boxst

Hello

I am looking forward to Unreal Tournament 3, but just realised my graphics card wont work (it's an Intel built into the Motherboard).

So ... I have a Pentium Dual 3.4ghz processor with 4gb RAM and Windows Vista, what graphics card will be OKAY, so not top-of-the-range, but quite good? Thanks.

Steve

hux309

The 8800gt is on the way and is just below the 8800gtx. for price/performance nothing can touch it, you just have to wait for stocks to come in.

Zotac GeForce 8800 GT 512MB GDDR3 PCI-Express 2.0 - AWD-IT.CO.UK

Naturally you'll need a pcie slot and a psu capable of handling it but it'll run the latest games easily.

turbomatt

iTrader: (1)

Nvidia 8800gt Brand new out mate and has great performance reviews.They go for about 150 quid which is a bargain considering they perform nearly as well as cards twice the price.most retailers have little supply as there in great demand.
Howeer see this thread as overclockers are getting a large shpment of them in very shortly.
NVIDIA 8800 GT arrival information - Important Information - Overclockers UK Forums

hux309

Pwnt

boxst

Thank you for the above, I was thinking more around £100 though ...

Steve

hux309

Tbh no point going for anything else, ut3 is hardly going to be gentle on a gfx card.

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

I agree, looking at the speed of that new card its the only one to get

turbomatt

iTrader: (1)

wait till the end of november and you might see a price drop to around 130-140 quid as most etailers are bumping up the prices due to high demand.

If you dont want to fork out that much wait a week or two and trawl ebay for an 8800 gts as the prices for them will plummet to below 100 quid once the 88oogt come into the uk in mass numbers

_Meridian_

iTrader: (1)

You are VERY unlikely to see a drop before Xmas, as new gfx cards are common presents. Wait until early Jan if you can. And you'll need to wait that long to get a GT anyway - despite what OcUk says, there's a serious shortage ATM.


M

hux309

By which time the 9 series won't be far off.

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

...and then the vicious cycle continues

andys

oh and do you have a PCIE slot?

boxst

I THINK it has a PCI Express slot. The reason I say think is that the spec's from HP's website say 'Low Profile' whatever that means.

Steve

P1Fanatic

Yep after all this GT hype I thought I might buy one but as usual the so called bargain price is not to be and your looking nearer £200 if you can actually get one.

Think the missus will be happy tho as better gfx = more games and I spend enough time playing BF2142 as it is

Simon

Steve Perriam

is your case a Small Form Factor one ? ie is that what Low Profile means ?

if so i reckon a normal full height graphics card may not fit your case ?

we've got some HP desktops at work and they have onboard graphics but the cases are Small Form Factor and a normal graphics card won't fit as standard in one.

i've just bought a couple of new cards and my price was also closer to £100 than £150.

i went with the Radeon 1950Pro's. Both 512mb and both under £100 incl Vat. They are of course not DX10 cards so if thats important to you then you will probably have to look more towards £150.

andys

Yes Low profile and PCIE are 2 diffrent things.

davecweed

dont forget that the gt performs well on average games, give it oblivion or crysis, then it starts to struggle againest 8800gtx and the ultra models

hux309

Well typically it was about 3fps behind on crysis and that's before you overclock which it does incredibly well, a 600mhz to 750 jump isn't unheard of.

Ati do have some 3750 model on the way which looks interesting and is worth keeping an eye out for.

P1Fanatic

The reviews Ive read say it matches the GTX unless you play at top res 1920 etc. As I only have a 19" monitor I dont think I will notice

Still Im gonna wait until they are a bit closer to £150.

Simon

P1Fanatic

Oh and depends which model as some are 600mhz some are already clocked to 675 like the BFG OC2. And isnt that much more really.

Simon

davecweed

here's part of where the problems lie

"The only part of the GPU configuration that may seem bottlenecked is the use of a 256-bit memory bus. The GeForce 8800 GTS uses a 320-bit wide bus and the GTX has a 384-bit wide bus. However, NVIDIA has offset this narrow bus by clocking the memory modules at a very high 900MHz (1.8 GHz)! This provides a memory bandwidth of 57 GB/sec which is only 7 GB/sec less than the GeForce 8800 GTS. NVIDIA has also changed the amount to a standard 512 MB of GDDR3 for this video card. You may also find some manufacturers offering 256 MB models, hence the low $200 price point mentioned."

which affect how well you can overclock it

I just read a test on the 8800gt in sli mode

8800gt sli x2 - 44.7 avg frames per sec on unreal tournament 3
8800 gtx - 44.1
8800 ultra - 48.8

so even with 2 8800gt, it can only match the gtx and still cant beat the ultra

BlkKnight

where'd you get those figures from Dave, they are very different to what i've been seeing.

Luminous

iTrader: (3)

I'd also like to know the frame rate when it was not in SLI mode. SLI does not always offer a good gain. It might be that a single card was giving 40fps, in which case it is still a good card for that game.

Shark Man

It could be a problem. I recently but a wireless net card into a small form factor dell....

The thing had half height expansion bays....the card will physically fit the motherboard, but the cover won't go back on the case as the card sticks out.

You need to make sure the case will accept normal size (full height) cards before forking out.

hux309

In sli the 3dmark score goes from about 11k to 13k so not really much point going for sli imo but as a bargain card it can't be beat.

From what ive seen the gt is about 2-3fps slower in crysis but then gap does grow larger once the res's go silly.

The ati hd3870 is interesting and although slower than the 8000gt it runs cooler and quieter so has more scope to be overclocked.

And dave your figures are definitely wrong.

albob

pinched this link from another thread..

PC Perspective - XFX GeForce 8800 GT Graphics Card Review - G92 Revealed

shows the speed of the 8800gt compared to the gts/gtx

davecweed

my stats are not wrong!, i was just quoting stats from a review, so dont get all upset about it

davecweed

also I can run very high settings on crysis with my new 8800 ultra, can you do that with a 8800 gt??

BlkKnight

probabilty not, but I've for £200 in my pocket

Lum

Probably worth mentioning that UT3 is actually suprisingly nice to graphics cards, especially when compared to the other games out there using the UT3 engine *cough*Bioshock*cough*

I have an XFX 7900GTX and I can run the UT3 demo quite playably at 1920x1440, wheras in Bioshock I have to go down to 1280x960 and it still struggles a little in big close up fight sequences.

You are going to be struggling to get a new card though. As far as I'm aware no-one makes a low profile card based on the high performance chips, since most of them take up two full size slots! You might be able to find a low profile 8600 or something.

I'd also question if you have PCI-E slots at all. Can you post the exact model number of your system, or even better, pop the lid off, take a photo of the expansion slots and post it here.