Honestly, I’m perfectly content with where things stand. In fact, I actually find myself preferring lower resolutions sometimes—there’s a certain charm to it that higher settings just can't replicate. If anyone needs proof that my setup isn't obsolete, I can easily rattle off a list of 256 different games I've successfully played on an 9800 over the last two years. It gets the job done just fine.
You clearly don't get it. My rig devours everything I throw at it, whether I'm running settings on medium or high; it hasn't even broken a sweat yet. So, I honestly have no clue what you're rambling about. At the end of the day, it's all about functionality, and frankly, I couldn't care less if it doesn't satisfy some arbitrary standard.
brightviper13 said:Looking strictly at the benchmarks, this card is outperforming its predecessor by about two double-edged swords. http://www.hwcompare.com/1733/geforc...0-216sp-55-nm/ That being said, even this 9800 isn't quite as pathetic when you're running things at HD resolution. It’s almost baffling if you don't look at the raw numbers—specifically the pixel rate, texel rate, and memory bandwidth. If you just glance at the sheer number of CUDA cores (listed there as unified shaders) and the bus width, the performance gap becomes glaringly obvious. Furthermore, I noticed that the 5670 doesn't actually trail the 9800 GT by much in terms of FPSi, despite all the chatter labeling these cards as "weak" and the snide remarks people make whenever they spot them. http://www.hwcompare.com/156/geforce...adeon-hd-5670/
Look, I’m telling you, this 9800 isn't something to just toss in the trash. Why on earth would I waste my hard-earned cash when I can just play every single new release with this thing? Let them laugh.
Oh, please, who gives a damn about 800x600? If you're running at 1280x1024, just play at that. I’m not blind, and frankly, everything fits perfectly within my field of vision on this seventeen-inch monitor. Let's not get carried away here; just yesterday, everyone was thrilled if they could even manage 800x600 as long as the game actually launched.
Benjamin King2 said:There’s no such thing as a two-thousand-dollar gaming card; professional workstation cards are in a completely different league altogether.
My mistake, Benjamin King2—I was actually referring to those two thousand extremists of yours.
..I finally installed that HD texture pack for Skyrim, and honestly? It’s absolute garbage. We're talking three gigs of data just so you can see slightly more detail on a single tree bark or some tiny ridges on a mug or a sword. It’s ridiculous. Anyway, I can see most of you guys here are pretty sharp when it comes to graphics, so I figured I’d ask for a reality check. I’m running this old GT 9800 512 ?? of mine, and frankly, it eats through every game I throw at it, so I fail to see the point of those $2,000 monsters out there. I know some "experts" among you will jump in to claim the visual difference is totally worth the massive price tag, but I’ll tell you right now: I play a mountain of games, and this setup with its 512 MB is still crushing everything on max settings. To be honest, who cares? I bought this rig back in 2008 and the damn thing still runs hot and fast. I remember back then, every time a new game dropped, it felt like a whole new world of graphics...
Well, damn... $133 , I can't quite wrap my head around what the actual catch is here. It’s definitely a hard sell when you consider what a kid can actually get for that kind of cash.. To be honest, this Nvidia 9800 handles just about everything I throw at it, but I’m genuinely skeptical about whether it can even stomach this HD texture pack. If it actually pulls it off, then I am officially done with all these fancy new graphics cards; it would be just like back in the day with the 6600, which absolutely crushed the competition for ten straight years... straight up...
So, it seems like raw bit count doesn't carry nearly as much weight as it used to, does it? I'm starting to wonder if we're seeing GDDR3 memory just making up the difference these days.
So, what’s the actual state of play with graphics cards these days? It feels like a complete jungle out there, honestly. Can someone please make sense of this for me? I’m looking at these high-end cards being pushed everywhere, yet they're only sporting a measly 128-bit bus. Meanwhile, I’m still sitting here with my old Nvidia 9800, which actually had a 256-bit bus. How does that even work?div>
Jesse Brown90 said:..moderator, oh great moderator, you poor, miserable excuse for an administrator,..
..you hit the nail on the head, Jesse, even though I managed to fix those high FPS issues entirely on my own without any "expert" guidance. This issue isn't just limited to ancient titles; it pops up in modern games too. Our moderator Benjamin King2 seems to think the only solution is to go out and buy some piece of junk hardware from a junkyard, but I’m telling you, there’s a way to have it all. You just install NVIDIA Inspector, do a little light tweaking with the frame limiter, and suddenly your FPS drops right down to those smooth, desired levels.. The performance gain is frankly indescribable. I can play what the moderator calls "prehistoric games"—though I thought Americans referred to them as "Stone Age classics"—just as easily as if /which I highly doubt/ I were to sit down and indulge in a more recent release for my own enjoyment.
