Getting LCD, am I powerful enough for native resolution?

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Gutspiller

Gawd
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I have a Intel Core Duo E6600 2.4Ghz, 2 GBs of ram, Vista, and 1 ATI Radeon X1900 XTX card. Is this enough to push the native resolution of my monitor that's 1920 x 1080? I normally play FPS and my main choice is Counter-Strike: Source, but am going to start GRAW1 and GRAW2 as well as play some older games as well.

1. Is it going to be playable at the native resolution with this system?

2. Should I get another ATI Radeon X1900 XTX? (My mobo is crossfire compatible)

3. For nearly the same price of adding a 2nd card, is ditching my ATI Radeon X1900 XTX and going with a SINGLE new card going to be better/faster than adding another ATI Radeon X1900 XTX? (ATI or nVidia)

Can I please get some recommendations as I don't want to get my LCD and have to run it in lower than native resolutions or have close or completely unplayable gameplay in FPS. This is my first LCD monitor and so I know nothing about how much the picture is degraded from not running in native resolution, only that I've been told it doesn't look as good.

Thanks for any direction you can provide.
 
I'm sure you'll get a million posts saying the same thing, but...

* For Counterstrike at that res, that card should be fine
* For GRAW 1 and GRAW 2? HELL NO! Definitely need a more powerful video component
* First off, I am an ATI fan at the moment. That said, yes, selling your current card and buying an 8800GTX is a better idea than going Crossfire. Heck, you've already got Vista, so a GeForce 8800GTX will get you faster gaming in your current titles, AND DX10 support - which you wouldn't get otherwise

If you can wait until midsummer, though, the new generation of ATI parts may or may not be more compelling at any given price point, so...that's something to consider.
 
Is the "gray fog" thing fixed in steam games yet? If not, you might want to hold on before buying the 8800, if you decide to go with it.
 
selling your current card and buying an 8800GTX is a better idea than going Crossfire. Heck, you've already got Vista, so a GeForce 8800GTX will get you faster gaming in your current titles

I don't agree with this. In real world terms, two X1900s are equal to or outperform a single 8800 in most benchmarks I've seen; the results on ORB back this up except in examples of high overclocking. My 3DMark06 score with X1900 Crossfire and an Opteron 170 @ 2.7GHz is 9438 - all of the 8800GTX scors with a comparable processor are in the same area. The same holds true for the C2D scores. Logically two X1950s should have the edge as they are slightly faster than the X1900s.

The 8800 has the advantage of being able to do SLI (equivalent to 4x X1900) and of DirectX 10 support, but in terms of raw speed the boost isn't there on a single GTX card, and certainly not on a GTS. If it was I'd have upgraded already. One further thin is that if you want to play Stalker, it doesn't work with Crossfire, so the 8800 has a large lead there. Stalker's video options are all buggered up anyway though - see the tweakguides.com guide, and I haven't found any other game that refuses to play nicely.

I can't recommend buying a DX9 card right now, but I would wait for R600 and then make your choice.
 
Thanks for the reply. I think for starters I'm just going to have to see for myself. My mobo is able to do Crossfire, but it wont do SLI for nVidia if it does Crossfire, correct? I don't want to upgrade my mobo just so I can do nVidias SLI. I will probably just have to stick with ATI, not that I prefer them over nVidia, but simply so I don't have to upgrade my mobo if I ever want to do SLI.

When are the next ATI graphics cards coming out? (I don't mean exact, I just mean like a 2 months or like 6)
 
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