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lol impressive hehehe' date=' i used to overclock procs and gfx lol them where the days, the smell of redhot metal and fibreglass still remains in my nostrils.[/quote']

 

Yeah, I remember ocing a pentium 233 up to over 260mhz and thinking I was a king among geeks... LOL

 

foolish young overclocker that I was, hehe

 

ahhhh, memories...

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Well my games PC uses the Nvidia Geforce 2 MX 64MB :-) AGP 2.0

 

Can play CS, MOH, BF, COD on nearly the highest detail settings

 

Of course its totally useless for modern games but thats why in my new machine Ive got a 7600 GT. I rarely use it as I prefer to play on the old machine.

 

I believe that as soon as you take a PC and push it into a high specification roll (you play games on it) you shorten the life of that PC. A PC can realistically operate for 6 years if all your doing is word processing but as soon as you you take it into that high specification roll the life of that PC is reduced to 3 years.

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humm not sure about that ive had my pc for, just comming to the eighth year..lol

it been loyal & reliable!!!!

 

& for the first 6 years i used to do video encoding, 12 hrs a day at least!!!!

 

HDD & MOBO are fine... works a charm to this date (i've only thing iv'e changed is the CPU only cause they don't sell durons (200mhz) any more!!! & that was an upgrade (recently built a new pc with the old cpu, running xp fine too)).....

 

ahhh hdd they don't make 'em like they used too!!!!

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On my b-day - the graphics card i'm hoping to get with my new computer is:

 

NVIDIA GeForce 7600GT 256MB

 

This costs about £100 however i may be able to get the 7900GS instead (although that will be about £160)

 

I hope i'm making the right choice.... :thinking:

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That is extremely cheap. Sure it isn't some kind of limited offer?

 

Most internet stores around here have it at about £125 and most 'real' stores have it at about £140.

 

 

In any case, I wouldn't buy the nVidia 7900GS. If you're looking for that performance level/price, you're better off buying an X1950PRO (ATI). It can easily be had at the same price and beats the 7900GS at just about anything, the performance difference varies between 5% and 50% depending on the game in question, but the ATI card is allways the faster one.

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In any case' date=' I wouldn't buy the nVidia 7900GS. If you're looking for that performance level/price, you're better off buying an X1950PRO (ATI). It can easily be had at the same price and beats the 7900GS at just about anything, the performance difference varies between 5% and 50% depending on the game in question, but the ATI card is allways the faster one.[/quote']

X1950PRO is a good choise, but you have to be lucky to get your hands on one.

 

Or the X1900GT (also beats nVidia's 7900GS) and almost as good as the X1950PRO and is available for around £120.

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  • 1 month later...

In any case' date=' I wouldn't buy the nVidia 7900GS. If you're looking for that performance level/price, you're better off buying an X1950PRO (ATI). It can easily be had at the same price and beats the 7900GS at just about anything, the performance difference varies between 5% and 50% depending on the game in question, but the ATI card is allways the faster one.[/quote']

X1950PRO is a good choise, but you have to be lucky to get your hands on one.

 

Or the X1900GT (also beats nVidia's 7900GS) and almost as good as the X1950PRO and is available for around £120.

 

I ave a X800 GTO its about a year old but still runs well, I  think they have dropped in price as well

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  • 1 month later...

I have an old nVidia 127mb card. It works so well I'd be surprised if it can't handle the new games. Hmm, I should probably ask... What games will not work on a 128mb video card? If I decide to buy a new video card, what technology will I need to look for?

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  • 2 months later...

Soval: directX10 cards are hot right now (read Geforce 8800s)

 

as for me I need to get a new chipset cooler :P I have to stick in my finger and start up the fan manually... it got one of those small and really agressive fans that spin at 5k rpm...

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I have an old nVidia 127mb card. It works so well I'd be surprised if it can't handle the new games. Hmm, I should probably ask... What games will not work on a 128mb video card? If I decide to buy a new video card, what technology will I need to look for?

A lot really does depend on what you plan to use the gfx card for.

 

if its cutting edge games you need a brand new card.

 

if however you are happy to use games older than a year an older card would do the job perfectly and at half the price.

 

if on the other hand you intend only to surf the net and write emails and do homework on then any old card will be adequate.

 

Always - always - know what you plan to use a pc for before upgrades. theres no point having blistering edge technology if you want to chat to friends on msn for example.

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another point is NEVER buy the top of the range card until its replacement comes out otherwise you will end up paying alot of money for being impatient...learned the hard way.

 

Btw I to also have a ATI X800GTO 256mb, still going strong!!

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There are some hard core gamers out there who use two cards in the same machine. Apparently one card renders half of the screen. Never seen this in action though.

 

yeah for people with more money than sense!!

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Both nVidia and ATI have such a feature, though both are incompatible. For this to work with a high end card (ATI supports 'software' crossfire for low end cards), you not only need 2 identical video cards, you also need a compatible chipset.

 

ATI solutions function on all ATI chipsets (currently named AMD) and on Intel 965 and 975 chipsets, if they have the necessary slots (at least 2 physical pcie 16x slots, doesn't need to be x16 electrical, x4 electrical will do). nVidia solutions only function on nVidia chipset mobo's that feature at least 2 physical 16x pcie slots with 8x pcie electrical capability.

 

nVidia's solution is called SLI (not to be confused with the older 3Dfx technology by the same name, which was something else).

 

ATI's solution is named Crossfire.

 

There are multiple ways in which the graphics cards can cooperate to render a screen. Currently one of the most successfull way to do the rendering, is: one card renders the even frames, the other card renders the uneven frames. Other possibilities exist, such as: upper half/lower half or even splitting the screen in 4 quarters proportionally to the anticipated amount of graphics processing power required. All methods incur a processing overhead on the cpu, the more advanced the method used, the more overhead.

 

This technology only operates correctly and reliably if there is specific support for the featured built into the drivers for each game that needs to be supported. If there is no such support, the game usually runs slower than on a single identical card, if it runs at all.

 

For low end cards the feature is really useless, since 2 low end cards combined, usually do not attain the same framerate and quality in a game as 1 medium end card equally priced to the combined total of the 2 low end cards.

 

For high end cards, it can increase the quality and framerate, but at an extreme cost.

 

Personal recommendation: steer clear of SLI and Crossfire unless you know what you're doing and are loaded with the cash to spend on it.

 

Current best performing graphics cards:

 

Sub $200: ATI X1950Pro and nVidia 8600gts (this nVidia is a little slower in general, but does support dx10, which is only an issue if you've got Vista installed)

 

Sub $300: nVidia 8800gts 320MB (if you have the cash for it and your psu has a decent enough power rating (at least 450W), this is the card to go for in this price range, no competition)

 

Sub $100... No idea, don't check out this class often, probably still the nVidia 7600gs.

 

:)

 

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