low profile graphics cards for TDM

MrMunkeepants on 13/5/2010 at 21:53

I was PMing with Bikerdude, but he seems to have disabled PMs so I'm opening the conversation here. I'm looking for a low profile graphics card suitable for the Dark Mod that will let me play new games for a couple of years and still let me run FMs in T2 (which I've heard can be tricky).

Quote Posted by Bikerdude

Assuming you have the slot space then the following card is the only option worth considering as the GT240 (which is the same as the 9600GT costs $20 more.... And the equivalent ATi dosent get close in price or performance.

A low profile 9600GT (same as GT240) (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814187060) $79 on NewEgg

I looked around the site and found (http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010380048+1069633099+1068320729+1419531894+1014655227+1320923120&QksAutoSuggestion=&ShowDeactivatedMark=False&Configurator=&Subcategory=48&description=&Ntk=&CFG=&SpeTabStoreType=&srchInDesc=) several 1gb video cards for a similar price, or even less than the one he recommends - wouldn't those be a better deal, more power for less money? or is there something special about this one that makes it worth getting over the newer cards?

I've been out of the video card/PC building game for so long that model numbers and lingo don't mean much to me anymore, so any help would be appreciated. my specs:
Windows XP sp3
Intel Core2 6600 @2.4GHz
2GB RAM @2.39GHz
ATI Radeon HD 2400 pro 256MB 64bit

Ladron De La Noche on 14/5/2010 at 02:09

Even though the GeForce 9600 GT is much older than the GeForce GT 220 it actually is much more powerful judging by the spec charts I've looked at, by quite a large margin. More memory bandwidth, larger memory bus width etc. etc. It should handle the Doom 3 engine quite well. As far as ATI 4650 cards are concerned, I'm not sure how they would compare. Benchmark reviews might give more info on this.

My vote is for the GeForce 9600 GT. :)

Brian The Dog on 19/5/2010 at 10:10

Yes, the main thing to look for in graphics cards these days is how many pixels and textures etc it can draw on the screen each second - i.e. the fill rate. A graphics card may have lots of memory, but if it cannot number-crunch the data fast enough, then most of that memory sits idle.

512Mb is probably enough for most things even today, providing you've got a fast enough card. My nvidia 9800GT is 512Mb and plays games from 2006 with full bells-and-whistles.

Wiki has articles listing the bandwidth, memory and texture fill rate for each of the (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Nvidia_graphics_processing_units) nvidia and (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units) ATI cards.

Renzatic on 20/5/2010 at 02:46

A 9800GT should be able to play even most recent games with alot of the bells and whistles on. Save for a couple of PC exclusive games like STALKER: Clear Sky and Crysis, my old 8800GTS 512 and DDR1 based system can still chew through most games at 1080p with only minimal hiccuping.

A 9600GT should perform about on par with mine, provided you run them at slightly more humble resolutions. Hell, it might even perform a little better, since you have a beefier Core2Duo system backing it up.