[Carbon]

Originally Posted by BGA

Well I bought the 3650 last night and installed it. Right on the box it says that a 300W psu is required so all the net info is wrong.

Well, wattage requirements are pretty much all bunk. Even systems with high end graphics cards (GTX 295, most powerful single card today) don't pull 300W. Those requirements exist because people buy generic SUPERPOWERXTREME 1000W PSUs that only put out like 200W and so the video card companies need to cover their asses.

The 3650 is not nearly as good as my old, overheating 9800. While the 3650 has twice the ram, it also has only half the memory bus width and half the pixel pipes. Civ 4 was choppy and when I tried to play CoD modern warfare it crashed. I'll return it tomorrow.

Like I said, you can't compare them like that. Despite my misgivings about its value, the 3650 should play those games fine (or at least won't crash!), did you install the correct, updated drivers?

Someone on another forum said something similar to this. What kind of system could I get for so little?

7750+ BE, good midrange motherboard, 500GB HDD, 4GB RAM. Hardware prices are in the toilet already and ATI is dropping all their graphics card prices by $50 pretty soon.

A more specific spec would be something like this:

Mobo: GA-MA770-UD3 ($75)
CPU: 7750+ BE ($60)
HDD: 500GB 7200.12 ($60)
PSU: PC P&C Silencer 370W ($50)
RAM: OCZ Platinum DDR2-1066 ($64)

So that's $309 with $40 of mail in rebates, if you're willing to use your old case and optical drives (HDD too if you want to save another $60 and drop it down to $200 AR). If not, add $50 for the case and $20 for a DVD burner. Most stuff on the list has free shipping too. Then return your card, pop in a new 4830 or 4850 from MicroCenter and you have a midrange-high end setup that'll play goddamn everything at max settings at 1440x900 or 1680x1050. Which, i think, is a much better value than blowing $100 on an AGP card :)

[redk]

Yeah, the 3650 should annihilate the 9800 pro, on any game. I had the step down (3450) and it would play new games like Crysis and Assassin's Creed on med-low @ 1440 x 900, so that should be able to go full out on Civ.

[BGA]

Well there was some issue with installing drivers. The latest drivers on ATI's site didn't work; I kept getting error messages so I googled them and found a forum where a person was having the exact same problems and they found a driver set on sapphire's website, so I downloaded it and then it worked.

Why do you expect that the 3650 will do so much better than the 9800 when it has half the bus width and half the pixel pipes? I would also mention that the sales guy said that the 3650 would be "comparable" to the 9800, and this guy wanted to sell a new card and he's saying that(!)

Anyway, I'm really thinking that getting a new board, cpu, and RAM is the way to go. Previously I figured that it would cost a lot more than what Carbon is indicating.

I would reuse all other components including, probably, the psu.

Thanks for all of the input!


PS redk: I play Crysis on my 9800 on medium to high settings no problem....

[BGA]

Carbon I appreciate you listing those components for me. Interestingly, the person on the other forum recommended the same cpu. Why do you recommend it so highly?

Also the motherboard recommended is the 780G (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...TE%20GA-MA780G) - very similar to the one that you recommended. The difference is about $15 and an onboard HD 3200 gpu which he says will outperform my 9800. What's your opinion on that?

[Carbon]

There is really no reason to buy that board over the one I suggested: you should have discrete video anyway (I would be reluctant to say it's any better than what you have), so the onboard is kind of useless. There's some other stuff like a slightly better onboard audio chipset but really there's no reason to get it over the 770 board. They're both fine, of course, but the only difference is price.

The reason everyone recommends that CPU is..because it's good? There's always going to be a leader at a given price point. It's the best budget CPU out there right now.

Also I still don't know why you're hung up on "half the bus width and less pixel pipes" as like I said before that means absolutely nothing, but okay.