Opportunity knocks. What card do I get out of it?

I usually tend to upgrade my PC only when I can afford it, but this is a special occasion. I managed to salvage a rather important file my boss had lost recently, and this allows me to upgrade rather a lot sooner than I would have expressly needed to, and I want to ask you guys what to get. Now, yes, I know this sort of thing has been asked plenty of times before, and I know Positron has talked about it, but the thing is... I'm REALLY out of the loop when it comes to video cards, especially since nVidia seem to have abandoned their old numbering system. I already got shafted with a GeForce 8500 that worked worse than a 6600GT once, so I know I'm not a good judge of cards.

Basically, I'd like to stick to nVidia for the moment, as I'm not really comfortable going with Ati, having never used one of their cards, but if the difference is too great, then why not? I ought to have everything else, including a sound card I don't have an extra PCI slot for at the moment, but the card just... Concerns me. I have a 9800GT at the moment, which Positron mentioned as practically the minimum system requirements for Ultra Mode. I like to think of it as a powerful card, and it does run things reasonably well, but every so often something will strain it, and I STILL can't run 2008's Cryostasis with a decent framerate. To boot, City of Villains still lags me in multiple zones, dropping my framerate from the 60 it normally is down to 30 and below, where I can SEE the slowdown. And that's just looking around the zones. I can't imagine Ultra Mode would run faster than this.

I've heard talk of GeForce 200-something, but again - I don't want to get shafted by a "next generation" card that's nevertheless much weaker than my current one. So which one do I place the order for?

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I'm not sure if there is a single GPU video card that can run Crysis with the knobs turned to 11 at a reasonable framerate and resolution at the same time.

A handy chart about what's what across generation and brand is the current Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart at Tom's Hardware.

There are two things to consider when picking a video card. One, will it fit. Faster cards tend to be larger to hold all the power circuitry and allow for a larger heatsink, because of all the power it will be using. Two, a power supply that can properly feed your choice. The important stat about your power supply is the maximum wattage at 12 volts your PSU can provide as that is what the video card feeds on.

It is also best to have a power supply that have the correct power connector(s) for your video card. Cards usually include one converter cable to convert a pair of 4 pin non-SATA drive power connectors into one 6 pin PCIe video card power connector.

The GTS 250 is a bit faster than your 9800 GT. It uses one 6-pin PCIe power connector. The next up from that is the GTX 260 that uses two. The GTX 260 may still come in two flavors, the original with 192 streaming processors or the later one that comes with 216 SPs, raised when ATI came out with their 1GB HD 4870. Posi says the GTX 260 (I'm assuming the 216 version) is mid Ultra Mode settings.

No idea what price range you are looking at. At the top end for single GPU cards is the GTX 285 that Posi says will run Ultra Mode at max, for around $380 online.

Between the GTX 260 and the GTX 285 should be the GTX 275, but you can't find them anymore. It was a $250 card.

The latest and greatest from nVidia, their next generation, is due sometime in March and I don't expect them to be cheap, I'm guessing in the $450-600 range. They will be GTX 4xx series if rumors hold.

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Father Xmas - Level 50 Ice/Ice Tanker - Victory
$725 and $1350 parts lists --- My guide to computer components

Tempus unum hominem manet

What Father Xmas said, with some additional clarification: currently there are many games that don't handle SLI, Crossfire, etc. well or at all; particularly MMOs and OpenGL games. This includes City of Heroes, Champions Online, Star Trek Online, Final Fantasy XI (IIRC), Dwarf Fortress, UFO: Alien Invasion, and so on. For these, you want the best single card, single GPU solution your computer can handle (space, power in, heat out) and your budget can manage. Nvidia also has historically done a better job on OpenGL than ATI.

Previously the sweet spot worked out to the GTX 275, and I'm happy with mine; however, as noted, they weren't making money so Nvidia has stopped making them. If you can find one on a shelf for something like list price it's still a good choice if your computer is up to it. The GTX 285 is only barely better than the GTX 275, but significantly more expensive; depending on what performance metric you pick to measure, it's between a 5% and 17% improvement, for more than a 50% price increase.

Looking at the GTX 260, which is a decent option these days; if you figure that as the baseline, moving from a GTX 260 to a GTX 285 would give you about a 21% performance increase, for about an 85% cost increase. Only you can decide if that makes sense for you, but I can't recommend the GTX 285 to anyone who cares about price/performance, only the "performance at any cost" crowd.

Someone else will probably jump in to talk about ATI; in the past, I've not been impressed with their OpenGL support; and while CoH is supposed to be working to fix some long-term ATI issues with the Ultra Mode improvements, that doesn't help any of the other OpenGL games I consider important.

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Miuramir, Windchime, Sariel the Golden, Scarlet Antinomist...
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I see. So, basically, 9800GT is low-range, 260 is mid-range and 285 is high-range, as far as Posi has mentioned. Got it. I'm not some kind of hideously successful business tycoon, so price ought to be of SOME concern, which means I'll probably shoot for a 260. I'm not really looking to go maximum everything, anyway. I hate Bloom and Depth of Field, and I highly suspect I'll turn something off of Ultra Mode, too. That, and I've specifically picked a 1280x1024 LCD for the express purpose of having a lower native resolution just to combat this specific brand of problems. I'm looking at something at least remotely like 60 FPS in most circumstances.

I honestly can't say I'd even consider nVidia's latest greatest, as that price point is just out of scale with my country's standard of living altogether.

I'm also probably going to be looking at a new tower altogether, come to think of it, since the one I have now is some kind of "mini" tower that has everything riveted in and crammed together to the point where I have only a single PCI slot in there. I'll likely be looking at Windows 7, possibly x64, with it.

Thanks a bunch, guys!

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