Suggested 3D graphics card?

[MYNI Secretary]

I've been searching for ages trying to find a compatible 3D graphics card... The problem is: i need one with a 1.5v support... Apparently, all the latest GeForce cards from NVidia all support 1.5V (they said so anyway).

So if you were in my case, what would you buy?
I need any card which has full Dx9 support and shader etc. BUT- I need a cheap one (Max £40 GBP / 78$ USD)
Oh, just to mention- i have no idea about ATI cards... as long as it is 1.5V, then I'm OK with it.

Thanks for your help/advice

[Spartan Erik]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814134041

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814121223

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130292

Those all look pretty good to me.. I've got a 256 MB 8600GT, and it runs Crysis and COD4 rather well on medium settings

[Jarryd]

I wouldn't have any clue for a high end 3D card for that price, if you want to pay a /little/ bit more, 512MB GeForce 8800 GT.

[Smith6612]

I'd say go with nVidia's 8 series card (preferably at least an 8800GT with 512MB of RAM), and if you want to pay a little more, go with the 9 series cards. As for ATi, look at their Radeon HD lineup and compare them to the nVidia cards I suggested. Otherwise, shoot for a card that does DirectX 10. They have better performance than the DX9 cards.

[Agenator]

I have the same as spartan erik, and I agree, the nvidia are really hot right now. Btw, I'm getting aprox. 100 fps on half life 2 with that card so theres a good idication of the level of performance youll recieve.

[Jarryd]

It depends what game you are going to play, Half Life 2 is not as graphical as CoD4 or Crysis, it really all depends what you want to play.

[woiwky]

The geforce 200 series and radeon hd 4000 series are being released over the next couple of weeks I believe. So if you can wait a month or so, you'll find the prices of previous generation gpu's to be significantly less.

[Zangetsu]

hmm 40GBP eh then you're looking at a low end video card
which would be an
Chipset GeForce 8600 GT
memory 512 MB
Type of memory DDR2
GPU speed 540 MHz
memory speed 800 MHz
Interface PCI-e 16x
RAMDAC 400 MHz
TV-out HDTV
Video-in no
DVI 1 x
D-sub 1 x
DirectX 10 support
OpenGL 2.0
128-bit floating point
full Shader Model 4.0 support

any thing else ?

i wouldnt go for the 280 GTX cuz its 500+ so unless you van afford it and have a big powersupply, motherboard to match i totally wouldnt recommend it

[Spartan Erik]

When it comes to DX9 and DX10, I can barely tell the difference based on screenshots that I have seen:

http://www.gamespot.com/features/6182140/index.html

Is it worth the extra to shell out DX10? Maybe in the long run, but as of now the difference is negligible (just minor brightness/contrast differences IMO)

[Smith6612]

You may not see the difference, but have you ever paid attention to some of the HDR lighting, pixel shading and soft shadows? There is a bit of a difference and if not, a huge difference between DX9 and DX10. I have 3 DX10 cards in my computer, and when I turn off DX10 modes and run on only DX9, there is a lot of noticeable changes between DX10 and DX9. Besides, DX10 does have better performance.