Looking for video card

Hey! I'm looking to buy a new video card for my PC because the one that I have makes my SL experience not so nice (I have an ATI Radeon x550). I read numerous threads and articles and reviews and System Requirements and still couldn't decide as most of them were outdated. What I am looking for is a video card that would run SL, 3d aplications, Photoshop etc. smoothly. For what I've read around the web I was thinking about an ATI Radeon 4850 as it has a good price/performance ratio, but i'm open to suggestions because i'm not sure about it's SL and 3d capabilities. I also need to upgrade my Power Supply to sustain any video card I would buy so throw in a few hints about that too if you like!

I have a 3.0 Ghz Pentium 4 processor, 3 Gb of RAM and an Asus P5VD2MX motherboard.

what kind of slot do you have?

http://www.whatthetech.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/slot-types-thumb2.jpg

PCIE 16x

well i saw a geforce 9600GT for 130$

over the ati you mentioned (4850) its gpu speed is 25mhz (650mhz vs 6225)faster,
and pretty much equivalent every where else

it was ~50 bucks cheaper, and historically nvidia has less chance of problems with SL, and for about the same price of the ati you can get a 9800GTX which is 120mhz faster

as far as power supply what does it claim its wattage ratings are, and what is the amperage of the +12v (you can find that on the side of the unit most of the time)

For a good power supply I can recomment the Antec EA-650. It's a 650 watt PS with a continuous load rating of 540 watts across two 12 volt rails.........adequate for almost anything you would put in a computer except maybe some super gaming rig. I got mine at Best Buys about 6 months ago for about $80 USD.

It has the power connectors for your higher performance graphics cards. And, I'll go with Osgeld and look very seriously at nVidia over ATI if your reasons for upgrading your graphics is for SL play. Just a little less problematic with drivers that work with SL.

multi rails can be over rated just fyi



and i bought a stronger psu for 70$ online, + 10$ sh its really worth shopping online, roughly the same price but better unit




well not only that, but nost of the time nvidia cards are generally faster for less cost, in the prices i looked up 170$ buys you a 130$ nvidia card thats just flat out faster, yea barley but its still more bang for your buck

and nvidia, for the most part, has rock solid drivers, which ATI hasnt had the luxury of saying since the (128 bit) rage days, well over 10 years ago, they are too busy trying to specialize, beating nvidia by a point or 2 in a small few applications while their total screwyness totally borks them in others

it might work for everything you want, ive owned plenty of ATI cards and have never had an issue as far as running, but a faster ATI card + screwyness usually (to me) ends up in lower performance and loss of quality, except for those 3-5 games they have cut a deal with to promote the goodness

i dont like ATI cards, they have useless drivers, and imo poorer quality graphics for a maybe 2% fps boost if and when it does work

as i said i have never had a issue with ATI running something, but that doesnt mean i haven had to fiddle fart with drivers and totally screwed up settings to get them to do it, just to have a poorer quality image and maybe a few fps performance boost

nvidia, i plug in, install the drivers and forget for 6mo to a year to occasionally update a driver, and for the price they are usually faster, then later ATI slightly surpasses them

and of course by then nvidia has a better card out for less anyway ...

Second Life is, by far, the most resource intensive program you will run. Shop with SL in mind and you can't miss on this one. By the way, have you seen the comparison on the SL blog?

http://blog.secondlife.com/2007/11/15/typical-frame-rate-performance-by-graphics-cardgpu/

First of all thank you all for your replies...and I haven't seen the GPU comparison chart until now. It looks interesting, although I can't see there any of the new GPUs from Nvidia and the best one seems to be the 8800 series is it safe to assume that anything newer than the 8800 would be better? I ask that because in many reviews I've read on the web the 8800 GT for example tops a lot of the new cards from Nvidia. And from the new cards, which one could be better: the 9800 GTX, the 9600 GT, etc.? And another question: does the memory of the card matter that much...i mean should I look for an 1 Gb or 512 Mb graphics card?

The 8800 series is the go, later ones are better but also the 8800 has the largest following for compatibility and production volume. I've recently seen SL run on a 6200, 7600, 8800, 9600 and now 9800. and the only difference is how hard you can push all the setings like reflections & particlles, all were stable at maximum resolution.
8800's run dual monitors well too, so you can have SL on one and photoshop / forums / workstuff / Utube / whatever on the other.
Go for at least a 512Mb card, more may not be any better depending on your operating system and computer CPU/memory.

Well I have done some research based on your opinions and it comes down to two cards: Nvidia GF 8800GT 512 Mb and Nvidia GF 9800GT 512 Mb. The chips are identical in performance (they are practicaly the same card) but there are some differences. I would go for the 9800 GT because it has Hybrid Power and HDMI, but I'm not sure that it would run on my PC. My MB (Asus P5VD2-MX) has an PCIe 16x port (which would be just fine for the 8800 GT) but the 9800 is built for PCIe 16x 2.0. Would a 9800 GT run properly on my PCIe 16x motherboard?

As for the power supply...i think I would go for a Thermaltake 750W...

And for the OS part ...I now run on Windows XP but I would upgrade to vista after i get a graphics card....

Check out these two Nvidia issues on the Jira:

http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-7957
http://jira.secondlife.com/browse/VWR-8211

Also, Nvidia shipped a bunch of bad graphics cards that have defective chip insulation. Countless computers are failing because of it -- desktops and laptops, HP, Dell, Apple . . .. The GPU overheats and dies prematurely, and the overheating also affects and tends to break the wireless and even fry the motherboard.

Here's a link:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13554_3-10020782-33.html (Written before the full extent of the problem was clear. For example, desktop systems started failing later, probably because they aren't powered down as often.)

Manufacturers are doing an extended warranty repair of affected computers, but that approach includes things like a bios update that just makes your fan run most of the time (so much for your battery life) and replacing the affected GPU free of charge . . . with another just like it that fails too.