Graphics Buying a PCI-E card need some advice...

I'm looking to upgrade my 9800 pro to something a bit shinier on the PCI express standard, I don't have much experience in the newer higher end cards so I'm basically just looking for the best performance I can get for my money, my budgets about £200 though I could maybe go another £50 over,

Cheers Rich

 

from what i read in review the 6800gs or the x800gto are some good options for the price range also the gto2 is a bit more than the gto but is unlockable to an x800xtpe

 

didn't it unlock to x850 xt pe? x800 pro vivo is possible to soft mod to x800xt pe

 

Yeh i read that earlier, apparently the GTO2 outperforms a 850xt? (when unlocked)

 

If you can go £50 over the £200 budget get a 7800 GT/X1800XL - if you're stuck with no more than £200, the 6800 GS seems to make the most sense at the moment.

 

Is your budget including a new mobo for PCI-e?

 

I was thinking about that, how do these two cards compare?

No, sorry I probably should have that more clear I just don't want to spend a ridiculous amount on a graphics card, I already think £200's a lot of money myself

 

It depends on whether you can buy one of the faster 7800 GT's inside your budget - if you can then the 7800 GT is generally faster, but with a 7800 GT at 400/1000 the X1800XL is faster. Neither is a bad choice, depends on whether you're a fanATIc or an NVIDIot. You won't be disappointed with either, IMHO.

If you're looking to upgrade to SLI/CrossFire in the future, I think it makes more sense to go for the 7800 GT, as the cost of the X1800 CrossFire card is nearly twice the price of an X1800XL - the only high end CrossFire solution that makes sense is the X1800XT solution, based on what I've read. Unfortunately, I've not had the chance to play with CrossFire X1800's just yet.

 

OK thanks mate, I was already leaning towards nvidia as I'd heard they perform better

 

I was looking earlier on OcUK and amongst their 7800GT's they have a couple of leadteks, the difference between the two I was looking at is one is advertised as "extreme edition" and both the GPU and memory clocks speeds are 50Mhz faster on the extreme edition. What I'm wondering is, is it worth paying another £50 for the EE or could I just overclock the standard one to make up the difference? (I'm sort of wondering whether the EE is merely an overclocked standard one)

Personally I can't see 50Mhz making that big a difference?

 

Have a read here: http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2005/10/17/sapphire_radeon_x1800xl/7.html

The XFX 7800 GT Extreme is clocked at 450/1050, BFGTech 7800 GT OC is clocked at 425/1050 and the reference card is clocked at 400/1000. Of course, you can play the game(s) at the same settings, but you will experience frame lag (which I'm quite susceptable to) on the reference card when compared to the overclocked cards. It's up to you, and depends whether you want to void your warranty and/or have a chance of achieving even higher clocks using the logic that you start higher so you've got more headroom.