As a continuation of my previous thread (instead of bumping that one),
http://laserpointerforums.com/f60/looking-new-gpu-77457.html
I have finally gotten a GPU, so now it completes my gaming rig:
Powered by Gigabyte Superb 460W PSU,
Gigabyte M52L-S3P Motherboard (unfortunately, revision 1.0)
Athlon II 7750+ Black Edition CPU (due to rev1.0 MB, cannot unlock cores
), OC-ed to 3GHz
2GB DDR2 RAM memory (Kingston or some cheap other)
500GB HDD space (counting free gigabytes already, need more space!)
And my crown, Galaxy's take on nVidia's GTX560, got it here:
Newegg.com - Galaxy 56NPH6HS4IXX GeForce GTX 560 (Fermi) GC 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card (ofcourse it's out of stock. Try Amazon)
The only sub-$200 GPU with 2GB of GDDR5 memory on 256-bit bus. That, and 336 Fermi cores done in 40nm process, yields more power than my CPU can actually handle, so sometimes I get hickups in games in transition areas, like recently, I just finished Metro 2033 on DX11 with everything fully maxed out (including tesselation and advanced DOF), it stutters a bit when new area of level is being loaded but most of the game framerate is very smooth and enjoyable.
I display all that on my... God, what's it been... 6 years old maybe? Maybe 5 years old, ASUS 22" 1680x1050 monitor.
You can see how it all mismatches across the low-high fields.
This gaming rig actually originates 3 years back, original configuration had Radeon 4670 as GPU, and entire rig was bought for about $400. Spend full week researching and, you know, NOT sleeping, so I can pick up the single best gaming rig for nearly-not-enough budget, and the rig I got served me VERY well.
I was amazed that through the 3 years I've had my Radeon 4670, it performed above my expectations. I didn't expect too much out of sub-$100 GPU but you could game DX10 just by lowering the resolution a bit, and beside Crysis 2 and Metro 2033, I don't think there was a DX9 game that wasn't at least nicely playable at max resolution, if not perfectly smooth.
When I got that rig 3 years back, it replaced an 8 year old machine I grew up with. It started out as:
Unknown power supply and mother board,
128MB DDR,
Athlon 1700+ XP,
nVidia 440,
20 GB Hard drive
Ended up as this before eventually being replaced:
Still unknown PSU, MB changed at some point for new one,
512 MB DDR,
Athlon 1700 XP overclocked to 1.6 GHz (original 1.2 GHz or so)
nVidia FX 5200,
20+40 two HDDs.
So you can pretty much imagine the gap bridged with Radeon 4670 machine. As a gamer at heart, I was missing the world for 5 years of owning that old bucket, only hearing about new games from friends, reading informatics magazines etc etc.
The miracle that was the parents blessing for actually buying a new rig, is a story for another time, this post is getting lenghty as it is.
