Video Card Advice and PC Game Wishlists

Wh1te Out

Wh1te Out

New Member
Well everyone, I'm out floating in the Pacific Ocean right now at the start of my six-month deployment. It'll be a long time before I see the states again and most of my shopping is being done by my wife or (if I'm lucky enough with connectivity) over the web. I'd like to get some recommendations about upgrading my current NVIDIA GeForce 6600 256 MB video card. I'm also interested in knowing what your favorite newer games are and what games are coming out for the holidays that might be worthwhile. Keep in mind that I'm going to be single-player gaming for a long time, so multiplayer based games won't do me any good.

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 6600 256 MB (PCI Express)
CPU: Dell Dimension 4700 w/ Pentium 4 2.8 GHz
RAM: 1022 MB
 
1) What kind of games do you play?
2) How much money are you willing to spend?

Go here: Tom's Hardware

Compare your current card with others on the market. They use a faster CPU than you have for the benchmarks, but the relative performance difference can be seen. Prey is a good measure because it uses the Doom3 engine which is used by many other games.

To make it worth it, you want to at least double your current performance.

I recently bought a GeForce 7600 GT for ~$100. It's more than double the speed of a 6600 in Prey. And double-and-a-half faster in Oblivion.

If you want to absorb yourself in a single player RPG while gone for a long time with plenty of downtime... Oblivion is a good choice (upgrade your GPU first!)
 
1. Mostly roleplaying and strategy when it comes to the PC. Neverwinter Nights 2 and Medieval II: Total War have caught my attention among the games recently released. I played Oblivion on the XBox 360 so I'm not sure I'd want to revisit that unless it was a very seamless presentation experience.

2. I'd like to keep the video card upgrade at or under $200. I know that my processor limits the effect of my video card and so I don't want to go over that obviously. But I also can't upgrade my CPU right now either, so I need to get as good as I can. :)
 
Best Video Cards for Your Money

If you're willing to hit up to $200, then the Radeon x1900 or x1950 PRO might be your choice.

Be careful, though. Some of these higher-end cards require hefty power supplies (400W+). Check the ratings on your PSU.

Also, when I tried to upgrade a Dell I had a few years ago, I found that it had a proprietary power supply. I had to cut up the back of my case a bit to fit a 3rd party power supply into it.

About a year later, I ended up building a complete system from scratch.
 
actually anything higher than the 7600GT is a waste of money..that p-4 won't be able to keep anything higher properly fed.
 
Speaking of the :Total War series, I asked for Rome:Total War w/ Barbarian Invasion for Christmas :D

5909_medium.jpeg


drool
 
Rome:Total War is probably CPU-bound. Generally the more stuff you see onscreen will be impacted by your CPU. The prettier it looks will be impacted by your GPU.

Case in point, the Doom3 engine is greatly affected by your GPU because your video card does all the grunt work. Most RTS games (like the TW series) are affected by the CPU because it has to process the AI for all of those units running around.

However, Rome: Total War pushes a lot of polygons because of all those units, so a good balance is needed.
 
Good stuff so far. I'm not going to go as far as upgrading my power supply so if the 7600GT is as high as I can go then that's fine by me.

I'm also a great lover of turn-based strategy games.
 
So, err, is there some kind of Dawn of War: Complete Pack yet? Ya know, with the main game and all the expansions?
 
Chicken, Rome: Total War is an AWESOME game. It and the medieval setting are two of my all-time favorite parts of history. You won't be disappointed. It is, like all Total War games, hefty on its requirements.
 
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