Help me upgrade my video card, please

ive personally have had no trouble with ATI video over the years

but

yes their drivers are screwball (but since amd took over they are getting better)

yes they have odd feature sets that do not play well with some others (ie 15 bit color)

yes nvidia and ATI go around eachother to make the next model faster than the last(course the 7 series cards were designed to outperform ati's 9 series cards x=10)

over all in my experience, yes ive had to fiddle with some settings here and there but ive never had a program just not run, i just prefer nvida (ati's graphics seem grainy to me and id rather not fiddle with driver settings)

course theres a large group even here on the forums that cuss ATI for all the crap they went tru and still didnt get some program to run correctly

Speaking of the 7600GS - what are the best video settings for it in SL? Is it best to max each one or no?

go to a really popular place with all the settings turned down and slide them back up untill it gets too choppy

really tho, I keep my settings wth low tree detail low particle counts and half to 3/4 on pretty much everything else

yea i have a 6600GT but my GF has a 7600GS

i picked up an XFX / Geforce 7950GT / 512MB , nice card, cost me $200 at the time, maybe about 6 months ago. Fantastic with second life, windlight's on Ultra settings, drawing distance is really high and displays high-prim areas nicely.

Other video games need a lower resolution setting if I want high detail. Bioshock & Trackmania are my 2 faves, Bioshock requires a lower res setting, trackmania lets me go to town.

3D rendering apps work like a charm.

"8800" was the buzzword around the office a few months ago, people were overclocking them, they all appeared to love that card more than their wives and girlfriends. I cant afford one.

I picked out mine in particular because it's heatsunk instead of fan-cooled, as its in a system that also runs as the house's A/V center. It's completely silent.


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in the nvidia vs ati battle, ATI seems to have better power management, resulting in running cooler. Apple's kept ATI in the iMacs for that reason.

I have an 1st gen macBook Pro with ATI, never had a problem. I wont talk about my horrible, crippling experience trying to run DirextX thru XP running on paralells however. I was asking for it anyways.

Wait a second - when did Windlight come out?
I read it's not out yet.
I don't see any settings for it either.

p.s.: Glad you're enjoying your card!

Windlight's in "first look" (sort-of beta):

http://secondlife.com/community/firstlook.php

even more fun with a powerful card is enabling the Debug menu and turning camera constraints off. great for photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/courtgoodman/2110329742/

(PS: thats on the geforce-equipped system)

Ok, buying a new comp, and choosing a card in my price-range... I've narrowed it down to two:

For $98.99:
MSI GeForce 8600GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127293

and

For $74.99:
MSI OC GeForce 8500GT 256MB 128-bit GDDR3 PCI Express x16 SLI Supported Video Card
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127295


So, is the extra money for the slightly newer card worth it? Even when the 8500 appears to have specs that are extremely close? (60 fewer MHz on the core clock vs 200Mhz more on the memory clock for the 8600.)
What am I missing that makes the 8600 cost about $25 more than the 8500?

I don't really know enough about current tech to make the decision for myself without more input, so I thought I'd bring it here, and see what others said.

(and yes, I know I"m being cheap, but all I need it to do is run SL, and Oblivion well.)

For reference, the system I'm buying is this one:
http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_00372318000P?vName=Computers+%26+Electronics&cName=Computers+%26+Printers&sName=Desktop+Computers

Hewlett-Packard HP A6230N Pavilion Desktop Computer
AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual-Core Processor 5600+
w/Windows Vista Home Premium
Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz
Hard Drive Capacity: 400.0 GB
RAM Total Installed: 3 GB

Easy choice, 8600

8600 - Piksel/vertex shaders ; 32
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec): 22.4
Fill Rate (Billion pixels/sec): 8.64
http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=proddesc&prod_no=1195&maincat_no=130&cat2_no=136


8500 - Piksel/vertex shaders ; 16
Memory Bandwidth (GB/sec): 12.8
Fill Rate (Billion pixels/sec): 3.6
http://global.msi.com.tw/index.php?func=proddesc&prod_no=1228&maincat_no=130&cat2_no=136

Do not buy 8500 if you can get 8600 , 8500 uses TurboCache™ , wish is pretty crap, basicly borrows ram from your system to vid card wich is slower then onboard vid ram gddr3.

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/12/03/best_graphics_card/page6.html

If you can find a 8600 GTS, I'd grab that myself. Looking at the chart you might find a card that performs about as well for a lot less money. Looking at the 8400, someone might have an old Ti4200 in a dust bin they will probably give you for free.

Windlight has been in and out for the past 4 months or more, however, they have only just in the past few weeks offered a version not considered Beta. A recent update has cured some of the old client issues and we can expect another one soon.

Get it here http://secondlife.com/community/firstlook.php