Graphics Card Recommendation

[Telomere]

Hello again.

Well, the conclusion from my last thread about the problems I was having with Dark Places is that I need to upgrade my Graphics card to get some decent performance. So, with that in mind I thought I'd ask the folks who know best what would be a good card to go for.

I'm looking for a good balance between price and performance, I don't want to go to crazy expense. I've got a few in mind already, but i'd like to hear from yourselves what you would recommend. Any and all suggestions much appreciated!

Thanks

[Baker]

Buy a $350 laptop instead. Even the Intel Integrated Media controllers these days run DarkPlaces fast as hell. I was rather shocked back 6 months ago.

Kind of silly to throw down $120 on a video card when you could use that $$$ as a partial investment in a new computer.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

Newegg.com - ASUS CuCore Series EAH5770 CuCore/2DI/1GD5 Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card


I bought two of those, and they preform really well.

[Telomere]

Thanks for the responses, I should clarify i'm in the uk by the way. Hmm, I hadn't considered a laptop. I do already have one, but its by no means a gaming system. I do like to sit at my desk with a larger monitor mind you, and you can't really upgrade them. Then again they are really handy to take to lan parties.

I have been considering the HD5770. I'm looking forward to Skyrim's release in November you see, so I was thinking I could either get a cheaper card just now to tide me over, as it'll still be faster than what I currently have, or push the boat out a little bit and hopefully still have good enough performance by the time it comes out. But of course, as we all know by about that time, newer cards will be out and the current ones will all be cheaper. Decisions Decisions. : /


Edit: I'm also thinking about this from the other thread..

DarkPlaces does not play nice with Radeons. I had a laptop with one a few years back.

Consider an older ATI card like you have effectively non-supported for the purpose of DarkPlaces. Don't want to bore you with the long version of this, but quite a bit of bad sentiment was felt regarding Radeon cards by some of the DarkPlaces loyalists due to drivers reporting extensions that they didn't have and several other problems preventing DarkPlaces from working on them.

Is this still the case for Radeons?

[Baker]

Buy used on Ebay. The idea of spending 1/3 of the price of a new machine on a graphics card to update, presumably, what must be an older machine is wasteful.

How old is this machine you have? Is it AGP or PCI or PCI-e .... this matters to the availability of various video cards that will work with your desktop.

[Telomere]

Ah Ebay, good idea I never thought of that. It's PCI-e, I upgrade in bits at a time. Never really all at once, so I've got a fairly new motherboard (can't remember the exact model offhand) and CPU (Phenom II x6), with 4gb DDR3 system ram. I just never upgraded the graphics card as I couldn't afford it at the time, plus it was easily running the kind of games I was playing at the time as i'm also a bit of a retro gamer.

[Baker]

Ah Ebay, good idea I never thought of that. It's PCI-e

Ah, well PCI-e is easy to shop for. I thought you might have an older machine due to the graphics card you have.

[Mindf!3ldzX]

get a badass videocard, and be able to play Wii on your high end PC like me Mario fans unite!

[Telomere]

get a badass videocard, and be able to play Wii on your high end PC like me Mario fans unite!

What are you running?

I'm considering the HD6950 and trying the HD6970 Bios Flash mod btw, anyone familiar with this?

This always happens when I'm considering a gfx card upgrade, I end up going much further than I originally intended


Edit: Btw, I'm still open to Nvidia cards if theres still problems with Radeons and Dark Places, but i'm not as familiar with them so i'd need recommendations in that area if indeed they are a better choice.

[Baker]

Nvidia is the dominant 3D graphics card maker. You shouldn't be "open" to Nvidia cards, they should be the default purchasing option.

Marketshare according to Steam:



Steam Hardware & Software Survey

http://www.bit-tech.net/news/hardwar...-market-share/

[Telomere]

I should qualify that "i'm equally open to both" Pricing, performance and how good it looks at the end of the day is what matters to me. I'm out of the loop with regards to current graphics cards, however because i've been using an ATI card for the last few years, I naturally looked at those first. But i'm happy to get either

[Mindf!3ldzX]

I bought two of these : Newegg.com - ASUS CuCore Series EAH5770 CuCore/2DI/1GD5 Radeon HD 5770 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card

Crossfire scaling on these cards along with PRICE + Features , I went with AMD considering my entire system is ASUS/AMD , I decided to keep things in-house, but that was based on preference alone.

I personally haven't had problems preforming any function involving Quake, and if you add DirectX to the scenario ,and I have reached the point of pointlessness in terms of preformance. I can play DarkPlaces with Retexture/Reforged + prettywater and barely dip below 40/50 in heavy action scenes.


I recommend Crossfire, I have yet to reach a point of being unsatisifed for going with a multi-GPU solution vs a single-GPU solution. (1 expensive ass card vs 2 fair priced cards).

I'm running Dirt3 with all settings max'd out,literally nothing is held back....

[DaniOcampo1992]

I have a nVidia 9500GT, and DP works well, not at it's maximum graphical details, but I enjoy it and yeah, it's a cheap card..
A 9800GT or above should be good.. Or maybe an ATI equivalent, which are cheaper than nVidia's

[Mindf!3ldzX]

I run DP fully maxd out, and never see under 50FPS solid.
This is using Retexture Project and Reforged Project as well, along with pretty water, real-time lighting/shadows. the whole she-bang !

[DaniOcampo1992]

I run DP fully maxd out, and never see under 50FPS solid.
This is using Retexture Project and Reforged Project as well, along with pretty water, real-time lighting/shadows. the whole she-bang !

Can you post your rig specs Mindf!3ldzX?