What to do.. what to do!!!

[ifO]

I'm with peris, buying top of the range stuff is a fools game, always buy mid-high range and you get bargains and yeah maybe you are always a couple of games behind playing the latest title on high, but if you really want that it would be cheaper to buy a 360.

My most recent gfx card (8600gt) was £70 2 months ago, which IMO is staggeringly cheap compared to what I've paid in the past. It solved all my woes and I can play all the games I want (Source games mainly) on max. I'm never gonna pay over £100 for any piece of hardware evar again!

Deads be aware you can get a PCI-E mobo super cheap (mine was < £50) and make the small leap to a decent card. I had a 6600gt agp card before and it was wank.

Highly recommend http://ebuyer.com - good place to read customer reviews and sniff out which are the best value for money (even if you then buy from another site).

[NormySan]

To be honest, you can't run crysis in dx10 at very high with a 8800gt. It's unplayable. Atleast if you want to play at a decent resolution. Even with a dual 8800gt setup you get low fps. You need a monster rig to run this game.

And in reply to what peris said. The 8800gt isn't a high end card, not if you look at the pricing. Depending on where you live you can get the card way cheaper than €250. If you compare price per fps the 8800gt is the best card to get imo. If you wanted a card like this about 1 month ago you would have to buy a 8800gtx at about €450.

I haven't relly checked out any reviews on the new ATI cards. I think they are a tad bit cheaper and a tiny bit slower but i belive you still get alot for youre money.

[Thrik]

'High-end' usually refers to the performance, not the price. There's absolutely no question that the 8800 GT is a high-end card, because it's now in the top few most powerful cards (the higher ones being the new 8800 GTS, the 8800 GTX, and the 8800 Ultra).

NVIDIA touts their *800 line of cards as the high end in general, so any card with that number is considered high end in any given series regardless of which letters are affixed to it. Mid-end would be the *600 cards (8600), and the low-end is something like the *200 or *300 (8300).

These cards will remain high-end cards until the GeForce 9s hit, at which point we'll have a new set of ends (the low-end 9300 or something, the mid-end 9600, and the high-end 9800). Well, unless they decide to change their scheme because of comparisons to ATI's older cards like the 9600 Pro.

[D3ads]

There's a 7600GT going for £40 new on ebay, it's the last AGP model before everything went PCI-E, 512 version, shader model 3. That would do nicely until I upgrade properly, I don't think the motherboard I have has any newer versions that will support my components as they are so it'll probably be a case of going for a new rig and keeping my HD's, DVD drives etc.

Btw, how do I check what kind of RAM I have?

[Thrik]

Look on the RAM.

[D3ads]

I was afraid you were going to say that, my computer is amongst all sorts of clutter on the desk, looks like I'll have to tidy up tomorrow and look inside

[Synthesizer]

Or you could try http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php I'm pretty sure it tells you what type of ram, and possibly the manufacture.

[NormySan]

I would guess that you have ddr1 ram.

[dissonance]

God, I love pie.

Srsly though, wait until next year. Set that money aside, invest it or something.