[Bonfleck]

I can't imagine my nvidia mx400 will suffice for SH3. I've been debating for a while now about which card makes the most sense to buy next. Any advice from those more savy in this department to steer me in the right direction would be greatly appreciated!

[Oesten]

Depends on how much money you can spare, and how long you intend to keep the card for.

Me, I always buy one step behind the cutting edge. Not the very newest and fastest video card in the manufacturers range, but the next fastest. (Better value for money that way, as the fastest cards are always ridiculously expensive.) Also I keep my video cards for at least two years before upgrading again.

With such cards, I can run the latest games at high resolutions and full anti-aliasing at high frame rates without breaking the bank.

If SHIII is the only game you intend to play, you will probably be OK with the third or fourth-fastest card in the range, since SHIII's graphics don't look as advanced and resource-hungry as the latest first-person shooters and flight sims.

[Gollard]

Hi Bonefleck,


Well, like Oesten said, depends on how much money you wont to spend

But heres some information on video cards, I have just recentley, purchased an ATI Asus Radeon 9600xt 128meg video card, It cost me 210 euro and that was from the following company http://www.komplett.ie

To be honest im over the moon with this card, its a really good card, it handles all games, at full detail maxed out. The card also got great reviews, and I also seen that it out performs the nvidia fx5200

There has been issues with ATI, video drivers in the past, but I think ATI have got there act together now and that problem is sorted out, last week they released new ATI drivers 4.10 I havnt had any problems with ATI cards or drivers yet

Im not sure if you preffer Nvidia or ATI ? But im really happy with the above card, and I would highly recommend it, also you get a nice bundle of cd's and applications with the card, they ATI also give you a voucher for half life 2 free game, with voucher, but half life isnt out yet, but even with out the free game over, I would still recommend the ATI Radeon Asus 9600xt 128meg vid card.


PS Hope This Points You In The Right Direction.

[McBeck]

[Seeadler]

Be in mind not every new video card works with older mainboards.

Most of the new cards needs an AGP8 supported slot and bios to get their full speed but older mainboards supports only AGP4. With a modern card in an older pc (CPU lower than 2GHz, 256MB) and if it already works with old hardware, you have the video card to handle such graphics from SHIII but you will have no fun with it, the bottleneck is the CPU/RAM system itself.

[NeonSamurai]

You can run most agp x8 video cards on the older boards, i run my ati radeon 9800 pro on a agp x4 board. Its not ideal and slows the card down, but it does work and i can get a better board later

[R Hardman]

[Anachronous]

even the 9200 ATI out performs the FX5200

Just read some reviews. ATI are cheaper and perform better when it comes down to numbers.

[Der Teddy Bar]

[McBeck]

[Andy]

I was the most hardcore of Nvidia users. Was being the operative word. Speed Shmeed. Yes I run a Radeon 9800XT in both desktops and my Alienware also shipped with a 9600. But image quality must also be addressed. And in that there is no argument. ATI is second only to Matrox in that regard. As stated above, there was a time some years ago when ATI's shoddy driver support was the bane of their existence. That has changed and their unified driver support - excepting the mobility line - is much improved. And as for the mobility line, Omega handles all of the updates based on the Newest Catalyst drivers.