Graphics Card Options

[Chewy]

Hey everyone. Just bought a new PC, it's working great. Only problem is the graphics card, not exactly top notch. I bought BC2 and am able to run the game but not with very good detail. Since I don't know much about this stuff, I'm looking for some help. I have a Nvidia Geforce 9400 GT. I want a good card but I don't want to over do it. The back of the BC2 case recommends and ATI Radeon 4870, would something similar to this be fine or should I step it up a notch? What should I even look for in a graphics card? All the numbers mean nothing to me ha.


Oh and what is everyone using nowadays? Teamspeak? any other helpful programs that I should look into?

This post has been edited by Chewy: Mar 3 2010, 12:05 AM

[BAC]

Chewels!!

How much money are you looking to spend? That is the big question.

And TS2

[Chewy]

I'd like to keep it under 200.

[Ragenowski]

Under $200 eh? That shouldn't be a huge problem then.....next question, what brand would you rather go with?


If it's ATI then a HD 5770 is gonna probably be your best bet. DX11 capable card and judging by what people I know who have one say the 5770 is fully capable of playing BC2 at pretty high settings with a dual core proc.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814150447

If you'd rather stick with an nvidia card then you can get a GTX 260. The GTX 260 isn't DX11 compatible and that's about it's only real drawback.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx...N82E16814143189

I'd recommend either of those two, of course pick your own vendor....some people aren't BFG or XFX fans but that was the first ones I saw so that's what I posted. Personally if you're going with ATI either Sapphire or XFX would be my choices and if you're going with nvidia then I'd opt for an EVGA card but that's just me.

[Chewy]

hell i dont know what all those things mean haha. Thanks rage, I'll look a little more into them.

[Ragenowski]

The short version without the links I posted is both of those cards are going to be pretty close performance wise, but the ATI card will have the ability to use the new directx11 that BC2 uses.


DX11 isn't a mandatory thing though so don't go off and get the ATI card because you think you need it. Do some reading and figure out which one performs better for whta you'll use it for and go from there.

This post has been edited by Ragenowski: Mar 3 2010, 01:08 PM

[Doc]

I get this game tomorrow so Newegg says. What is it with Invidia? seems they are on the short bus, no Dx11? I would have upgraded the video but im going to see how bad my 8800gtx 512 is with Bc2. I may overclockit till it smells like burnen PcB's first. Though if they do have one soon it will be alot of $. Looks like I may have to go with Ati, though i hear there driver support is slow

[Chewy]

So I'm thinking of maybe getting the ATI 5770. You said people are saying it's working good wit BC2, and I really don't see myself buying any other top notch games for PC in the near future. And according to newegg, it's about $50 cheaper than the Nvidia you suggested, Sapphire even being $10 cheaper than XFX. Main concern is I wanna be able to play BC2 without a problem, cuz so far it seems amazing (Only played first mission and short online play). BC2 will be the most graphically demanding thing on this system, so like I said if it's working for others with high graphics, should be fine by me, plus I have a quad core .
But then is there really no difference between XFX and Sapphire other than just being a different brand?

[BAC]

I am running the GTX 260, at the moment, chewy.. it runs well..but I would go with the DX11 (5770) as well, performance wise, they are close.

Then, down the road, you can always add another 5770 to get that extra FPS..

[Doc]

was looking at the two 5770 and 5870 The first one you can get a lot less. If the later is not alot better seems the best one for the money might be the 5770? dam i hate upgrading.

[Ragenowski]

I get this game tomorrow so Newegg says. What is it with Invidia? seems they are on the short bus, no Dx11? I would have upgraded the video but im going to see how bad my 8800gtx 512 is with Bc2. I may overclockit till it smells like burnen PcB's first. Though if they do have one soon it will be alot of $. Looks like I may have to go with Ati, though i hear there driver support is slow

Doc my 8800GTS 512 gets roughly 35-45 fps at medium settings 1920x1200 res. with a quad core Q9550. With my old core2 duo e8400 that would have been more like 20-40 fps. I'm actually surprised that the 8800gts is able to run this game as well as it does....and dude even at medium settings this game is freakin beautiful.

I recently got an HD 5870 and it was a huge difference but that was in the beta, haven't played it in the retail game yet because I had to send it back to newegg to RMA it because I was having random gray screen crashes....



When anyone of you do decide to upgrade, keep in mind that DX11 is not the garbage that DX10 was. I haven't run an actual game with it yet since I sent my HD5870 back for RMA but there is a DX11 benchmark out there called Heaven Benchmark and the difference between DX10 and DX11 is a LOT more than the difference between DX9 and DX10 was. And yes BC2 IS a dx11 game so to see it in all it's glory you'll need a dx11 card.

