Well I have a dilemma, my Radeon 9700 pro just gave up on me, put in a good 3 years, so who am I to complain. The original plan was to wait to get a new vid card till pic-e was a little more mainstream, well obviously that didn't' work. So now I need a new vid card, at a reasonable price, I was thinking the Nvidia 5700 series. I want it to be under 200$ but still able to run HL-2 as well as be better than a 9700 pro, which I think all 5700 are anyways be default. Theres so many manufacturers out there that make the 5700s I was wondering if anyone had any suggestions or experience with them? Thanks in advance for the help, I do appreciate it.
im not sure you need to wait for PCI-e to hype up any more, i don't think its going anywhere. but the 5700 is ok i might try a 9800 pro its 128 MB but if its just for a while you won't feel a big bite. (this coming from an NVidiaphile) after that id go grab the latest (and of course greatest) NVidia board
If you are setttled on the nvidia cards i would go for the 5900xt because Its 256bit memory card vs the 5700's 128bit. I have a pixelview golden limited 5900xt and it clocks and scores the same as a 5950 or better. Anyways a 5900xt is always faster than a 5700ultra. Do some reserch and you may find a 5900xt for about 170bux shiped. Thats not too bad. also noticed your 3d mark score on your 9700pro and I can say my 5900xt @ 390core and 700memory scored about 5000 and at 450core and 925memory I score around 6500. Not too bad of an increses huh?
So even though the 5900 is xt, its still faster than the 5700? And the reason I don't' want to get a AGP card for those 16 pixel pipeline cards is because of the insane power requirement, plug wise. And all the 5900xt's on newegg.com are 128 MB or ram, what dose it mean, the bit is 256 though, It's 128 mg, but 256 bit, I can't seam to wrap my head around that. The one I've kept my eye one, since the review on bit-tech has been the Gainward 5900xt at a core speed of 450 MHz, which is 60 more than the standard, and on newegg its only about 15 more bucks, dose that sound like a deal to anyone else?
Thats the other thing I forgot to mention, its going into my aria case, 300 watt power supply, so I think I might half to take out my sound card..or figure out some other cooling solution because thats how my last vid fan got shot, I'm sure of it, its too hot to touch the fan hub.
i say buy a CRAP card for a while and buy another one when the pci-e comes out but obviously i doubght youll be able to play hl2 on it untill u get the new card
