Concidering GFX upgrade...

Have you got Half Life 2?, It's a great game, the graphics are amazing as it can run on almost anything, infact my radeon 9600np overclocked from 250mhz to 480mhz was running the game on almost full settings including 1280x1024 res and it was quite playable

Just played F.E.A.R Combat last night, was on this level were i was outsidem, loads of trees, has graphics on max and res on 1280x1024, looks preety good, it was playable, i would of thought it would lag due to the trees and all that, but it was only choppy, it was playable for me, had softshadows enabled, oh, i remembered, the AA or AF, cant remember which one needed to be lowered abit as it was lagging quite, also were there is large explosions, highest settings aint a good thing, game freezes abit, dunno if that was due to playing it online tho, but either way, the graphics only need cranking down a little, AA and AF dont really make a difference to me anyway,best having them disabled

 

Thanks man, yeah I can deal with 1024x768 and 2xAA/4xAF if it keep the FPS high. I've got HL2 and when it was updating it apparently added HDR support to some maps, I'm not really sure what it looked like before but it's a nice effect at times. HL2 is one of the few games that SM2.0 cards can enable HDR on, it's done though software but it's basically ATI's of holding it's own against nvidia back when the X800series was head to head with the 6800's.

 

I was browsing vid cards again just because and I came across something really pleasing: Leadtek WinFast A7600GT TDH 256MB Video Card - Retail at Newegg.com
An actual 7600GT for AGP. It even comes with Serious Sam 2 which is nice. I'm just wondering if it'd be faster than this card: BFG Tech Geforce 6800GS BFGR68256GSOC Video Card - Retail at Newegg.com even after unlocking the full 16 pipelines? I mean the clockspeed difference is pretty major but the 7600GT is of course 128-bit. It's a hard one. I wonder if you can unlock those as well?

 

get the 6800GS or X800XT, i seen benches of the 7600, dont even beat the X800XT.

 

Yeah you're right, the X800XT still crushes it: Tom's Hardware Guide Processors: VGA Charts
Perhaps this is because HDR isn't enabled on the XT but just the same it still wins in other tests. Man I'm really having a hard time deciding here.

 

X800XT PE :good:

 

It's hard now because I checked out a bunch of reviews on newegg of the only X800XT. They say it runs super hot, as in hot enough that it's been known to shut down games and reboot due to heat. People are also saying that the driver support is pretty bad and it's really buggy due to it's needs as an All in wonder card. It's plenty fast but I don't want a hassle with drivers and dropping money and loosing my warrenty over a 3rd party cooler. Too bad they don't have other AGP X800XT's. Even other sites don't seem to stock anything but the AIW versions. The GS is still looking pretty good though.

 

I agree it does get vv hot, but i have never had problems with games shutting down, ever, the cooler on my card is almost the same as the cooler ATi has, support for my card seems to be ok, i cant think of any problems i have had exept for crappy shadows in NFSMW which is with all ATi cards, dunno if thats sorted now tho.

How much are the AIW versions?, the clock speeds are a little slower on those right?

 

The AIW version is the only one newegg has and it's going for around $160, the clockspeeds are the same as other standard X800XT's 500/1000 but there are a lot of complaints on there about heat creating unstablity, basically removing any hope of overclocking.
But unfortunatly I got a bit ahead of myself and assumed too much of my parents. Despite my best pursuasive techniques they shot down my request for buying my own new gfx card and said that awhile back I had promised not to buy any other expensive items since I got my TV and video camera. I guess I did say that, just forgot. So yeah I'm stuck with what I've got. Thanks for all you're help just the same man. It's a hard hit to take but at least I'll take comfort in the fact that I won't have to upgrade in incriments only to throw it all out in a year. Next summer it'll be DX 10 for sure and that'll be cool.

 

Yea, i think i am going to do that, in the short run its going to be a nightmare when new games start coming out, but then in the long run, if i wait, i can splash out on a killer rig for my next upgrade and not just upgrade mobo and cpu, probs get the latest and greatest.