I'm about to buy a new video card, and want to see if the video card will make the difference in frame rate that I want before I purchase it. Here is my current setup: AMD Phenom II X4 945 3.15 GHZ 8 GB Memory Windows Vista 64bit AMD Radeon 4850 (2 in crossfire mode which isn't supported by any sim I want to use) I am planning on getting an AMD Radeon 6950. Will this be sufficient with my current other hardware? The frame rate on rFactor2 with the Radeon 4850 sucks. I can't race with any cars on the track. Any suggestions would be great.
i was talking to a computer guy recently and in his opinion he told me to go str8 to a gtx680 4gig or a 7970 3gig not sure how correct he was but im sure some ppl no better than him.
The 6950 is a good card, but there are better out there now. I use the 6950 2Gb version for triple monitor setup and I can run graphics at full for the most part. I do turn down the AA to 2X though. For a card that will continue to perform I would suggest one of the 7XXX series as they are newer and will have more support than the 6XXX series later down the road. If cost is a concern, then perhaps staying with the 6950 is the way to go. If you are going to be going with the better card, then I would go for no less than the 7870 ATI card or the GTX 580 or 660 ti from nVidia. Keep in mind though that at some point your CPU will be an issue as you are only running at 3.1Ghz per core which is probably going to be a little slow when it comes to hardcore gaming and newer titles in the future, but for now it should be fine. Oh btw, going for the top of the line isn't a bad idea if you have the cash to throw around, but performance isn't going to be noticeably faster than the slightly lower end cards which cost a bit less.
I would recommend the AMD Radeon HD 7970 and also the 7950, they are amazing cards, you can play any game at max without problems. I've used NVIDIA's cards since the MX400 until 9800 then I've decided to switch into ATI to test the 45nm manufacturing tech (at that time) and I've achieved a better performance in graphic processing power with less power consumtion (and less heat generation) and this factor seems to be valid until today. One thing I've always take into consideration was the Motherboard's Southbridge. I've always matched the southbridge's manufacturer with the GPU and never had an issue.
I can understand that point when talking about AMD, but what if the Southbridge is Intel? Are you saying you would buy an Intel graphics solution?
I'd like to toss something else into the mix... Forget about ATi vs nVidia for a moment. What was the mother board designed to do??? I've seen great processors teamed up with fantastic video cards with a boat load of RAM... Yet the machine doesn't game well. Oh, they overlooked the Mother Board, which in my humble opinion, is the most important part of the system... After all, everything else you bought/buy gets plugged into that Mother Board. If the "foundation" ain't there... don't try to build on it. A ladder is as good as it's weakest wrung. A chain is as strong as it's weakest link. A computer is only as fast as it's slowest component. Hope this helps! Bryan
The reason there are motherboards out there that don't seem to perform as well as others in games is usually because the BIOS is not setup correctly. You can buy a 500 page book on just how to setup the BIOS and this will help quite a bit. Everything from RAM timings to how to setup the IO addresses and such make a difference on how the system will ultimately perform. This is the reason that Alienware was so good before they sold out to Dell, they spent a lot of time in the BIOS as well as tweaking Windows to get the most out of their systems.
Extreme site and find a thread on your specific motherboard by a experienced user. Example this one covered my board. http://www.overclock.net/t/963798/msi-p67a-gd55-review-and-oc-guide I agree with Bryan, first thing I would get rid of the weakest link ...... Vista
