Computer Update Advice.

So yes, Soon I shall be updating my computer, and I have a question of you people:

Should I bother Updating my Videocard. It’s Currently a Geforce Ti 200, and If I update I’m looking to about Radeon 9600XT 256MB. Is it worth me updating the Video card as of yet, or should I leave it for a while?

Yes.

Care to expand on that a bit, Rain man? Is my card that outdated that You recommend I update it now?

If you’re looking to play the next generation titles I.E Half-Life2 and Doom 3 as well as the upcoming Splinter Cell title than yes updating your video card is a good idea since older video cards, especially rhe nvidia’s, will not support half of the engines’ features in those games and you won’t be able to play with fluid speeds and a decent framerate. Also with the X800 Pro and X800 XT Radeon’s coming out soon look for prices to drop significantly on the 9600 XT and 9800 XT. If I were you i’d go for the 9800 XT once the price drops.

Now that’s an answer. Thanks Drak. I will give it a bit of a wait, and go for the 9800XT :slight_smile:

Well it’s always a trade off, so called next generation games are built to use next generation hardware that may or may not be available months before the game goes gold so it’s almost certain that there will be some little thing that isn’t at its peek unless you have a graphics card on the bleeding edge. The trick is finding a balance, how much do you care about such and such graphical element and more importantly, how much are you willing to spend to get it.

This is an argument I’ve had with Drak on several occasions; sure, every gamer wants a top of the line PC that can run everything, but such a machine is outright out of the price range of most gamers, and the regular upgrades to stay at the cusp can be very high. There’s also the fact that when you’re at the very forefront of technology you tend to overpay things for what you get. On average, you might get a 20-25% increase in performance for a 50-75% increase in cost and it won’t really last you that much longer than a good piece of hardware. Are you willing to pay more than the hardware is worth knowing you’re only going to get a few more months out of it than you would have gotten for a card at half the price.

You mentioned you have a Geforce Ti 200, I’m assuming you mean the Geforce3 Ti 200, which I believe has 128 MB DDR memory. (but I might be wrong I looked it up real quick). If that’s what you have than honestly I wouldn’t recommend changing it, you already have an excellent video card, better than what most people have.

What I would suggest is that you wait, take the money you would have spent on a new video card and put it aside and wait until those games you want actually come out. Once they do try them out and see if you really feel you need to buy the card at all, but don’t buy an expensive piece of hardware because of what a studio tells you their game is going to need. They tend to over exaggerate.

I have a 9800 XT, and its working me wonders :slight_smile:

Only game with slowdown is Far Cry, and even then its only miniscule

(barring activation of AntiAliasing and uber-high resolutions like 1600X1200).

Hell, I got UT2k4 running max all settings, 1600X1200, and at excellent framerates (Im guessing somewhere in the 60s, I havent used the FPS counter myself)

Well Ds, The card was correct, the memory was not; It’s a 64MB card…well, at least this one.

and I’m fully aware about the Cost-to-Power ratio thingy. I’m just thinking if my current card will be able to handle the upcoming games. Halo2 and Half-Life 2 are the main games I’m looking at, but also KOTOR2 (but that never really pushes the limits of things :p).

Bah, so much easier with outher hardware. You want more space, you get 120GB HDD. You want new videocard, you get GEFORCE 34534 SUPER ULTRA LITE EDITION XT or RADEON 234234 PRO DVI EDITION 4! >_<

Wait.
At least until you find a game that will need more than the GeForce TI 200.

Well, I know certain geforce 4s cant run thief: Deadly shadows. And don’t worry, I know what you mean by there being too many video cards out there (though after a while, you get used to it). For a while I had trouble discerning between the Geforce FX 5200 and Geforce FX 5750, despite the major differences between the two (performance-wise, at least).

Also, I believe that you may want to go with a radeon if your in this for Half-life 2. I hear that HL2 is much better on the Radeons than on the Geforces. hell, the 9800 XT comes with a coupon for a free copy of HL2! Halo 2 Im not sure on, but I dont believe it matters too much.

Byt be prepared to do some driver rollbacking to get KOTOR to work well. Cant say for sure in regards to KOTOR 2, but I know firsthand you want to rollback to catalyst 4.2 on KOTOR 1 to get any decent performance.