First Upgrade...Ever?

Joined
Dec 19, 2007
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So the time has come to upgrade from my GeForce 5900 to something a bit less...well...antiquated. My buddy has lent me a donor system fo rthe time being, as I buy parts to upgrade from it. I'm looking to spend around 200 bucks, and as the times have gone by, I have not kept up. After taking a peak at prices, and the performance reviews from the Tomshardware.com charts, I'm spying ATI's 4850, or nVidia's 8800 something or other, or a 9800 something or other.

Now numbers don't translate those intangibles: looks, colors, smoothness, etc. In your experiences (I know the 4850 is REALLY new so I doubt there's many first hand reviews), which card is good for the average gamer? I don't game avidly, but I will play a new release once in a while; 3, 4, maybe 5 titles a year. I do a lot of watching of DVDs and videos, as well as your generic web-browsing and IMing. Also some Illustrator and Photoshop for work when I don't have enough times in the office.

With all of that in mind, what do you guys think?
 
I assume your on an AGP port with that old card so the 4000 series and 9000 series are out of the question as they are PCI-e.

You could get a 3850 AGP or one of the 7 Series NVidia cards and they would be a very large jump over the card you have. Otherwise you are looking at replacing the motherboard and probably the RAM and CPU as well.

You could also poke your head in this thread if you only want to replace the graphic card:

http://www.hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1168924
 
Well, I'm actually overhauling it all. The system I have so far is PCI-e compatible, so everything's fair game.
 
or wait another month and till the GTX260, HD4870, and 9800GTX+ come out and get the 9800 GTX or the HD 4850 for cheaper :D
 
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