Vid card, memory, PSU, oh my!

E

Elec

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Jul 20, 2000
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I also posted a question in displays which is semi-related. Basically, I got some money for Christmas and am trying to decide what to do with it. At this point, I'm probably going to spend it on a new video card or a nice LCD, either/or but not both.

If I go the video card route, I'll probably get either a 6600GT or 6800nu if I can find one cheap enough (the $250 maybe not in stock one at outpost.com is about the highest I'd go). The only games I'm really playing right now are World of Warcraft and HL2. Don't care much about trying to "future proof", just something that'd serve me well for the next year or so. Right now, I have a 128 meg Ti420 that doesn't really overclock at all. It plays WoW at 1024 and default graphic settings. It's mostly fine but has some occasional hitches and a lot of slowdown in towns (I'm on 3Mbit cable and ping is around 50-100ms so I assume it's not my net connection). HL2 is kind of similar, runs fine but obviously newer would make for smoother and more pretty.

Now for my concerns, which is what I'm hoping people can comment on. One is the effect of RAM. I've got half a gig of PC3200 right now, and I really don't want to go buying a new video card, only to find out that bumping my RAM up to a gig would have been a better fix. 512 megs of the RAM I've got is still about $120 at Newegg, so I'm not real excited about that idea. The other thing is, I don't know if my PSU is up to the task of powering a 6600GT or 6800nu. It's an Antec 330W TruePower, which is fairly good but not real beefy compared to what's out there now. Same deal as with the RAM, I wouldn't be real excited to buy a pimpy new vid card only to discover I need a new power supply to use it.

Please keep in mind that 1) I have pretty limited funds and can't be shelling out left and right and 2) I have no desire to pay big bucks for the latest and greatest, as evidenced by the Ti4200 I'm still running :D Good enough is good enough, as far as I'm concerned.
 
the psu should be enough for a 6600gt or 6800nu, the only problem is antecs wimpy fans.

If you run into a stabilty problem, modding your psu to get better cooling should be able to fix it. It worked for me anyway
 
Your PSU should be fine for either graphics card as long as you don't have 4 hard drives and 2 optical drives in your rig as well.

If you want prettier performance in HL2 I say buy the 6800nu. Then sell your old card and make some cash back so in the end you spent less than $250.00.

There is the Buy Sale Trade section here as well teh Ebay.
 
Nah, only got 2 hard drives (both 7200 rpm) and 2 optical drives (a 2X DVD ROM and a 48x CD burner).

I suppose I should also mention that my CPU is an unlocked Barton that runs at 10.5x200. My motherboard won't tolerate an FSB higher than about 210 so I could do something like buy the cheap gig of dual channel PC3200 Mushkin on Newegg and then sell the RAM (2x256) I've got now, but reselling is kind of a pain.
 
Gk22CoE said:
the psu should be enough for a 6600gt or 6800nu, the only problem is antecs wimpy fans.
Click to expand...
If you find that the fan speed is too low than just increase it w/ Speedfan.

BTW, as long as your True330 is the new revision with 22A on the 12V rail, I can't imagine you having any problems even with the power hogging 6600GT.

The beauty of Truepowers is that they have truely independent rails.
 
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