[Mike]

I was wondering what type of graphic card everybody has, because I know that a lot of people seem to be swaying away from Geforce and going to Radeon. I myself have a Radeon 9550, it's not the newest, but it isn't ancient, I wouldn't really even consider it old. I don't think I really need to update it for anything.

What do you all have?

[CG Man]

I have a geforce 6800 GT water cooled and over clocked to 430 Mhz it's only just about ok for some of my games. A geforce 7 series or equivilent is whats needed for games coming out now. I'm waiting a while before I upgrade as theirs cards coming out very soon that are fully windows Vista compatible. Next gen cards can do Direct 10 graphics and run the next gen movie disks BlueRay.

[Hybr!d]

I'd agree with CGMAN, I recently got a 6800GT as it was great value now.

7 Series is the way to go tho' but I shall wait for them to drop in price.

[CG Man]

Geforce 7 series is getting a bit old now, it's Series 8 in November with a big jump in graphics processing power. Xbox 360 and PS3 already look very outdated. This new card runs all of Windows Vista graphics abilities and will also play the HD DVD video discs. Their is a cheap version with only 640 MB of memory.

8800GTX Specs $649

GPU 575 Mhz nearly 700 million transistors. Rumered dual GPUs
Shader clock 1350Mhz
Memory GDDR 3 900Mhz 768MB
Memory bus width 384bit

physics acceleration technology
128Bit HDR
128 shader units
Dual DVi monitor sockets
HDTV out
Water & fan cooler.


Performance 38.4 Billion Pixels per second
86GB per second.

PSU needed 450watt

[Hybr!d]

That is definitely a serious graphics card.

No mention of price but I bet its big.

Great post too mate, thanks!

Dave.

[Jade]

Just out of curiosity how much does this Graphics Card cost then? I bet like Dave said I bet it's big!

I eventually want to get to the point where I can buy the best and have the best, shouldn't take too long to get there.

[CG Man]

The GTX is likley to cost £300+ but that will fall to £250 a month or two later and £150 when series 9 comes out this time next year. The best thing to do if you want a monster PC that runs any game at 60fps at 16000 X 1200 res is buy the third best card. If you buy the best just so you can say you have the best you will be buying a new card every two months.

When these cards are out the series 7 card prices will plummit and they are already overkill for todays games. I think I will buy a series 7 next and get a series 8 card when they start making games to make use of it.

The next from Nvidia to look out for is a processor they are working on to do the same job as AMD and Intels processors. AMD have joined with ATI to work on their next processors and GPUs. Intel ship their Quad core Core Duo 2 chips in November.

[Jade]

Thanks for the info, I didn't realize they get realized so much. I like your idea of buying the 3rd best card I suppose that would save a lot more money in the long run.

[quinda]

I'm running 2 6800 Ultras at the moment - I really want to upgrade, but it won't be for a while, I just can't afford anything at the moment :(

When I do upgrade I like to buy 'the best' just to get a little future proofing, I don't mind not having the 'best' all the time, as long as every now and then I get the brag factor, then I can save up for a year or so to buy the brag factor again.

Sure, I'm probably wasting money, but its part of the fun of the technology for me to drool over the top of the line stuff then eventually have it :)