PC Game Advice

If I find I like playing games how much do I need to spend to get a decent video card?

What do you recommend?

Depends on how much u Wanna Spend. the x850 is ok but last yrs chipset. The X1900xtx is the top of the line in vid cards and can run into the 600 dollar range.

For car racing i kinda like the need for speed genre games. Most wanted is kinda fun. If ur into nascar, the EA Nascar Games are top notch.

Xfire uses way too much cpu and mem for my taste. I havent ran it in a couple yrs but most everyone i game with hangs out on my teamspeak anyway, so i know exactly where they are gaming at. I also found xfire doing some port scanning back then too, another reason i axed it. oh ya Battlefield 2 is a good all around first person shooter/vehicles control type game. Heavily hacked but still not too shabby.

For Fantasy, check out world of warcraft and the final fantasy series.

Half Life 2 and Fear, both really good FPS and with a good vid card, visually beautiful. I usually spend a day blowin through the game. then another week, walking through it goin....oh dam that looks sweet, hey i can shoot that computer and the parts fly out.(actual parts..ie...sb sound card, socket 939 mbs, cpu fan, ati graffix cards.... Ya no kidding.)

Have fun in the gaming aspect of the computing world...its a whole nother level of experience.

Thanks Bud thanks, I'll checkout the EA racing games....and yeah $600 for a video card, no way. lol

You can get a decent card for a couple hundred.

www.americasarmy.com...

Here is a free FPS propaganda tool for the USArmy. I hear its a pretty good game too.

Okie dokie then, check out www.pricewatch.com

x1800xt 512meg PCI-E bout 349 with free fedex ground shipping from allstarshop. ive bought a couple parts from them and they seem fine. That card will do anything you want it to do with todays games so thats a good buy for you for the price.

Americas Army is even more hacked then bf2 so be wary. Online gaming has become a funky place lately.

Edited for game info.

[edit on 30-5-2006 by S1LV3R4D0]

300 is about avg price for a decent 3D card, it wont be the most uber, but it most certainly wont suck at all.



I wouldnt worry about getting a new card til later on, til you can say damn i think i am a lil addicted I NEED THE MOST UBEREST GRAPHICS and then its on to www.newegg.com...

PS: Americas Army sucks hard specially SF crap, you gotta sit through all these craptastical training simulation to even play online on some servers...




avoid it at all costs and buy Battlefield 2 and it's Special Forces expansion, then get ready for Battlefied 2142.

i like BF2 (battlefield 2) from EA very fun 1st person shooter war games to play on PC. God i love to drive helicoter or kamikaze style my ride with c 4.

Grand theft auto san andreas is soo fun on the xbox or ps2, i bet its realy cool on PC too.

Other game i love on PC is Fligth simulator 2004

Final Fantasy 11 (MMO) pay by month, like World of Warcraft wich is very popular but imo are meant to be played by hardcore gamers only, since real money trade and economy are well establish. Go look IGE.com to realize chineese arent only making cheap t shirts or Nike shoes.

All those game works very good on my Geforce fx 5700, like 2 years old, you could get it for 50 $ now, originaly 275$, but i recenly bougth Oblivion and its working badly, so its almost time for me to get a new one or maybe Oblivion is an exception?



[edit on 30-5-2006 by eagle eye]

www.fileplanet.com...
www.fileshack.com...

You need too do some demos to see what you like !

BattleField 2 will become Battefield 2142 in the fall (check out the movie.

Fear is very popular ,also Matrix ..

Multiplayer is the way to go if you have a good ISP.

demo : www.fileplanet.com...[Multiplayer]



[edit on 30-5-2006 by vertol]

[edit on 30-5-2006 by vertol]

Originally posted by vertol
www.fileplanet.com...
www.fileshack.com...

You need too do some demos to see what you like !

Oh..you can download demos.

thanks!

Just a note on the difference in some video cards... memory bitrate is the big one now, I usually make sure people buy the 256bit cards.

So anyway, you're looking for a fun game to test your card on... best out now just to run and marvel over... oblivion for sure.

