What video card should I get???

[RamenNinja]

The computer I have now is a AMD Opteron 250 2.41ghz and it has pci express and sli. It has about 2.75 gb of ram. Do you know what card is out there right now and will give me the most bang for my buck? And do I need to ugrade my memory? I am willing to spend around $300 for the video card.

[rburke]

The computer I have now is a AMD Opteron 250 2.41ghz and it has pci express and sli. It has about 2.75 gb of ram. Do you know what card is out there right now and will give me the most bang for my buck? And do I need to ugrade my memory? I am willing to spend around $300 for the video card.



oh i love these questions. First recommendation is bang for buck get a ati radeon 4890 there is a 1 and 2 gig version 1 gig should be fine get 2 gig if you can, but the selection is more limited. they come from many manufacturers so go with one with good reviews and above all a good warranty.
If you want a more in depth evaluation of your options please feel free to email me. I love building computers and helping others get good deals.

oh and on your ram its ddr 1 so i do not recommend trying to upgrade for a few reasons, the moan one being super high price on this older memory. the second be lack of good options since its been all but phased out of the market. If you had wanted to upgrade that the better option would be saving some money and building a new system which i would be glad to help with.

Also i had a similar rig to yours as my previous computer i loved it. but my new one is my baby

[RamenNinja]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102847#spec

What do you think of this video card?....

Will it work with the set up i have?

[rburke]

yup sure will, although your power supply should be noted. how many watts is it and what brand. It more likely meets the minimum requirements, but always want to play it safe.

note that that card is not in stock though. and will be in stock until the 21st which is not really guaranteed.


also another thing to note is the 1 gig model is about 30-40 bucks cheaper and you have more options. Im not familiar with sapphires warranty and could not see it in the description. Some of the pros is that it comes with HDMI and native display port compatibility so that is cool. Some of the reviews had DOA products but that is common in all products. Also some benchmarks show better performance in a 1 gig card than a 2 gig card. Its a matter of preference. I have a card with 768 mb of ram and ive only seen one game ever that used it all. Overall looks like a solid card.

oh yeah new cards like this are fucking huge so if you have very small case it may not fit but in most cases it will.

[RamenNinja]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Productcompare.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048%20106792627%204018&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=True&CompareItemList=N82E16814102826%2CN82E16814121308% 2CN82E16814102847

I'm looking at these 3 right now.

[RamenNinja]

I ended up getting the ASUS.

[rburke]

what card did you have before? and do you play pc games.

[RamenNinja]

I use to have a NVIDA Quadro FX 4400. I think it died on me because I can't even stream video without it dying on me. I can't even play Warcraft 3 without it flickering then crashing.

[rburke]

ah well when you do get it welcome to true next gen gaming, this current gen of video cards will fucking blow you away.

[RamenNinja]

Thanks! Excited to see the power of this ASUS.

[RamenNinja]

Apparently I have a .... ENERMAX EG651P-VE FM 24P 550 WATT POWER SUPPLY. Would that be enough?

[graduisc]

should be good for now, that sounds in range.

[rburke]

yes that meets the minimum req youll most likely need to be using some adapters to plug it in but they will be included with the card. it used 1 6pin and 1 8pin

[RamenNinja]

Do you think it's better to get two 23 inch screens....

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236052

or one Samsung 32inch LCD TV Screen

http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=9301604&type=product&id=1218080215881

I know the 23s will be clearer for sure. Just want to hear what you guys think.

[rburke]

god get 2 23's that would be sexy. I dont really like tvs for displays. Although i also have one for use when watching movies. 2 monitors will be a lot more beneficial to your workflow. not to mention the monitors resolution will be much higer so your games will look so much better if you play pc games that is. the difference between 720p and a 1920x1200 display are not even comparable.

[RamenNinja]

Ok. I'll go with the SEXY combo then.

[matthewparis]

Freaking awesome.

[Daisuke]

if u have couple extra bucks(depend on RAM), I recommend you to have RAMDISK on your PC. I installed 8G ram for less $100, then 3.25G for windows, 4.75G for cash of MAYA and Photoshop. became very faster especially when you bake(or Re-bake) AO or Normal and work on a lot of layer in Photoshop. for Display, I think 2*22-24 is really cool. I also do that.

