Need Help with buying Card.

[Baker]

My friend is looking at picking himself up a new video card. Hes looking at this.

From what I can tell it looks like its a decent card for the price, would any of you suggest something else for this price range 100-220?

I don't know his PC specs, I know that may help determine a better card for his PC, but just for PCI express and price range, is this a decent card to get.

Thanks

 

[silent-circuit]

$250 gets you a Geforce 8800 GTS 320MB that will destroy that thing.

$150 or so should get you a Radeon X1950 Pro, which would also be far faster in everything current, though it has no DX10 support and is not nearly as fast as an 8800.

The 8500 cards are simply too slow to play DX10 games, so their DX10 support is something of a joke. They get single digit and low double digit (20 and below) FPS at 1280x1024 in modern games like Lost Planet and Call of Juarez. I would not recommend them to anyone planning to game. All they really do well is decode HD video in hardware, so they're good in home theatre PCs, and not much else.

Even the 8600GTS looks to be to slow to play upcoming games like Bioshock and Crysis in DX10 mode... and in DX9 mode they're no faster than the previous generation high end cards from ATI like the X1950.

Keep in mind that the 8800 GTS (and potentially even the X1950 series cards) may require a PSU upgrade, depending on the specs of your friend's machine.

 

[Baker]

$250 gets you a Geforce 8800 GTS 320MB that will destroy that thing.

$150 or so should get you a Radeon X1950 Pro, which would also be far faster in everything current, though it has no DX10 support and is not nearly as fast as an 8800.

The 8500 cards are simply too slow to play DX10 games, so their DX10 support is something of a joke. They get single digit and low double digit (20 and below) FPS at 1280x1024 in modern games like Lost Planet and Call of Juarez. I would not recommend them to anyone planning to game. All they really do well is decode HD video in hardware, so they're good in home theatre PCs, and not much else.

Even the 8600GTS looks to be to slow to play upcoming games like Bioshock and Crysis in DX10 mode... and in DX9 mode they're no faster than the previous generation high end cards from ATI like the X1950.

Keep in mind that the 8800 GTS (and potentially even the X1950 series cards) may require a PSU upgrade, depending on the specs of your friend's machine.

Thank you, I'll relay the information on, he and his brother share a PC to play BF2. I tried to tell him it might be best to wait to build a PC, but I guess they would like to get BF2 running more smoothly. He had come up to me with this card and I really was like Uhmmm I'm not sure about that one, I've heard good talks about the 8800's, but I'm not sure his system is ready for that

Thanks again.