For gameply I'd have to recommend HL:2, the graphics are very nice, and the puzzles and shooting are awesome without a doubt. The new HL:2 episodes are coming out soon (First one on June 1st) and I think they support HDR (good graphics stuff, looks amazing on my old 9800xt) HL:2 covers 1st person shooting, adventure, racing (come on... you ride a hoverboat for an entire level with a shooting helicopter chasing you) but it is a little creepy at times.

If you like the modern military thing, BF:2 is where it's at. Graphics of course are quite awesome, and you spend most of the time running around and shooting everyone else. There are vehicles, and I gotta admit it's an awesome time loading all your buddies in a transport helicopter and accidentally crashing...

Planes, helicopters, tanks, jeeps, dune buggies, transport vehicles, amphibious vehicles, boats. the game has a lot to offer, and when you play on ranked servers, you can win medals and awards and get new guns.

That's really all I can give you a 100% idea about, since that's what I've been playing as of late. If you just want a shooting game, with fun monsters and crazy guns with real nice looking visuals, I'd get Serious Sam 2. It's like a funny Doom shooter with an hysterical commentary and weird stuff to do. It's a blast if you just like Shoot-em-up. Bloody too....

Try registering with gamespot at gamespot.com...

You might want to try some older games too "return to castle wolfenstein" FPS
or "call of duty" FPS, "vice city-gta" 3rd person, "rome-total war" strategy, "TOCA" series from codemasters all of which can be run at amazing speeds with newer equipment.

For newer games I would try demos first as returning a game to a store can be a bit depressing!!!

And keep your graphics drivers updated.

and finally.....Good gaming to ya!!!!

Just a word of forewarning when dealing with ATI Cards and their drivers. Do a search for driver cleaner pro. download it and install it. when u see a new ATI Driver out, run that program, chk the box that says allow multiple drivers, and add anything that says ATI on it before you hit the remove button. Then go ahead and install the new drivers after reboot. I love ATI and have used their cards for almost 2 decades now, but the driver issues have plagued them just as long. when they work, they work awesome, when the drivers are gimped...nothings happy on ur pc.

I agree with the previous poster ATI works great with proper drivers but makes things anoying when you want to play old games.


Also go look at google video theres tons of funny vids of video games just search for them World of warcraft, battlefield 2 , Final fantasy, Half life, Counter strike, i could make a link compilation too if you want but theres so many great videos now.



[edit on 31-5-2006 by eagle eye]

I love Half Life 2, you will love it if you buy it. Surprisingly it works better than UT2004 with everything on highest than Half Life 2 on highest with my GeForce 6600 GT OC. By the way, I've been able to play games made for DOS on that card without failure plus it takes off work from your computer. If your wanting a cheap, powerfull and flexible Graphics card, buy that one and it has a life time warrenty too.

[edit on 31-5-2006 by wildcat]

Not to bash ur card wildcat, but its been out over 2 years now. the 6x00 series GPU although a good chipset is now outdated. His x600 pci-x card benches about the same. an upgrade would be the 7600 for middle of the road or 7900 for a major upgrade. Since he has ATI and its superior to Nvidia(ATI doesnt pay benchmark companies to put in special code to make their cards look good) He should stick with ATI. You also failed to mention that Its a BFG made card that offers the Lifetime warranty. Theres a buttload of manufacturers out there making nvidia based vid cards. BFG is the only one offering that kinda warranty.

did you try counter-strike source yet?




original size

If you want a car sim that you can play for free, (there's an option to upgrade to get the rest of the cars and tracks), then try Live For Speed.
liveforspeed.com...
Link to DL: www.liveforspeed.net...

Originally posted by Lysergic
PS: Americas Army sucks hard specially SF crap, you gotta sit through all these craptastical training simulation to even play online on some servers...

You're making it seem alot harder than it is. I'm now 57 honor on America's Army and did the training fine, the E&E (where you got to go undetected during the night and crawl for ages) is the hardest, but only because it takes time. You don't NEED to do that training though, it's only if you want a Special Forces weapon.

[edit on 31/5/06 by Nventual]

Originally posted by Lysergic
did you try counter-strike source yet?

No Bud not yet, I'm going crazy trying to find a demo version to download.

Counter-strike, like few other games, does not have a demo unfortunatly.
I've never played it because of that reason.