Graduation = Comp Upgrade, Need Advice

So I'm finally getting my Bachelors in Computer Science and saying goodbye to school forever (hopefully). With this occasion comes the blessings of lots of money, so I've decided to upgrade.

I'm having problems with deciding on my graphics card though.

There's the Gigabyte 9800 GTX+ 1GB RAM http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814125245, which I have a Gigabyte Geforce 8800gt right now and have been quite impressed with the brand.

And there there is the EVGA Geforce GTX 240 http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130370

So I'm not quite sure about what to get. I am trying to stay under $230; so if anyone can drop in some advice I would greatly appreciate it.

Congrats on graduating! I can't help you with graphics cards (games and 3D modeling/rendering are not my forte), but I can tell you what I would probably get myself if I were in the market for a new desktop: a 3.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 with integrated graphics, possibly the Intel GMA X4500 (integrated graphics have improved a lot), 4 GB of RAM, and three 500 GB hard drives with which I would use software RAID-5 (thanks Ynot).

If you have a CS degree, I would guess your main computing needs would be CPU intensive rather than GPU intensive, e.g. compiling lots of code. If you really need a dedicated graphics card, perhaps let us know what you'll be using your computer for?

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Originally Posted by dsr

Congrats on graduating! I can't help you with graphics cards (games and 3D modeling/rendering are not my forte), but I can tell you what I would probably get myself if I were in the market for a new desktop: a 3.16 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 with integrated graphics, possibly the Intel GMA X4500 (integrated graphics have improved a lot), 4 GB of RAM, and three 500 GB hard drives with which I would use software RAID-5 (thanks Ynot).

If you have a CS degree, I would guess your main computing needs would be CPU intensive rather than GPU intensive, e.g. compiling lots of code. If you really need a dedicated graphics card, perhaps let us know what you'll be using your computer for?

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Thanks! 5 long years I am SOOO ready to be out.

Most of my work is done at the office and the .NET framework runs very smoothly on my athlon x2 5000+, so upgrading my CPU isn't a priority.

My forte is gaming, the latest and greatest and the most GPU intensive.

do NOT get the 9800!! AVOID AT ALL COSTS!

I recommend the HD4850. its probably the best performance thats fits in your budget. a lot better than the 9800.

and the extra memory will not make ANY DIFFERENCE AT ALL. You'd need a crazy fast GPU to take advantage of that. Years to come. Huge overkill / not worth the $

I'm not exactly how it compares to the GTX260. you might wanna go ahead and look and benchmarks for that

^^

what he said don't bother with the GTX240 and if you want the latest games and high settings the 4850 is more likely to give you that then the 9800GT, I spent a little more and got the 4870 512mb which on average is supposed to give a 15% boost over the 4850 however it was about £50($75) more but I don't plan to upgrade for a while so I thought why not get as much as a I can for my budget now.

Anyway the 4850 should play everything, apart from Crysis of course...(fail engine) on high settings really well. Another reason for choosing the ATI card is that for now anyway, especially in the 8800GT and 9800GT(not sure about GTX 260), the nvidia cards can't handle AA so well so it's causes more lag when you turn it up with them.

HOWEVER, if you can push your budget to get a GTX 260 I would consider it as new games coming out next year may be starting to use physX, now nVidia cards(the new ones) have the ability to use physX well as the compatibility is hard-wired into them, like they have the ability of a separate physX card. ATI's don't which means if you buy a game using physX(which will be shooters at first, not all 2009 shooters but a small number will, I know the PC version of Mirrors edge is using it and the difference is amazing, you get hanging flags which react to were you should them, waving in in the breeze way realistically and glass smashing looks a lot more realistic.

If you have an ATI card the physX processing will be loaded on the CPU more, if you have a good QUAD core or something that probably wouldn't make it so bad but you'd get better FPS if you had a good nVidia card, or so they say.

However if like me you have a good ATI card already you get buy a cheap nvidia card, anything in the 8000 series will do, 8600GT recommended to be your physX card. With the nvidia control panel you can tell that card to process only the physX for you, so if you have two PCI-e x16 slots on your mobo that's an alternative, although by 2010(when more games use it if it catches on) I'll probably get a better GPU anyway.




...whew that was an essay. Basically in conclusion get a 4850, if you have the budget for a GTX 260 though, think about that too, but the price difference is pretty large GTX 260 costs £200 here which I bet is like $280-300 for you where as 4850 should be more like $200 maybe a little less.


actually found the 4870 cards for your price range, newegg has a few but here is an example:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814131117

comes with a custom heat sink too which will help temperatures. However a tip for you, most new cards run very hot. For the ATI ones the solution is to download the latest drivers and with them comes the ability to manually increase fan speed using CCC(catalyst control centre) you get a cool slider bar, I have mine at 40% when gaming, you don't hear it when you start gaming and it keeps my temps below 55c(although RTS games aint so intensive I guess as shooters). When browsing I turn it down to 22-25% then it's silent, still a whole lot quieter then an xbox 360.:P

My 8800GT runs almost all games well on max settings, and Crysis on High, do you really need a new graphics card? It almost seems like overkill unless you're looking to play Crysis on Very High (which no card can really do well anyway).