Upgrading Video Cards - would I see a difference?

polydiol

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Feb 3, 2004
Messages
1,468
Hi guys

My current system (in my sig) is what I use for gaming and I play just about everything out there - World of Warcraft, Doom 3, Half Life 2, Rome Total War, Sims 2, Warhammer 40k Dawn of War, IL - 2 Sturmovik Forgotten Battles, Pacific Fighters, Microshaft Flight Simulator 2004 and Battlefield Vietnam are the ones I play the most. In the future I look to be purchasing Doom 3 expansion pack, Vampire Bloodlines, Battlefield 2 (I plan to spend infinite hours as either Middle East Coalition or Chinese :) ) Sims 2 expansion pack(s), Quake IV (or whichever one is due out this year), F.E.A.R. and I'm pretty stoked about Star Wars: Empire at War as well as Age of Empires 3 or so that was just announced.

My current system is AGP and I was considering upgrading from my 9800 Pro to the fastest available my system can handle at this point which was an ATI made X800 XT or BFG 6800 GT or 6800 Ultra as I'd like this current system to last me a few more years. Would anybody have any input on whether it would be worth it to upgrade as I'm concerned about maybe having problems with my cpu being a bottleneckand if the above video cards would provide any benefit over my Radeon 9800 pro - I game on a crt at 1280x1024.
 
Well the 6800GT, Ultra, X800XT and XTPE will all play pretty much everything at 1280x1024 with 4xAA 8xAF and more than comfortable fps. If you wanted to play at 1600x1200 with AA and AF, I'd maybe swing more towards an XTPE if you can get hold of one.

All these cards are in the region of twice the speed of your current one. CPU limitations mean you'll probably have to turn up the AA and AF to see much benefit at 1280x1024 in most games. If these IQ features are important to you, you won't lose out by upgrading.
 
I just upgraded to a XFX 6800XT from an FX5600 and can not believe the difference that it has made in FS9.

LouP
 
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