Video Cards

Looks like my video cards are kaput. STW2 has been playing fine for me, till last evening. Soon as the game entered the battle screen it crashed to black and gave me a display driver error. I tried updating the drivers, no joy with the updated drivers either, none of my games will play. The card is old, NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT so I guess I'm due dammit. My system:

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9650 @ 3.00GHz
Memory: 4GB DDR2 800MHz
Motherboard: ASUSTeK P5N-D
Hard Drive: 500GB ST350062 0AS SCSI
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium

I've been considering 3 video cards. Dual 1GB GTX460, Dual 1GB Radeon HD6870, Dual 1GB HD 6950. Anyone have any experience with these cards? Any recommendations?

Well my PC died about 6 weeks ago. So yesterday evening I got all the parts together for a budget box (based on the Ars Technica budget one). Put it altogether last night, installed Win 7 on it. The video card is the relatively cheap radeon 6850. I've seen a few issues with nvidia listed here... But I was using one until recently. I'll get shogun 2 on it and see how it runs. All the graphics cards you listed are more powerful then that so I'll be showing the minimal experience ~:)

Hosa-san, you specify "dual" for each of your cards. May I ask the reason? I've always been a proponent of one good card, rather than going the two-card route, if only for reasons of game support and driver support. I would be interested to hear your rationale for going with two. Mebbe it's time for me to change my tune?

Hehehe, if I had taken your advice last time, I would've had better vid cards than the 9800GT. I bought this gaming system 2 years ago from Alienware, and it came with this NVIDIA SLI dual card system. From what I've read using dual cards increases performance and enables one to play these graphically intensive games at higher settings.

Should I go with the single card and increase my memory to 8GB of DDR3? I don't know much about building pc systems and appreciate any advice ya'll can give.

Hi Hosa, to the best of my knowledge the only reason to go with two cards right now would be if you had a ginromous monitor or a multi-monitor system (such as Beirut and his flight sim shrine). Pretty sure any medium-to-high-end card can handle modern A-list games on most monitors.

Four gigs should be plenty of memory for modern games. By the time you need to bump that you will also need to bump your processor, so I wouldn't worry overmuch. However, Vista Home Premium is not nearly as much fun as Windows 7. Since you're on Vista, you can go with an "upgrade" license, which can be had for $115 at Newegg. There are probably even better deals around, and since you are a state employee you may be eligible for even steeper discounts. Definitely want to go with the 64-bit version, to address all of your RAM.

As for videocard, I kinda fall into the AMD crowd right now, since I have no real use for GPU compute support, and the power/heat savings are real. Any of these would rock out TW:S2 with ease. Frankly, they might be overkill, since S2 is supposedly more CPU-bound than GPU-bound.

Thoughts?

I'm kinda leaning toward the Radeon HD 6870 & Win 7. Thank you for the advice, gentlemen. Now to shop price.

As Lemur mentioned AMD cards are more power efficient, potentially reducing your electricity bill compared to with an nVidia card. Something to consider.

Does that also equate to less heat?

Yes. After all a computer is little more than collection of highly sophisticated heating elements.

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Originally Posted by Tellos Athenaios

After all a computer is little more than collection of highly sophisticated heating elements.

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I'm going to stroke my Antec case lovingly and whisper, "Don't listen to him, baby," in the top fan vent.

Hehehe, with much impatience I'm patiently awaiting my parts. Only 4 business days left...:wall:

The elastic definition of the "business day" is awful when you're waiting for parts. You have my sympathies.

I think the best value AMD/ATI card you could go for right now, considering price, efficiency, and the performance it offers, is the AMD Radeon HD 6950 2gb. You get amazing performance for the price that you pay for it (around about £200). It would also offer you at least equal performance to 2x 1GB 6950's, whilst at the same time being cheaper. Also, don't waste your time with the 68xx series, since they are just rebranded 58xx's with just a couple of tweaks, hence their generous pricing.

However, it all depends what sort of games you play most. If you are playing games such as Shogun 2 and other TW games, I would recommend spending more money on your CPU, since, after getting my 6950, I didn't get much of an FPS boost compared to my old 4850! So ignoring what I just said above, you might, instead, want to invest in a cheaper AMD card such as one of the 58xx card, which in themselves, are very respectable cards :)

Hope this helps ^_^

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Originally Posted by slysnake

Also, don't waste your time with the 68xx series, since they are just rebranded 58xx's with just a couple of tweaks, hence their generous pricing.

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68xx is closer to 57xx

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Originally Posted by Psychonaut

68xx is closer to 57xx

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Ditto.

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Originally Posted by LeftEyeNine

Ditto.

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I never bought a 5xxx card, I skipped a whole genration, so I'm a little rusty on what's what with it ^^

I have an HD5870 from the end of 2009 and it still as capable such that it can run S2TW all settings maxed out.

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Originally Posted by slysnake

I think the best value AMD/ATI card you could go for right now, considering price, efficiency, and the performance it offers, is the AMD Radeon HD 6950 2gb. You get amazing performance for the price that you pay for it (around about £200). It would also offer you at least equal performance to 2x 1GB 6950's, whilst at the same time being cheaper. Also, don't waste your time with the 68xx series, since they are just rebranded 58xx's with just a couple of tweaks, hence their generous pricing.

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Actually, the performance difference between 1GB 6950 and 2GB 6950 is negligent atm. It might change with time, but now they're equal. That still makes it a good card though.

I've been digging through a lot of test results lately so.

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Originally Posted by Ironside

I've been digging through a lot of test results lately so.

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Yeah, I've been hearing that too. A 1 gig frame buffer seems to be the sweet spot, although, as you say, that's at the moment. Maybe Crysis 6 will require a terabyte frame buffer. Such things happen.

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Originally Posted by Hosakawa Tito

Looks like my video cards are kaput. STW2 has been playing fine for me, till last evening. Soon as the game entered the battle screen it crashed to black and gave me a display driver error. I tried updating the drivers, no joy with the updated drivers either, none of my games will play. The card is old, NVIDIA GeForce 9800GT so I guess I'm due dammit. My system:

Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Quad CPU Q9650 @ 3.00GHz
Memory: 4GB DDR2 800MHz
Motherboard: ASUSTeK P5N-D
Hard Drive: 500GB ST350062 0AS SCSI
Operating System: Windows Vista Home Premium

I've been considering 3 video cards. Dual 1GB GTX460, Dual 1GB Radeon HD6870, Dual 1GB HD 6950. Anyone have any experience with these cards? Any recommendations?

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i wouldn't go dual unless you are buying high-end cards, as SLI/cross-fire performance is always subject to the quality of driver/patch enhancements to achieve increased framerate.

I'd look at one 6970.

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Originally Posted by LeftEyeNine

I have an HD5870 from the end of 2009 and it still as capable such that it can run S2TW all settings maxed out.

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yeah, my 2GB 5870 is quite capable of running S2 at 5860x1200.