a new rig, what video card should I get?

[cptmaxon]

ok so I'm getting a new rig, because I've landed a job at intel (yay me )and I can get both a good motherboard and a cpu in a very good price(intel employes get about 50% off)
this is as far as I got:
CPU: Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz 8Mb BOX
motherboard: Intel® Desktop Board D975XBX2
ram: Corsair Dominator 2GB Kit PC2-6400 DDR2-800 CL4 Twin2X2048-6400C4D
hardrive: Seagate Barracuda ES 400GB 3.5 7200Rpm 16MB SATA II ST3400620NS

so this is it for now, but I need a video card so which should I buy? first of all the obvious question, Nvidia or ATI? , and then what should I get ,a friend told me I should get a directx 10 compatible drive, but I can get a high range older generation at about half the price of one of those , so any suggestions?, also if you have any suggestions on the stuff I already picked out I'd gladly hear them.
thanks

 

[Prime Junta]

First, I'd suggest you add a second HDD and RAID-0 them. That'll double your disk bandwidth, which will make a very real difference in games that are disk I/O bottlenecked (which means just about anything that does dynamic terrain loading). Not to mention it'll speed up loading screens, boot, program startup, and so on.

Second, the card: that would depend on your budget and the size of your monitor. If your budget stretches a bit, the nVidia 8800 series rocks -- the GTS 320 MB is incredible value for money and will run anything on the market today (and in the near future) for most practical purposes as well as the way more expensive GTX (*UNLESS* you have a really big screen and want to run it at high levels of anti-aliasing or anisotropy). If your budget is a bit tighter, go with the ATI X1950 XT.

Oh, and for the latest word, see here: [ http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/06/11/the_best_gaming_video_cards_for_the_money/ ].

 

[Moriendor]

That link is good and the VGA charts are great for a quick overview/comparison as well. Check here and make liberal use of the drop-down menu for comparing different models, games and resolutions:

http://www23.tomshardware.com/graphics.html

Personally, I'd recommend a 8800GTS 640MB. Depending on where you buy and what kind of deal you get, the difference between the 320MB and 640MB model is frequently just EUR 20.00 (should be about the same in US$). For example, a retailer over here was recently selling a Gainward 8800GTS for EUR 319.00 while most 320MB models are/were around the EUR 299.00 mark. If you can afford roughly $/EUR 300 for a video card then you should really consider a 640MB 8800GTS. If you can't then -yeah- ATI X1950 series or nVidia GeForce 7950 are the way to go.

P.S.: Congrats on the Intel job by the way .

 

[mudsling3]

Paying $250 for Q6600? Good! But do you know that retail price will drop to the same point next month? I would also recommend 8800GTS 640.

 

[cptmaxon]

Paying $250 for Q6600? Good! But do you know that retail price will drop to the same point next month? I would also recommend 8800GTS 640.

yeah I heard about them doing that in july 22nd, so I might wait till then to see if the employ prices get the discount too, it's hard to wait cause I still haven't played gothic 3, but saving a hundered bucks would be nice too (hey I can put it toward a gothic 4 fund)

 

[bjon045]

Get a 7950GT or a X1950. Both can easily handle every game on the market unless you are playing at obscene resolutions with 16xAA (and all the other stuff).

Then in another 6-9 months you can sell that card and take a small loss and buy a decent card that can actually handle directx10 well (such as the upcoming 8900 cards), and there might actually be more than a couple of directx10 games available. Why buy a directx10 card when there is all of 2 games out there than can even use it and there is basically no difference when using it (as you currently cannot run any directx10 game with full eye candy options turned on at anywhere near the speed you can run a directx9 game)

 

[Cleric]

For building a new system, I'd spring for one of the WD "Raptor" Hard Drives. You can't beat them for a good overall perfromance increase.

 

[woges]

I'll agree with Moriendor here. Get the 8800.

 

[Shagnak]

Don't get one.
Shelve your computer.
Read a book, hell, write a book.
Buy an easel and some paint and learn to see things in a different way.
Learn a new language and then travel, live in alien societies and think with new perspectives.
Meet a nice lady, make some kids, die old and happy and wiser due to the hours you didn't waste on the digital teat.

 

[woges]

@ Shagnak

Already done that.

 

[Lucky Day]

8800 that's what I've been eyeing. $296 at Circuit City right now and I think the 8600 is $269 - so don't waste your money on what's essentially a downgrade.

Can these video cards be used in tandem again? I forget. Like having two 8800's if you have two PCIe slots?
--
I have to disagree with Junta on the RAID 0. RAID 0 is dangerous - if one HD goes down so do both.

RAID 1 effectively gives you a backup on one HD but as some claim its faster still others claim its slower.

