Upgrade for my old man...

A

AciDeX

Gawd
Joined
Jan 1, 2005
Messages
581
Looking for a graphics card for my old man, he doesn't really play anything right now besides Tiger Woods '06(but may pick up on other games if he can run them). Sad thing is that he's stuck at the end of the story mode because the on-board 6100 graphics bite the big one whenever the last match with Tiger is loaded. He gets an error that the current video driver is not supported then crash to desktop, yet it works on every other match before that(my guess is that Mr. Woods is that much of a badass the he requires more rendering).

So I'm looking for something that will take care of my parents current needs and future ones without breaking my $75-$100 max budget.

I built this rig about 3 years ago for X-Mas for them, their important specs are:
Biostar T-Force 6100 Socket 754 mATX w/ PCI-E and DDR support
AMD Sempron 2800+ 1.6Ghz
2x 512Mb DDR400(only 2 slots)
80Gb HDD
Sparkle 350W PSU
17" LCD max res 1280x1024

What I'm looking to get out of the upgrade is something with DDR3 at least, and was eyeballing something in the 8600GS-9600GS range. There were a couple deals but some of the low-end cards just seem too "low-end" for my standards. NCIX had a descent 9800GS deal last week but sold out real quick which would have been perfect. Would a cheaper ATI card be worth it? Seems like the Radeon 3850 512mb is dominating at that price point at the moment.

SAPPHIRE Radeon HD 3850 512MB for $79.99

EVGA GeForce 9600 GT 512MB for $89.99

Recertified: EVGA GeForce 9600 GSO 384MB for $59.99

I think I may have just answered my own question with that 9600GSO I'm just wondering if there is anything better out there for the price(just not thrilled with the recertified warranty). And like I said these cards may be a bit overkill for this one game but I'm sure there are few others I can get my dad to play.
 
Thanks for the suggestion but thats a bit more more than I want to chew on, and at that price I could probably find a 4850 for a few bucks more. My max price is $100 but I'd like to stay closer to the $75 mark unless the deal is smoking! :cool:
 
I'm not sure what the difference is between the 3850 and the 3870 are but a friend of mine that recently picked up a 3870 says it runs very well on his machine playing things like a lot more recent then Tiger Woods 06 :)
 
looks like the main difference on the 3850 and 3870 is about $15 bucks, same amount of stream processors and memory clock. Other than that they look like the same card for the most part. I might pick up a newer version of Tiger Woods, just so the new card doesn't go to waste.

*Edit* The 4650 doesn't look half-bad either at that price, I'd personally like to stay away from GDDR2 if I can avoid it. Just kind of hard to pull the trigger on a new card thats using the same memory as my old GForce Ti 4400(which is still kicking ass BTW).
 
On average from this review the 4650 is only about 10 frames slower then the 4670 http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-6278-view-Radeon-HD-4670-and-HD-4650-performance-review.html. On average the 4670 keeps up or even out does the 3800 series at times.

The games your father will be playing shouldn't push the card to hard considering he doesn't know what AA is and probably doesn't turn the graphics on high. I'm sure tiger woods games aren't that demanding.

I think you're a little to scared DDR2 will hamper the performance a lot. I don't think that is the main factor of the performance at least in this case. The DDR2 clocked on this card is about twice as fast as compared to your old TI4400 http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=580&card2=136. The 4650 is on a 128-bit bus so it should have sufficient bandwidth.
 
9600gso or 8800gs would be a cheap solution. I think you can get them for like 60 or 70 bucks.
 
I'd consider the HD 4670. Good performance considering the low power usage.
 
I like the 4830 more than the 4670, I think thats just the [H] in me talking though. Not really planning on grabbing anything till Friday, so I'm hoping to see a couple good deals online. I wish I had a Fry's in town... Right now I'm leaning on the 9600GSO just since I have a nVidia chipset board in there. I could still go ATI since this is WinXP Pro, but my old man was tossing around some questions about Vista recently(and my aunt works at MS in Redmond, WA so I get $45 copies of Vista Ultimate and free Microsoft Studios games for Xbox 360 when we're good :D).

Also thanks for that link to gpureview.com for comparrison that you snuck in there Banzai. Should come in handy down the line.
 
Yeah no problem. Any of the midrange cards will last him quite a long time I'm sure. If you can find a good deal on the 9600 GSO. That should be a steal.
 
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