GB.

Cheers

Allan

iTrader: (1)

Ian,

That's encouraging on the Vista front, I'll be getting the home premium.

doeboy

Well Iain i'm glad your happy, teh wider majority are not so enthusiastic about it. Infact MS themselves will tell you you need a better spec pc, or in other words it will run faster on XP.

Yes, 2GB ram is great if you can afford it. I'm not saying it's not better for your PC. I have 2GB 800Mhz running at 1000 and i'd like at least another gig but i was simply saying if you don't need it then don't spend the money.

I intend on buying Vista and setting up Dual boot when the games i want are released for Dx10.

sigh, the XP/Vista is a long debate.

It has been 6 months since i bought ram. It has fluctuated in the past few years. If it's cheap buy more!

Iain Young

Well, I'm running it on two of my home machines (laptop is a Pentium M 2.13ghz, and the desktop is an Amd 4800+), and on 2 of my development machines at work (both Compaq P4 1.7ghz). All of them are running quicker than they did with XP with no modifications to the hardware spec.

I shudder every time I have to go back to XP now, (when writing software at work and I need to check it works on Win XP / 2000 as well as Vista). It feels so old and clunky in comparison


Ram is fairly cheap these days, (unless you go for the ultra performance stuff). If you can afford to spend the money building a whole pc, it isn't a bit stretch to add an extra stick of ram, and the benefits can be huge.

Allan

iTrader: (1)

Anyone else know anything about graphics cards ?

Daz34

512MB Radeon X1950 Pro or if you can run to around £190 then the 8800GTS 320MB looks great value.
I personally wouldn't look further than those two.

MrShades

Hi Allan,

I was recently in the same boat as you - and spec'ed up a new PC. Graphics cards are a whole subject as far as I can tell.... far from simple!

In the end I went with:

Asus P5N32SLI-Premium m/board
Intel Core 2 Duo E6600
2GB some-ram-or-other
2 x 500GB HDD (just so I could have 1TB in my new PC!)

...and (after considering 7600GT)

512MB 7900GS graphics card. Apparently you can overclock them considerably, and run in SLI mode - which (suitably clocked) can result in a fairly formidable graphics beast for gaming if you really wanted to, or needed to in the future.

Total system scores 5.3 (limited by CPU performance) under Vista Ultimate 32-bit, with the graphics rated at 5.9

Hope this helps... but I just read review after review after review....

Shades

ru'

+1 for those - it all boils down to how much you want to spend (haven't noticed a figure; apologies if I missed it).

Allan

iTrader: (1)

Don't I just know it, problem is you read so many reviews you get confused in the end. I actually threw the towel in a couple of times and went back to the Dell web site, however you soon wake up when you take a close look at the specs of the important bits.

I can get the X1950 within budget, the above system + all the other bits, HD, Vista, comes in @ £588.

Thanks all, I'll probably go with that.

Allan

Kevin Greeley

Friend had an X1950 Pro - until the graphics chip burned a hole in the card and fell out! He now has an Nvidia 7950 or similar and it's fine.

Allan

iTrader: (1)

Not heard of that before, hopefully it's an isolated case. Presumably that was down to insufficient cooling, or had the card been tampered with.

Jack Cowell

Vista sucks at the moment wait 6-12 months until the bugs and drivers are sorted

Iain Young

No it doesn't. I'm quite happily running 32bit Home Premium on my laptop, and Ultimate 64 bit on my desktop. Runs everything just fine and I've got drivers for everything. My 3dmark scores are coming out higher than they did with XP as well.

MrShades

I'm with Iain - no probs running on Ultimate here also... latest games, drivers for everything etc.

Better than XP in my opinion...

Allan

iTrader: (1)

Well, I had decided on the X1950 Pro but it's out of stock and may not be coming back in. Have been offered the 7900GS 512MB as a replacement, I know Mr Shades has this card and is happy, any other views ?

Allan

Daz34

Plenty of stock at overclockers and ebuyer.

lightning101

Aria are doing the E6600 for £120 inc vat and the X1950 pro for £75 inc vat, although they sold out every one of them yesterday

Allan

iTrader: (1)

This is for a pre-built system, I doubt they will supply without any card.

Interesting that's out of stock at Aria as well, is it going obsolete.

Daz34

New range of ATI cards are released on 14th May AFAIK.

lightning101

They are clearing out for their range of DX10 cards, the nvidia 7950 512mb is only £120 as well, which is a huge drop from the start of the year

Tidgy

the 8800gt has known stability issues, had one on mine and bombed out all the time so switched to a 7900 (its my work computer by the way)

funkyspider

Bear in mind where the PC will be. If it's in an office then noise may not be an issue. If its in your front room then the added noise of a gfx card fan may get on your t1ts. If noise is an issue then check out the passively cooled cards with large heatsink and no fan.

Use Google to search for any issues with your chosen card drivers and Vista, the drivers aren't 100% for vista yet, some cards offer less reliable support than others at the moment.

For those people saying Vista is quicker, bear in mind you are comparing a new Vista install against probably an old XP. The OS gets increasingly slow the more crap you add to the system - as you invariably do.

On the issue of noise, when speccing the heatsink and fan for your CPU get a 4wire one which supports Cool 'n Quiet (or whatever intels version of this is) or one with a built in thermister control such as the Coolmaster Susurro (model RR-KCT-T9E1-GP)

Iain Young

What stability issues? Mine (880gtx) has been rock solid.

Iain Young

I thoiught that might be the case so I did actually try a fresh xp install on the same machine as well (I was curious). Vista was faster

Mick

iTrader: (1)

With a high powered GPU fan RivaTuner is brilliant

- I run my 6600GT at 25% power to the fan for 2D work and can hardly hear it - you notice when it has to do a bit of work and the fan speed starts ramping up LOL

Tidgy

basicly lock up then dumps the signal going to the monitor (goes black, athen flashes up lost signal), restart sorts it for a while, but then bombs out again, could do it every 5 mins for could be fine for 3 hours. tried new powerpack, drivers etc and only thing that sorted it was new card (diffferent one) we've got 4 machines that have been doing exactly the same thing (all exactly the same spec), and mine is the one with the switched graphics card in it and its now the only one that doesn't crash

Iain Young

That's weird Tidgy. Perhaps the card itself was faulty, (it sounds like a hardware fault rather that software). As I said, mine has been rock solid, and it gets a lot of use...