video card over clock or get a new one

[danmac]

Got my ram ordered got 2 2gig ripjaw I think is what its called and I'm ordering the PSU right now and as soon as I sell one of my rc cars I'll get my video card

[gyrene81]

Got my ram ordered got 2 2gig ripjaw I think is what its called and I'm ordering the PSU right now and as soon as I sell one of my rc cars I'll get my video card

oy, oops...uh, guess someone should have warned you about your memory purchase. unless you already have a set of gskill ripjaw memory that is the exact same spec as what you just ordered, you may have problems. at the bare minimum, the memory you ordered should match what you already have. the basic reason is, memory will run at the specs of the lowest speed memory you have in the system. let's say you have 800mhz in the system now, if you pop 1333mhz memory in the system with the existing memory, it will run at 800mhz. it can also cause random performance issues depending on the mobo, the worst of which is random bsod's.

if it's not too late, cancel the order and order an 8gb set at 4gb x2.

[danmac]

Ok I'll call new egg

[danmac]

So I'm looking at video cards what's with the different brands of the same card

[gyrene81]

quality...some are better than others and some are just overpriced fluff.

at one time pny was a good brand, then something happened and now they are crap. his was at one time a bargain basement brand but, if you shop carefully they have some decent hardware. brands like powercolor, zotac, visiontek, galaxy, ecs, sparkle...all low end junk. the brand you can generally count on to have good performance, competitive price and mostly reliable hardware are, evga, xfx, sapphire, msi, his, gigabyte and asus. the differences are going to be individual component quality and performance. evga and xfx tend to have the best warranties.

[danmac]

Then what one would you get

[gyrene81]

oy, i wouldn't dare to make that sort of decision with the hardware you have now. best i could say is something in the $250-$325 range will get you good performance and if you decide to build another system, will save you from having to buy another video card. maybe something along the lines of an nvidia gtx760 2gb from evga or gigabyte.

[danmac]

I'm just lost the cards all say their the same but have different one is 980 MHz another is over 1000 Seems like their is no set standards at all

[gyrene81]

I'm just lost the cards all say their the same but have different one is 980 MHz another is over 1000 Seems like their is no set standards at all

what you want to look for is gpu (the graphics processor) speed without overclock, amount of onboard memory, memory type (ddr2, ddr3, ddr5 etc..), memory speed, memory bandwidth (64bit, 128bit, 192bit, 256bit, 384bit).

for nvidia, start looking here for basic factory standards...
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/desktop-gpus

for amd, look here...
http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/Pages/desktop-graphics.aspx

[Bizman]

A couple of percents difference in MHz doesn't affect gameplay much. That saying, 980 is roughly the same as 1020. As you've noticed, there are no standards. Minor differences are merely a marketing gimmick, 1000+ is MUCH more than 999...

GPU memory type is a more important factor. There are cheap cards with multiple Gb's of RAM, but it might be of DDR2 or GDDR3, which are much slower than GDDR5. For AH and your rig 1GB of fast GDDR5 memory will be more than sufficient for years.

Rather than looking at the Nvidia and AMD marketing orientating specs, I'd compare different card models in Wikipedia. For GeForce there's http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce where under the title "Generations" is a link to all of the series. There you can find a comparison table covering all models and their specs. For AMD the link is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_AMD_graphics_processing_units with links to Main articles for each generation. The current models are Radeon HD 6/7/8xxx series.

[gyrene81]

Biz, i dunno about those wiki articles. ya sure things are changing at wikipedia but, there is still a lot of poor information on it, including some of what's in the nvidia and amd articles.

[Debrody]

There is only GDDR5 RAM on the lower-mid range cards, from the HD 7790 and GTX 650ti, this is only an issue on the lower end models. Theese cards can run AH well, with nearly all the eye candy turned on.
Still, i would buy a HD 7850/7870 or a GTX660/660ti, those paired with your CPU will run AH maxed out for many years.

[Bizman]

Biz, i dunno about those wiki articles. ya sure things are changing at wikipedia but, there is still a lot of poor information on it, including some of what's in the nvidia and amd articles.

Well, anything that's in the Internet should be taken with a grain of salt. Why I prefer Wikipedia over Nvidia is that the former doesn't claim that the weakest card they have on the list, the GeForce 205 (OEM),

brings impressive graphics processing power to your PC.

That doesn't sound like it were too far from

a revolution in PC gaming performance

which is from the description about the GTX Titan.

"Revolution" doesn't sound like 50 fold better than "impressive", although their prices differ by that. I know by experience that hoping and wishing can make a budget restricted buyer read between the lines things that apply only for the more expensive alternatives.

[danmac]

Thanks for all the help guys got the 660ti ordered and got the corsair PSU I can't wait to see the work with better eyes

[gyrene81]

Well, anything that's in the Internet should be taken with a grain of salt. Why I prefer Wikipedia over Nvidia is that the former doesn't claim that the weakest card they have on the list, the GeForce 205 (OEM), That doesn't sound like it were too far from  which is from the description about the GTX Titan.

"Revolution" doesn't sound like 50 fold better than "impressive", although their prices differ by that. I know by experience that hoping and wishing can make a budget restricted buyer read between the lines things that apply only for the more expensive alternatives.

and that is exactly why i specified the information i did...basic factory standards. forget the marketing b.s., just look at the factory specs and go from there. even the wiki articles have information that  over most people's heads and they don't really care about.