If you can do RAID 0+1 that's the best of both worlds.

Or even better RAID 5 is what most people are using these days, or even RAID 6. I believe these use minimum 3 drives (the odd drive is for Parity checking).

But there's lots of flavours of RAID now. Effectively I recommend one that gives you the best advantages of speed and security.

Hard Drives are cheap and plentiful these days for lot's of mega storage so its worth it to downgrade your storage for that extra capability. Instead of one 400-500gb say get two 320gb's or three 250gb's.

If you needed just storage I see the kids at the University packing portable HD's everywhere now and the newest ones fit in your pocket and use the USB for its power. Use that for backing up and your in box HD's for actual use.

 

[Prime Junta]

RAID-0 is certainly twice as likely to go down due to disk failure as a single disk. However, it's no more vulnerable to corruption by human error or software glitches, which is the most common cause of hard disk problems (and against which RAID-1 won't protect).

Naturally you should keep backups no matter what storage solution you choose; relying on a single storage device, whether it's a single disk or a RAID array (redundant or not) is really stupid. And if you do keep backups, the slight decrease in reliability from RAID-0 is a pretty small price to pay for the very significant boost in performance.

 

[Gig]

I also turned away from RAID-0 a couple of years ago and started using my drives as individuals. All drives fail and they do it without user error, they are considered a consumable part. RAID-0 doubles the likelihood of a hardware failure that will wipe out you system, it's simply the way it is. After recovering from three drive failures in four years, I finally decided that the gains weren't worth the risks and went back to separating applications and data onto individual drives. I just lost my applications drive last month (that makes five drive failures in seven years on one machine!). We simply replaced it and reinstalled the apps and OS, no muss, no fuss and off to the races. That's the first time in almost a decade that it was so easy. RAID-0 works and works very well, many people swear by it. There are also limitations to that type of drive array that should be presented as well. If someone wants to use RAID-0 they absolutely should, but they should also be aware of what they're getting into when deciding.

 

[Prime Junta]

@Gig -- you're absolutely right, and I should have mentioned it when making the recommendation.

 

[Asbjoern]

I'm not ready to upgrade for DX10 yet. The best card below the 8000 series would that be 7950GT, 512MB? I'm not an ATI guy, so excluding ATI-cards.
The 7950GT, 512MB is really cheap too.

And how big will the difference be between my present card, 6800GS, and a 7950GT card?

Regards Asbjørn

 

[Prime Junta]

The DX10 cards will work fine with DX9, so you don't actually *need* to upgrade your DX to use them.

 

[Asbjoern]

I know, but what I meant is that I'm not planning on using DX10 yet, so I might as well not buy such a card at this moment and instead buy a 7050GT for half the price of a 8800GTS card.

But is it worth upgrading a 6800GS to a 7050GT? I'm asking this because I want to get the visually best out of BioShock without having to pay too much.

The rest of my hardware is well up-to-date.

 

[Moriendor]

Due to the heavy dependence on pixel/vertex shader power in the newest DirectX 9.0c games I'd say it's worth it. I'm still on AGP and upgraded from a 7800GS 256MB AGP to a 7950GT 512MB AGP card earlier this year which might seem like a small step but it does definitely make a big difference in the newest shader-heavy games (the 7800GS AGP model only has 8 pixel pipes while the 7950GT AGP model has 20 or 24). It's also nice when you can turn on anti-aliasing and max out the anisotropic filtering in just about every game without any noticeable performance hit.

 

[Sir Markus]

I rely on a good friend, who meticulously keeps up on the latest components, for advice on what to buy. He is also strongly recommending the 8800gts. I think Vista's major issues will be worked out by the end of the year, and while directX 10 will not be necessary, there will be enough games that support it to make the 8800 a good purchase. I think I might get an 8600gts though, which is also a good card, because I'm cheap, it also supports DX10, and I never play games maxed out or at high resolutions. I figure I can get about 1 1/2 years of service out of this card, at least that's always been my goal. I think the best value is in the mid-market arena. Most people I've known that buy state of the art video cards end up selling them used so they can get something else that's more 'feature rich' way before the useful life of the card they had before ends, for whatever reason. Just my opinion.

 

[Prime Junta]

FWIW, I have the 8800GTS/320, and it runs everything I've thrown at it at 1920 x 1200 at pretty high settings with no problems. I'm sure I'd hit the memory limit if I turned AA up to the max; however, I have a feeling the frame rate would slow down due to processing power constraints before that.

(N.b.: "pretty high settings" != "everything maxed out." Some newest games will bring the card to its knees if I turn everything up for sure. "Pretty high" still looks damn good though.)