i've been wanting to upgrade for a while now, and i want to buy a high end card which will enable me to run quake4, doom3, and half life 2 on high settings. i've found a Nvidia 7800GTX 256M for £255.00 Ex VAT £299.62 Inc VAT. what i want to know is... is this worth it for the price or can i get a better performing card for the price. One of the reasons i asked is that ive found a Foxconn X850XT Platinum Edition 256M PCI-Express for £173.95 Ex VAT , £204.39 Inc VAT. This reduced price would enable me to buy other components i.e new motherboard. PS what other components would i need with your choice of card.
I rarely see the point in splashing out with lots of money for cutting edge hardware since they go out of date soon anyway. You should probably get a card which is excellent value for money in the high end sector. But this depends on how yo're going to be using it. The X850 will be fine and perform very well in all your games as a casual gamer. You can buy the GTX but depending on the circumstances it may not be worth the extra £100~.
I see myself as quite a "dedicated" gamer, how much of a difference would there be between the two cards in performance. Also which processor would be good with the card?
An Athlon 64 would be ideal for gaming for yor needs. They outperform Intel CPUs greatly in this area as well as general usage. If you're a dedicated gamer, then the card is probably for you. It does perform much better than the X850, and probably the PE card aswell. As for the exact CPU, you'll probably end up building a new rig mostly. You'll be looking at an Athlon 64 Venice 3200, 3500 as they're quite good value chips.
Yup, if you want to save a bit of money a 7800GT is a very good choice, you get a lot of the power of a 7800GTX and easily more than the 6800Ultra or X850XT but you also save quite a bit of money. As for the processor yeah either of the ones Addis suggested are great for the money, another step up would be a 3800+ which is the best highend processor for the buck if you ask me. Just make sure you have a gig or more of ram and a quality name brand power supply with at least 500wts and 26A on the 12v rail, there are exceptions but for a full blown gaming rig that's a good place to start.