This post has been edited by Ragenowski: Mar 3 2010, 07:09 PM

[BAC]

doc..I would look more at the 5830, over the 5770..

I think I am going to get one soon, then add another one down the road.

The 5870 is THE card right now

[Doc]

man might have to spring for THE card, thinking of bf3, every time a new bf comes out im like 2gens behind and buy the time i get A card the games about done and we move on to the next BF. so perhaps better to blow 100$ more now? well newegg says ill have the game and W7 with some new memory to bump this rig to 4gigs see how it runs then with th old 8800gts runs it first. The good things ill get to see if i push this new memory more as well might get to 3.4-6 and stable if not hope i can get to the 3.12 it is now the quad 2,4 has alot of overhead. if i can aford the 5850 this rig should be rather fast with my 2 raptors in rad and all that memory, or the whole thing goes up in smoke when fubar the OC

[Chewy]

is newegg.com a good place to buy from? I can't find anywhere else that has cheaper price on that card.

[Grimm]

Yeah man newegg is a trusted site.

[BAC]

Mac, that sounds great to me, man!

[Doc]

Newegg is the only place i get parts. I have built over a dozen Pc;s all the parts from newegg. For friends family they have great service, fast, trusted. I know of people that fried a Mb do to not useing the standoffs or miss placed a few and shorted the Mb out. They RMed and replaced at no cost. One guy i know DID it TWO TIMES!!! They still replaced it. Ti date i have only had a few ram chips be bad, about a year or so ago they replaced right away, the new ram was fine no issue. They state in your order that are not reponsible for errors made by the buyer, but it seems they care more for the buyer than stated in the purchas agrement. I have allways sood by NG. other places are good to like Tiger direct though it has been YEARs since i have been there.

[Chewy]

That's the kind of info I like to hear about a vendor. Let's hope I won't have to go through any replacement orders though.

[Doc]

you never know its made in Tiwain or China. I have had other things not Pc related have bad cold soldier(sp) joints, from NXt(Lego) to key fobs that fall apart. so you never know. I try to read comments alot and reviews of these things to see what and why they had troube or great things to say though fan boys are many, Caviet emptor

[Ragenowski]

I've built 6 or 8 PCs and everything I get I get from Newegg except for once when I needed some arctic silver for my cpu and I couldn't wait the 3 days to get it from newegg.

I've also never had anything bad until I got the new graphics card a couple weeks ago and that wasn't anything to do with Newegg. The RMA process seems simple enough and I should have my new graphics card back within a couple of weeks.

I definantly stand by the Egg, great place to do business.....hell I even bought a 46" HDTV from them and it showed up 4 days later in perfect condition.

[Chewy]

Alright, so of course I'm having issues getting this to work. I put in my new card and booted the computer. I tried installing from cd but it would not run. It read that there was a cd in it but threw an error window at me when trying to run it. The only thing I can think of...is when placing the card in my mobo I realized there was a loose Orange wire that was going into my hard drive. Of course it is possible maybe I knocked it out or something but I don't remember being even close to it. Everything else seemed to be fine though. Could this be the problem or does anyone have any idea why this would happen. I'm near 100% sure that I did not alter anything related to the disk drive...Here's a picture of the piece I'm talking about, the orange wire on the end was loose...


Re-installed my old video card and everything works just fine, but still can't use the installation disc for the new card, maybe a bad disc?

This post has been edited by Chewy: Mar 9 2010, 03:45 PM

[Doc]

Depnds on how your are connected to the Hard drive if it is SaTa from the MB one plug/connection. Older systems may have a mollex and a Tape data wire(those big ones). That Kind of looks like a sata though most you dont see the wires its molded. If that is the Sata and its unpluged AND its your boot drive you should get an error during boot saying No Hardrive Detected, select a bootible drive..etc. If youare getting to windows then it is a none issue unless you mat secondary hard drive.

Sounds like you at windows/ Down load the latest drivers that is recommened(* since the last new Invidia was recalled something about the gas pedal sticking. You may have to remove the old first(mosr times if you are up grading espeicaly to a differant brand remove all the old drivers and run on just the Windows driver. Then add new driver. shake not stirred..

[Chewy]

Still nothing. I realized it's not even showing up in my device manager. When I put my nvidia in it shows up there and everything works fine by just turning on the system. Maybe something isn't connected correctly? The only thing i was confused about was the power source cords. Installation guide more less than helpless.

[Chewy]

Got it, simply downloaded latest driver online, and it did the rest.