Suggest to me a sub-$200 video card.

agrikk

agrikk

Gawd
Joined
Apr 16, 2002
Messages
933
My rig currently uses the following components:

-ASUS M2N-SLI Deluxe Motherboard
-XFX GeForce 7900GT 256MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 Video card

And I am thinking about adding another video card and monitor, primarily for running two games at once (long story).

Newegg has discontinued the XFX GeForce 7900GT card and I can't find it's match anywhere, so now I've decided to just buy another card, plop it into the second graphics slot, connect the second monitor to it and screw SLI.

Will this work?

What card should I buy?

I don't plan on doing any overclocking of the card. Please no double-wide cards, since I'll be watercooling this card (unless it has a really, really good silent cooling solution on its own).
 
How do you plan on running 2 games at once is what I want to know.
Do you just run them in windowed mode?
 
Yes. I have multiple accounts on an MMO that I play simultaneously.
 
:rolleyes:man, do you know what you're talking about? i think it's impossible.
 
SLI wouldn't work anyways. Only two of the ports are enabled, you can't hook 4 monitors up to a SLI setup because they are acting as one video card.
 
you can run two games at once only if :
-both games support windowed mode
-you have enough gfx power, ram, processing etc to run both games.

it has nothing to do with adding second gfx card and monitor, man.
 
it wont work because there is no way to specify which gfx card each game will use (they will most likely use the same one! which will mean one is sitting there doing nothing)...not to mention the over all driver nightmare your gonna have, having two different cards.
 
If said MMO is something like WOW, then you can run 2 instances of it windowed and drag one to each monitor. Youll obviously need another monitor, and a video card with 2 outputs (which Im pretty sure yours does). NVidia cards have a setting called DualView that you have to select and youre all set to go. You might as well try it first and if its too choppy or slow or whatever then think about upgrading your video card. The most important thing is that the game supports windowed mode or I dont think you can do what youre suggesting.
 
nösferatu;1031518927 said:
:rolleyes:man, do you know what you're talking about? i think it's impossible.
Click to expand...

As a matter of fact, I do know what I'm talking about. For all of you people who say it won't work, I already run two games at the same time, one on each monitor in windowed mode without any problem. I simply plugged in one monitor into each of the two ports on the card and I was off to the races. I launch one instance of the game, log in and drag it over to my second monitor. Then I launch a second instance:

See? (The screenshot is a little wonky since I have two different sized screens running at different resolutions. One is 16x12 the other is 12x10)

What I am wondering now is if I can add a second video card to my rig and move one monitor off of my gt7900 and onto this new video card. Like I said before, I'm not going to do SLI, I just want to put another video card into the second PCI-E slot on my motherboard and see if it will work.
 
I don't think you can run two graphics cards at the same time and have a game running off each, but you can run two windows games at the same time (hell even different games :p). Your best bet would be to try and save up for a 512+ meg card thats close to 8800gts performance.

I was running two instances of City of Heroes a while back on mine and they both ran great even during a raid.

So, a 640mb 8800gts is a good bet, or the 512 2900 Pro (or whatever NV / ATI come out with in Nov/Dec). The 320mb 8800gts might have memory problems. I know I ran into this when doing 2 instances of a game when using a 128mb card back int the day ;) (It would actually say memory was too short and close the 2nd instance)
 
Well you can run two instances of WoW on the same computer. Not very well though.

I used to play it, and I had two accounts. For me to transfer stuff from Horde to Alliance (or vice versa) I had to have both accounts active, so I would flip between each running instance of the game with Alt-Tab to transfer items and gold between my faction characters across the Gadgetzan neutral AH. Sometimes I even ran instances with myself, using my main to escort a low-level character set on follow. Performance was actually okay. But there were still some serious limitations such as massive graphical corruptions in the running game in which textures suddenly weren't been cleared and refreshed properly, leaving their colors permanently on the rendered image. Flipping back to the other running instance of the game usually cleared it but it would eventually degrade. Maybe it was my 256 meg of video ram, I'm not sure.
 
agrikk said:
As a matter of fact, I do know what I'm talking about. For all of you people who say it won't work, I already run two games at the same time, one on each monitor in windowed mode without any problem. I simply plugged in one monitor into each of the two ports on the card and I was off to the races. I launch one instance of the game, log in and drag it over to my second monitor. Then I launch a second instance:

See? (The screenshot is a little wonky since I have two different sized screens running at different resolutions. One is 16x12 the other is 12x10)
Click to expand...

i never said that's impossible, ofcourse it's possible.

agrikk said:
What I am wondering now is if I can add a second video card to my rig and move one monitor off of my gt7900 and onto this new video card. Like I said before, I'm not going to do SLI, I just want to put another video card into the second PCI-E slot on my motherboard and see if it will work.
Click to expand...

now, this is, what're you talking about? :rolleyes:
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top