Benjamin King2 said:If you're looking for an upgrade for that GPU, something like a GTX 560 or a Radeon 7770 would actually be worth your money, which means spending upwards of $333. Honestly, I'd just milk that current card for all it's worth until it finally kicks the bucket, because you won't find anything decent for peanuts.
,look, here's the deal: since I don't exactly have the luxury of endless free time to sit around gaming and messing about, whenever I do find a spare moment, I stick to the classics. I don't have much patience for these modern, overhyped pieces of junk. The other night, I finally sat down to play Blood 2—after finishing off the first one, naturally—and for the first time ever, my little graphics card decided to start acting up. My weapons are twitching constantly, almost as if Caleb has developed Parkinson's disease. People on the forums are claiming it’s a high FPS issue and that I should cap it at 60, but the real culprit seems to be an issue specifically with Nvidia cards; apparently, the ATI crowd doesn't run into this mess. So, what am I supposed to do? You have no idea how frustrating it is when a legendary character's hands are shaking uncontrollably during a fight. It completely kills the immersion, and since you've definitely played Blood, I know you know exactly the kind of nightmare I'm talking about...
The rest of my setup includes four gigs of RAM and a 3.0 GHz Pentium dual-core, paired with a 550W power supply, plus an additional little inquiry for you all: do I actually need anything better? Because honestly, this 9800 of mine absolutely crushes just about everything hitting the market right now. I’m hunting for these answers because, frankly, I can’t make heads or tails of this jungle anymore; things have changed too much since my day. Back then, there were really only two players on the field—ATI and NVIDIA—where one was clearly superior to the other, and you’d have to slave away for months just to afford one. You’d see reviews of those top-tier ATI and NVIDIA cards, but they were nothing more than pictures in a magazine, accompanied by some nauseatingly eroticized prose written by those wannabe tech-geek freaks.
I consider myself an old-school gaming veteran—a true FPS enthusiast with the lightning-fast mouse movements and the sharp eye needed to navigate the eternal struggle of VSync versus non-VSync... The thing is, I feel like my knowledge of graphics cards hit a massive wall somewhere back in 2006.🤷🤷 🤷Back then, I was running an ATI 9250, and then jumped to a 9600 Atlantis just to get Oblivion to run; man, that card bled me for a hundred bucks, and let me tell you, I wasn't looking back at ATI for a long time. After that, I moved on to the GT 9800 Nvidia—absolute gold for whoever engineered that beast—and I can't forget the legendary 6600; may its soul rest in peace. What I'm really trying to figure out is: what does the mid-range market look like these days? I'm talking about those solid, reliable cards for people who actually play games—not necessarily cranking everything to ultra, but just enough to dominate. Even though that 9800 still feels like an absolute powerhouse, you never know when some new game with impossible requirements might finally knock it off its pedestal. I'm asking you guys to guide me through the current state of GPU warfare, but please, don't quote me anything north of $500. I'm currently traveling through the States on business, so I'll be gone in a few days. The Wi-Fi here is practically a national treasure—it's incredibly fast, so I'm busy downloading everything under the sun while I can.
Larry Ortiz5 said:If you ask me, Windows Vista was basically just a beta version of Windows 7. It never really sat right with me. In my book, Windows 7 remains the gold standard—it’s easily the most intuitive and efficient OS we've ever seen. But hey, if you're feeling nostalgic for Vista, be my guest. 😉
I completely agree that it felt like an unfinished beta; I'm fully aware of how much of a resource hog it used to be. But here's the thing: with all the modern updates they've rolled out, I honestly can't tell the difference anymore, aside from the UI. A buddy of mine actually mentioned that their daily updates are practically identical now, and frankly, I have no reason to doubt him...
Could someone please clarify the actual difference between Windows 7 and Windows Vista SP2 with all the updates installed? I recently picked up a used laptop that came with an original installation CD for Vista, and I decided to set everything up at home on my rig—all five updates included. Honestly, it’s running like a dream; it handles every game I throw at it flawlessly, and I couldn't be happier with the performance. Prior to this, however, I was strictly a Windows XP user...