How much of an improvement is this?

I

IndeX

New member
Current video card in my system is:

nVidia GeForce FX 5600 (256mb of DDR RAM)

The one I might get for $80 (currently have it, but have not installed it yet - its used from a friend):

GeForce 5900. He said it's an "Extreme" version, but I think he means "Ultra". 128mb of RAM.

How much of an improvement will I see, and is this card worth $80?


Come on Peepers, don't let me down.
 
> How much of an improvement will I see, and is this card
> worth $80?
>

Considering that you can probably sell your 5600 for $40-50, it's worth the $30 to upgrade. I ran a 5900XT for nearly a year until I got my current card last week (a Radeon X800 GTO) and it served me well. I played Battlefield 2 at 1024x768 with decent settings at full speed. Same in HL2. You'll notice the performance increase for sure.
 
I'm not a video card guy by any means (my card is an onboard riva tnt2 with 16 MB), but wouldn't going from 256 MB to 128 be a step backwards?
 
> I'm not a video card guy by any means (my card is an onboard
> riva tnt2 with 16 MB), but wouldn't going from 256 MB to 128
> be a step backwards?
>

Nah, it all depends on the power of the card. Yeah more RAM helps, but it isn't a tiebreaker.
 
> Nah, it all depends on the power of the card. Yeah more RAM
> helps, but it isn't a tiebreaker.
>

In this case, the 256MB of RAM on the 5600 means nothing. The card isn't even fast enough to utilize all that in all but the rarest cases.
 
>
> Come on Peepers, don't let me down.
>

I bought a new Geforce 6600 256 MB AGP 8X video card off eBay for $90. It replaced a Geforce FX 5200 128 MB AGP 8x card. I would recommend at least a Geforce 6600 or better. You will notice a huge difference especially in FPS games (Doom3, Battlefield2, Half-Life 2, etc.) Also, I think your friend is trying to rip you off. lol.
 
> In this case, the 256MB of RAM on the 5600 means nothing.
> The card isn't even fast enough to utilize all that in all
> but the rarest cases.

Indeed this is true. IndeX I'd research the core clock speed of that video card and make sure it's not the same or slightly faster--then it wouldn't be worth it. For $100 you can get a killer video card now that will play Doom 3, Quake 4, and Battlefield 2. <img src=smilies/thumb.gif>
 
<blockquote><font class="small">In reply to:</font><hr>

Indeed this is true. IndeX I'd research the core clock speed of that video card and make sure it's not the same or slightly faster--then it wouldn't be worth it. For $100 you can get a killer video card now that will play Doom 3, Quake 4, and Battlefield 2.

<hr></blockquote>
Indeed, but no video card, I don't care how good it is, will not make up 500MHz of processor speed. *curses own machine for not being able to play Doom 3*
NVidia GeForce 3, 64 meg PCI card
 
UPDATE:

Wow.

Seriously. Wow. I installed this card - and went into World of Warcraft, put the rez up to 1600x1200, and maxed out all of the options. It ran super smooth.

Went into Half Life 2, set the rez to 1600x1200, and maxed out just about everything I could find. Some of the stuff I'm not real familiar with like the Bi/Trilinear filtering etc - so I left that stuff alone - but I put the anti-aliasing all the way up. No hiccups.

This card rocks.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom