The 8800GT (and related cards) were legendary for their time, and go very well with a Core 2 Duo. You can find them very cheap, and they're still quite potent (although you definitely have to turn down settings on newer games, and even then they're getting old). I used my old 9600GSO (384MB version, it's an 8800GT with two memory chips disabled) as my main card for six or so months recently since my 6870 fan was bad (it still is, I've just decided to add it to my watercooling loop when I can afford a block instead of RMA'ing it). The only games I had to turn down settings for were GTA4 (demanding) and All Points Bulletin (terribly optimized), though I also turned AA and AS down to only 4x on Source games to be safe.

A GTX260 would probably be the next step up and quite a bit better; if you could find one cheap I'd go for that. Equivalent ATI cards would probably be an HD4850 (roughly equal to an 8800GT if I recall right) or an HD4870 (~GTX260 level). With one of those cards, especially a 260 or 4870, you should still have a fairly decent system for current games, as long as you're okay with dropping a few settings.

Anyways that's just my two cents. Hope that helps!

CapnCrunch53 wrote:

The 8800GT (and related cards) were legendary for their time, and go very well with a Core 2 Duo.

Thank you for the reply.

I see prices on the 8800GT ranging from about $50-100, and GTX260 cards for $80-200. I have no idea which one to get though. (company, specific model, etc)

CapnCrunch53 wrote:

With one of those cards, especially a 260 or 4870, you should still have a fairly decent system for current games, as long as you're okay with dropping a few settings.

I'm not real demanding when it comes to graphics. I mean, I love good looking graphics, but so far I've been playing games in 800x600, or 1024x768 if the game doesn't stutter at that resolution. I don't even think half the games I have use AA or AS. Probably the most advanced games that I've played so far have been Halo and Jedi Academy! JA ran great, but in Halo, I had to turn off particle effects or the game slowed down too much. (note these were on my Win98SE system) I was probably missing out on some other graphic effects too by not having pixel shaders.

So really, as long as the games run in a decent resolution and I'm not missing any major portions of the graphics, I'll probably be happy. 😀

The one thing I can't stand in games though, is slowdown. I'd rather a game run at a low resolution, than to have it suddenly lag while playing. A while back I tried playing Unreal II. The game kept crashing, but I managed to make it through several levels. One had you accompanying other soldiers through a foggy landscape and fighting off enemies. The lag during the fighting was so bad that half the time I had no idea what I was shooting at.

I can deal with less than stunning graphics, but I can't deal with the game suddenly dropping frames in the middle of the action. You try to do a quarter turn to face an enemy, the game appears to freeze, then it suddenly kicks back in with you facing away from the enemy and getting shot in the back. Or you come to a complex part of the level and suddenly it's like someone filled the map with molasses because every mouse movement takes half a second to register. Then you go inside and the game speed returns to normal since it only has to render a single room.

If you do get a 260, look for the 216 version. They basically cost the same, but the 216 has a good 10% extra performance. I actually have one next to me that i'm not using any more. I WANTED to put it into my computer and use it for F@H and the few games that have physx, but because of heat, i'd have to lose my x-fi sound card. 😜

Rekrul wrote:

I see prices on the 8800GT ranging from about $50-100, and GTX260 cards for $80-200. I have no idea which one to get though. (company, specific model, etc)

I don't think the company matters all that much, particularly since we're looking at budget stuff here, though some will say otherwise.

I'm told a useful basis for comparison is to multiply the number of cores by the clock rate, as listed on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nv … rocessing_units . That would be why the core 216 version of the X260 ("216:72:28") is superior to the original ("192:64:28").

Tom's Hardware has a monthly article series with recommendations -- "Best Graphics Cards for the Money #month #year" -- I'd check that out. Here's the May 2012 link:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-gr … eview,3107.html

GTX460, 560 or Radeon 6850/ 6870 are a good match for C2D and have enough grunt to run anything. I've had great results playing old games on even new Nvidia hardware BTW.

If you are going to aim for a G92 based card you might as well replace the cooler. As for the GTX 260 don't end up with the 65nm version unless you are willing to one day replace the chokes on the card. Got two gtx 280 and won't be to much longer before they need new chokes for the power vrm -_-

Don't go no higher than a 6850 or a gtx 460.

get an ati 7750, doesn't need any extra power, is not that far away from your cpu performance-wise, very low temps, state of the art features, will last you a long time as long as you dont go 1920x1080 and beyond. it will play all the recent games, and all the older demanding games you mention up to 1680x1050 with AA and AF np. it might help a lot if you overclock your cpu a bit. can you post your current pc specs?

If you want it to be period too an 8 series is a good bet. Either an 8800/9800GT(X) or an 8800GS are good bets. I had a GS from 2008-2011 and it was a great card. I only upgraded because I was given a faulty 9800GT that was fixed by ovening it! 😳 😁

The graphics card in my dual-core system is PNY brand, equipped with the 9800 GT chipset and 1024MB of RAM. Not nearly the best but definitely good enough if you're not wanting to spend a fortune.

When looking for a new card I recommend keeping an eye on the texture fill rate and the memory bandwidth. The trick is to get a card that has these numbers pretty high compared to other cards without being too expensive. All of the other numbers you might see (including core speeds) are pretty useless.

The operating system makes a difference too. If you're still using Windows XP and have no intention to upgrade anytime soon then you can't take advantage of DirectX 10/11 features, and since the 200+ series of nVidia cards aren't really that much more powerful than the 9 series cards, there's no point spending the extra money on a 260 GTX or such. Heck, even with the new 600 series cards, you have to get up to at least a 640 GT with GDDR5 memory before you finally have a similarlly powerful card to a 9800 GT. :o

I think it goes to show that graphics technology has kinda been stagnating for the past few years. >_>;

I say, take a ATI radeon 6850!! (its little bit faster than a Radeon 4890 & 5830)

Its an almost recent graphics card, so easy to get! And its more power efficient then the older ones!

This machine iam using now has this specs:

Intel Core 2 pentium 45nm E6700 @ 3.2Ghz
4GB of DDR3 ram
Asus P45 P5Q3 Deluxe WIFI APN.. (PCI-EXPRESS 2.0 board)
AUZENTECH X-Forte 7.1 soundcard
HDDs
Zotac 240GT AMP Edit..

This computer runs very well..

But iam going give it a litte upgrade..

Going to Intel core 2 Q9550..
And graphic card would be an Radeon 7850 or an Nvidia 660 TI or so..
And put an Marvell SSD 256 GB SSD M4 in it, because those are cheap now!

Maybe going to use dual boot.. Windows XP and Windows 7 32-bit.

I agree. I would definitely look for something new-ish. Radeon 68x0 or GTX 460/560. They are much faster than a 4850/8800/9800/GTX 260.

Radeon 6850 is superior to Radeon 7770 in many cases.

If you want cheaper than that, I would look up Radeon 6770 or even 6670. Perhaps GeForce 550 Ti but it tends to behave strangely in the tests I've seen that look at frame rate stability.

There's little point in going retro for a Core 2 box GPU. Unless you are like me and have an AGP Core 2 system! 😉

Yeah, for a Core 2 Duo based system, the logic is to get the best card affordable, imho. The answer may seem bland and crude but there's no reason to get anything "mediocre" since all the games you mentioned will run happily with the faster, more powerful graphics cards.

Graphics compatibility between "older" games and newer graphics cards is much better with Windows XP though.

Robin4 wrote:

I say, take a ATI radeon 6850!! (its little bit faster than a Radeon 4890 & 5830) […]
Show full quote

I say, take a ATI radeon 6850!! (its little bit faster than a Radeon 4890 & 5830)

Its an almost recent graphics card, so easy to get! And its more power efficient then the older ones!

This machine iam using now has this specs:

Intel Core 2 pentium 45nm E6700 @ 3.2Ghz
4GB of DDR3 ram
Asus P45 P5Q3 Deluxe WIFI APN.. (PCI-EXPRESS 2.0 board)
AUZENTECH X-Forte 7.1 soundcard
HDDs
Zotac 240GT AMP Edit..

This computer runs very well..

But iam going give it a litte upgrade..

Going to Intel core 2 Q9550..
And graphic card would be an Radeon 7850 or an Nvidia 660 TI or so..
And put an Marvell SSD 256 GB SSD M4 in it, because those are cheap now!

Maybe going to use dual boot.. Windows XP and Windows 7 32-bit.

A 7850 would be pretty bottlenecked by a Core 2 system I'd have thought.

you're going to see a difference with that c2q only if you play the few games that take advantage of the multiple cores which is not that many.

One more vote for the GTX 460. Get the 1GB version.

RichB93 wrote:

Robin4 wrote:

I say, take a ATI radeon 6850!! (its little bit faster than a Radeon 4890 & 5830) […]
Show full quote

I say, take a ATI radeon 6850!! (its little bit faster than a Radeon 4890 & 5830)

Its an almost recent graphics card, so easy to get! And its more power efficient then the older ones!

This machine iam using now has this specs:

Intel Core 2 pentium 45nm E6700 @ 3.2Ghz
4GB of DDR3 ram
Asus P45 P5Q3 Deluxe WIFI APN.. (PCI-EXPRESS 2.0 board)
AUZENTECH X-Forte 7.1 soundcard
HDDs
Zotac 240GT AMP Edit..

This computer runs very well..

But iam going give it a litte upgrade..

Going to Intel core 2 Q9550..
And graphic card would be an Radeon 7850 or an Nvidia 660 TI or so..
And put an Marvell SSD 256 GB SSD M4 in it, because those are cheap now!

Maybe going to use dual boot.. Windows XP and Windows 7 32-bit.

A 7850 would be pretty bottlenecked by a Core 2 system I'd have thought.

Why should it be a bottleneck?? the 7850 is just een little bit faster then the older 5850..

Robin4 wrote:

RichB93 wrote:

Robin4 wrote:

I say, take a ATI radeon 6850!! (its little bit faster than a Radeon 4890 & 5830) […]
Show full quote

I say, take a ATI radeon 6850!! (its little bit faster than a Radeon 4890 & 5830)

Its an almost recent graphics card, so easy to get! And its more power efficient then the older ones!

This machine iam using now has this specs:

Intel Core 2 pentium 45nm E6700 @ 3.2Ghz
4GB of DDR3 ram
Asus P45 P5Q3 Deluxe WIFI APN.. (PCI-EXPRESS 2.0 board)
AUZENTECH X-Forte 7.1 soundcard
HDDs
Zotac 240GT AMP Edit..

This computer runs very well..

But iam going give it a litte upgrade..

Going to Intel core 2 Q9550..
And graphic card would be an Radeon 7850 or an Nvidia 660 TI or so..
And put an Marvell SSD 256 GB SSD M4 in it, because those are cheap now!

Maybe going to use dual boot.. Windows XP and Windows 7 32-bit.

A 7850 would be pretty bottlenecked by a Core 2 system I'd have thought.

Why should it be a bottleneck?? the 7850 is just een little bit faster then the older 5850..

My mistake! I've not been keeping entirely up to date with graphics cards, although I think what I said is true for some of the higher end cards? 😀

Sorry I haven't responded to all the suggestions. I started to get confused again, looking at all the different model numbers and specs. Then I had major problems with my old system (changed a ScanDisk setting telling it to not check long filenames and it renamed most of the files on my system to their DOS names!) so now I'm using the new one.

A friend recommended an ASUS GT 440;

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?It … #scrollFullInfo

$95 seems like an average price for it, and the reviews are mostly positive.

A couple people mentioned it blanking the screen for a few seconds when it gets hot, which is something I would definitely like to avoid. However many also mention over-clocking it, and I've never really been one to OC. I prefer stability rather than the extra little bit of performance I'll get. Also, many people were running games at high resolutions with all the settings turned up to max, while I'm usually happy playing at 1024x768.

Being able to turn all the settings to max is nice, but all I really want is for the games to not have major graphical glitches, not to crash and to not lag.

Does anyone have any opinions on the above card?