What to look for in graphic cards?

joe123

Can anyone mention some points to look out for in searching for a good graphics card such as sharder model and things like that as I want to learn myself in what to look for because at the moment im fairly clueless.

Also the graphics card i was going to get on komplett has just vanished for some reason so could someone recommend me a good one that would play the next elder scrolls game and total war and games such as that. Around the 300 euro mark.

btw which is better out of these two cards. Both by radeon but different names...

Sapphire Radeon X800XL 256MB GDDR3 PCI-Express,Tv-Out, DVI-I, Full-Retail

or

MSI Radeon X800XL 256MB GDDR3 ViVo PCI-Express, RX800XL-VT2D256E, Retail

The Real B-man

full retail your best bet

jozi

The other one is ViVo thou.
For nvidia and ati the higher the number the better the card.
Then there's the few letters after that that make all the difference, im not sure of the order anymore im affraid. (its covered in a sticky but needs updating)
A card as good as the x800xl is the nvidia 6800gt (incase your wondering)
Nvidia also has better linux support if you like your *nix distro's

Jozi

joe123

The Real B-man wrote:

full retail your best bet

Whats the difference? Does full retail mean all wires/cables are included etc?

Im getting a sli motherboard where you can use two pci express cards but do they have to be by nividia or can you mix and match any two graphic cards?

Kintarō Hattori

You can't mix and match I'm afraid- the two cards in an SLI setup have to be the same.

Cake Fiend

joe123 wrote:

Both by radeon but different names...

Not exactly. ATI make the Radeon GPU, which is the workhorse of both cards. But, each card manufacturer (MSI and Sapphire in this case) can change the configuration of video RAM, clock timings, cooling, etc. You should look up both cards in google and see what the differences are. You'll quite possibly find sites with direct comparisons between the two cards.

Nukem

joe123 wrote:

Im getting a sli motherboard where you can use two pci express cards but do they have to be by nividia or can you mix and match any two graphic cards?

Ati = Crossfire (2*ATI cards)
nVidia = SLI (2*nVidia Cards)
Cannot mix and match the two makes,you actually have to have the exact same cards for Sli and one Crossfire ready card with the ATI and one exact (non/ or crossfire).

Really no point in getting ATI and SLi ready mobo IMO.
Nukem

Jammer

OCUK have savage prices for the BFG 7800GT's - €340

You get a much better card for an extra €40

You can add another one at a later date for SLi