Hi all, I am about to buy a new PC, which is being built to my own spec(ish!). Below are my options and the extra cost to pay for each - I don't really want to spend more than ?100 on a card (for now), so would appreciate if you could let me know if the sub-?100 cards would do me for a bit, or if it's worth spending a little extra. I don't want to be able to play too many particularly fancy games (have a X360), but would like to be able to play stuff like Roller Coaster TYcoon 3, Age of Empries 3, etc (on full graphics options). I will be running Win XP, and have a Athlon 64 X2 4800+ processor with 1GB RAM. Many thanks in advance! NVIDIA GeForce 6100 on board graphics [FREE] 256MB DDR NVIDIA 8500GT PCI-Express Graphics [extra ?64.99] 256MB DDR NVIDIA 8600GT PCI-Express Graphics [extra ?104.99] 256MB DDR ATI Radeon X1600 Pro HDMI PCI-E graphics [extra ?104.99] 256MB DDR ATI Radeon X800 PCI-Express Graphics [extra ?104.99] 256MB DDR NVIDIA 8600GTS PCI-Express Graphics [extra ?135.00] 256MB DDR ATI Radeon X1950Pro PCI-Express Graphics [extra ?135.00]
This is the order they go in from best to worse: X1950Pro 8600GTS 8600GT 8500GT X800 X1600 6100 So yours best off getting an X1900Pro, best value, its not DX10 I know, but 8600 series wont be much use for DX10 so X1950Pro is the best choice
I would go for the 8600GTS - it's fast enough, it's DX10 (the tech is still young so basically no card is handling DX10 super great, but still, they've something more than those cards which don't have DX10 support at all), it continues the great mainstream 7600GT and is a bad boy, if you will, in its range. Some review links: XFX 8600GTS, MSI 8600GTS or Club3D 8600GTS
Its just not worth the money when you can get an X1950Pro for cheaper than runs all DX9 games well and really the 8600GTS aint gonna run DX10 stuff good at all and by the time he wants to play DX10 games he will need a new graphics card anyway so the X1950Pro is the best choice and its faster.
