Need Help Choosing a Video Card

Depending on the games you would fall in love with a 3870(if you can find one).

At that low resolution you can pretty much max out any and all games and still get pretty high FPS.
 
it depends on the games ull play. the 8800gt offers the better performance. if you choose it get the evga brand since it has the good customer service reputation and step up program in case you want to "step up" within 90 days.

the 3870 and 3850 both offer the direct x 10.1 but who knows how useful thatll be yet. they both offer good performance at reasonable pricing so it all depends really on what games youll play.

they all offer the bang for the buck for its performance ratio with its prices. i'd pick the 8800gt or the 3870 though since the 3870 prices arent too far off from the 3850 512mb.
 
Well as for some old games I will be playing Call of Duty, Call of Duty 2, Counter-Strike 1.6, CS:S, BF2, Doom 3, WoW, Guild Wars, and Starcraft. As for new games I will be playing COD4 competitively, Orange Box, and Crysis. Future games that I'm waiting for the release are Guild Wars 2 and Starcarft 2.
 
Only games you might have an issue with(and thats not a big might) is Crysis.

If you get the 8800GT you will no doubt be able to play at max settings with AA/AF at max on that resolution, but on the 3870 I'm not too sure.

The rest of the games you will be flying through.
 
in xp a 3850 512 is fast enough to run cod4 with maximum settings including 2x supersampled aa at 1680x1050. i ran fraps while playing through the 'war pig' stage and detected a minimum of 45 fps without aa and 20 fps with aa. the 3870 is not be significantly faster than the 3850 512. the only differences are clockspeeds and the gddr4. the 3870 is significantly faster than the 3850 256, as you would be able to turn on more graphic features.
 
The Gigabyte is the clear winner to me as it has the after market cooler eliminating the GT cooler issue. It will easily out perform the 3850 and beat the 3870 which is nearly the same price, if there was a larger price gap may have said 3870. The EVGA SC is a rip off for a stock cooler when you can more than likely overclock the Gigabyte to the same level.

so ftw, but it says out of stock.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125081


ThR!LL said:
I'm going to be playing on a 24" monitor
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Actually when you say 24" do you mean a flat panel?, if so then you want to play in the panels native resolution as anything lower can look like crap which is probably 1900x1200.
 
Battleneter2 said:
The Gigabyte is the clear winner to me as it has the after market cooler eliminating the GT cooler issue. It will easily out perform the 3850 and beat the 3870 which is nearly the same price, if there was a larger price gap may have said 3870. The EVGA SC is a rip off for a stock cooler when you can more than likely overclock the Gigabyte to the same level.
1900x1200.
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So the size of the Gigabyte card won't have negative effects on the performance of the card vs. the Evga card?
 
ThR!LL said:
So the size of the Gigabyte card won't have negative effects on the performance of the card vs. the Evga card?
Click to expand...

Correct. Size doesn't matter, it's the motion of the ocean. ;)

The Gigabyte is a pretty good value. Compared to the eVGA SSC Edition ($300 MSRP, $330 Newegg), it has the same core clock, and a 100MHz slower memory clock.
 
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