Hi, I am looking at upgrading my computer and I am wondering if I need a new video card. I currently have a Nividia Ge Force 8600 GT Spec: NVIDIA GeForce 8600GT GPU Clock Speed 540 MHz RAMDAC Speed 400 MHz Card Interface PCI Express Memory Installed Memory 512 MB Memory Tech GDDR2 SDRAM Memory Data Width 128-bit Installed Memory 512 MB (GDDR2 SDRAM) Max. Screen Resolution 2560 x 1600 I am a gamer and this card seems to run most of the games I have just fine (Oblivion, Fallout3 Mass effect, Assassins creed), but I am wondering how long that will last. Is this card good enough to play the new games coming out like Assassins creed 2 more Mass effect 2? And if so, will it play the games at the high graphic setting or low? The idea is to keep this card as long as I can so that newer cards go down in price. Can some one please help me?
You'll probably be able to play them as long as you don't mind not doing so on lower detail settings. If you want an upgrade and, assuming your motherboard supports it, you could always SLI two 8600 GT's. Otherwise, you might consider replacing it with a GTX 280. They're fantastic cards for the money, especially since they have been replace by the 285... which is about twice as much in price, and only ~2% better performing. The 280 is one of the fastest single-GPU cards on the market, and an excellent value while you can still get them.
Thank you for the info. Actually I was wondering about linking two of them together. How much would that boost my performance? It seems cheaper then buying a higher end card. Lets say I get another 8600 (prob very cheap now) and link them. Would I have enough power to play most games on high settings? The guy at fry's suggested I get the BFG GTS 250 for $130. Would linking two 8600 give me more power then that? As for the motherboard, I am getting a new one anyway, I can just make sure it allows me to link.
Well, the 250 has 128 Unified Shaders (Vertex shader/Geometry shader/Pixel shader), 64 Texture mapping units, and 16 Render Output units. That's a lot better than the card you have, but it's still pretty low-end. Let me illustrate: Really, it boils down to what you want to spend. You can get another 8600 GT for about $50, and it will give you 50-100% better performance than your current card on games which support SLI. Not all games do support SLI, in which case you'll recieve no performance benefits over having a single 8600 GT. For $130 or so, you can get the 1GB version of the GTS 250, which will usually outperform the dual 8600's even on SLI-enabled games.* Finally, for around $200, you can pick up a GTX 280, which will dominate both previous configurations in any benchmark. * The GTS 250 is actually a re-branded 9800 GTX+, so while it's still a decent card, it's also a last-gen GPU.