[rburke]

if u have couple extra bucks(depend on RAM), I recommend you to have RAMDISK on your PC. I installed 8G ram for less $100, then 3.25G for windows, 4.75G for cash of MAYA and Photoshop. became very faster especially when you bake(or Re-bake) AO or Normal and work on a lot of layer in Photoshop. for Display, I think 2*22-24 is really cool. I also do that.

You can also get solid state drives now, better than having a ramdisk IMO but both are good options.

[RamenNinja]

I have no clue what you guys are talking about. Haha. What is a solid state drive?

[RamenNinja]

Ok I read up on the solid state drive. I kinda get it but still kinda lost. =P

[matthewparis]

Ok I read up on the solid state drive. I kinda get it but still kinda lost. =P

Essentially It's just a giant flash drive w/ better read/write speeds

[matthewparis]

I looked at my motherboard specs and it says I have thisExpansion Slots1 PCI, 1 AGPI dont think thats for a pci video card?

Nope in that case you would have to use an AGP based card. Which tends to make you choices fairly limited : /

[rburke]

lol i almost responded too then i realized it was a spambot.

[graduisc]

i didnt even get what the spambot was trying to say. D:

[matthewparis]

That was a spambot? Made perfect sense to me...

[dabu]

yeah, its this new uber spam bot that feels just like a real human nerd. crazy right? Still don't know what theyre doing, but I find it amusing...

[rburke]

lol they do it for fun, R&D whatever bot this guy wrote can scan our posts and pull relevant info, and then respond by reassembling posts of similar topics from other sites that are stored in its data base.
It reminds me of how gmail has adds that are generated to match the content of the current email your reading, funny stuff.

:Yeah this one was pretty spot on, the one on Marquis thread is just into driving topless.

[matthewparis]

yeah, its this new uber spam bot that feels just like a real human nerd. crazy right? Still don't know what theyre doing, but I find it amusing...

I can see me and this bot are going to get along very well. :P

[rburke]

someone should do a model of a spam bot, one with subtle hints of human nerd.

[paulpeter]

Try for a used 3850 or 8600GT ... anything that doesn't require an extra power connector. In reality anything with dual dvi ports should be just fine.

[Instinct]

OK, here's another video card question. While working in Maya the screen will lock up but once I toggle to another view it will come back and allow normal functions.

I KNOW I saw a posting on this about what needs to be done to fix it, but I can't find it anywhere. I'm using a GeForce 7600GS. I would go higher, but I have an AGP port and don't have the money to bump the motherboard, memory and all that jazz up.

[WipEout]

Instinct-- If you haven't already, update your video drivers. If that doesn't work, try rolling them back to an older version. That might take some digital legwork, though, because that means A) finding older drivers (they're still out there though) and B) Uninstall/re-install/reboot/boot Maya, check for bug/repeat as necessary.

That's the only solution I can think of though, as I've never come across such a problem in Maya's GUI.

RamenNinja-- If you're still interested in upgrading your RAM, I have 2 Gigs of DDR1 PC3200 if you want it. the exact type is OCZ Performance Series OCZ4001024PF. That's two 1G sticks. My Google-Fu only found one retailer, selling them at $49/GB-- no way in hell I'd ask nearly that much of a fellow Gamestepper!

If you're interested, PM me an offer and we can work something out!

[rburke]

add this to your maya env file its in your documents/maya/mayaversion/ called maya.env
MAYA_GEFORCE_SKIP_OVERLAY=1

also go into your nvidia control panel and under 3d options there is one for threaded optimization. set that to off for best compatibility with maya.

its as super common problem on a number of the nvidia cards under various version of maya. although i get the error in xp but not when in windows 7 so it may have to do with what os your using as well, either way that should fix it up.

[Instinct]

I knew you would have the answer. :D

[rburke]

just so you know the solution is stickied at the top of the help me out forum. for some reason i never see the stickies either, even though im staring right at them.

[Instinct]

My SA isn't what it should be. Not enough sleep I think.