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Hey guys. I'm not exactly knowledgeable in the area of video cards, so I was hoping you guys could lend me a hand. I'm planning on building a new computer sometime soon, and I could use some suggestions on video cards.

My budget is roughly $200-$400, and I want the best performance I can get for my money; it doesn't have to be the top of the line, just very good for the money. I'd like to be able to run Oblivion at near-max settings with the high-res texture replacement mod, and Crysis, Mass Effect, and other newer games at moderate settings, with a good, solid FPS count (I'm sick of lag.)

So, with that in mind, what can you guys suggest? Ad while I'm at it, any suggestions for CPUs?

Thanks! :)

What's your OS?

You can get a very solid DX9 card for less than $200; capable of doing all that you asked (I know, that's what I did). If you don't have Vista and aren't getting it soon, do that. You need Vista to use DX10 anyhow. If you have Vista or will be getting it shortly, you should be able to pick up a pretty darn good DX10 card for your price range, though I will admit that I haven't been shopping for one yet myself.

-- CPU-wise --
I'm an AMD man, myself. Their processors also tend to be less expensive than a similarly powerful Intel rig. I've been very happy with my Athlon X2 6000+, though if I were going to rebuild my computer today, I'd probably splurge on a Phenom. Just to have the four cores...I really don't have anything I need that for. Or that can use it, actually...

Incidentally, Mass Effect's system requirements are really not that high. Oblivion is probably much more of a test of your system than Mass Effect will be.

I'm not sure whether I'll be using XP or Vista yet, to be honest. Assume Vista, but feel free to throw in any DX9 suggestions as well. As for the CPU, AMD or Intel is fine. I'm really just fishing for suggestions at this point, to give me some idea of where to start looking.

If you're going for Vista, you should consider DX10 card :P

May be interesting:
$500 pc, $1000 pc and $1500 pc

I would make sure first that your system will be able to put out the amount of information your graphics card is capable of generating. If you have a sluggish processor, there's no point in getting a $500 graphic card. And if you're going to invest any decent sum into upgrading one part, you may as well wait a while until you have the money to upgrade the rest of your rig.

Throw us your system specs and we should be able to let you know where your limitations are regarding cards.


Right now I use a GeForce 9600GT 1.0Gb PCI-Express card, but that's running on an AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 6000+ 3.01GHz and 4Gb of memory.

Again, if you're upgrading for a game, be sure the rest of your parts have pipes big enough to handle the information your card will try to put into them. Otherwise your computer will automatically reduce the card's output and you won't see a great improvement.

(And get Vista 64-bit if you're doing this for gaming. And 4Gigs of RAM to run the OS and games smoothly)

I'm building a completely new computer, from scratch. My last one is built around AGP tech, so for how much I'd spend to replace the motherboard, processor, video card, and memory, I may as well just build a completely new rig.

Good boy! Suggestion time! (Go to NewEgg) I'll link you what I purchased for my build just recently, just to give you an idea what to look for.

Processor: I'd stick with a solid dual-core rather than spending extra money on a quad-core chipset. Reason? There are no games out yet (not even Crysis) that fully utilize 4x Core technology. By the time big titles come out that do, the processors will be half the price and twice as powerful. Go for a Dual Core AMD with ~2.8-3.0GHz.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6819103773

Memory: 4 Gigs, ideally 2x 2Gig sticks. I recommend Corsair or Crucial because it's quality stuff. Remember, PAY attention to the ratings on each part. Some may look better but I'd read through reviews.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6820145194

Motherboard: Anything that has a SATA setup. IDE cords are a [censored] to deal with, and I don't much care for them. Plus SATA gets rid of you having to dick around with jumpers on your hard drives. I have an ASUS for a brand name, so there's a good starting point.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6813131013

Video: I'd look at the GeForce 9600GT 1.0Gb PCI-Express. It's a solid card, runs Crysis on nearly maxed-out specs (It'll run Oblivion without problem), and it's just nice to look at. But watch out! It's a big card and takes up a lot of space. Make sure your case is large enough.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814130345

Audio: If you're really picky about sound, look for an audio card. If not, run with the onboard audio that comes with your motherboard. I'm running on my motherboard's audio and it works just fine for gaming. Good motherboard = good audio. Don't waste money on an audio card unless you're going to run something like Dolby 5.0 Surround.

Hard Drive: Pick up a solid 500GB drive and you'll be set. Make sure you look at reviews for this as well because you can buy shoddy drives.

DVD/CD Drives: I suggest an Asus media drive WITH LightScribe. Make sure it comes with LightScribe because it's a damn good feature for burners. Keep your eye out for anything 48-50x playback speeds.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6827135156

Power Source: If you're running a good gaming rig, pick up a good power source. Let me see if I can't link you the one I have. It's heavy-duty and works like a charm.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6817703009
I recommend that whatever build you get, you get this power source. It's excellent.

Case: Getting a case is almost as important as all the parts, am I right? ^^ You want it to look good, function well, and not fall to pieces on you if you bump it. That's hard to do with all this flashy plastic junk out there. What you want is a case that is fairly spacious but with plenty of airflow, because a big case with small fans will mean unmoving hot air inside. I.E. overheating.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6811129021
This case is absolutely fabulous. It comes with two 120mm fans in the front that suck air in, a gigantic 200mm fan on the top that blows air up and out, and another 120mm fan in back to cool what didn't get obliterated by the big guy. Not to mention space for another optional fan in the clear case. Each fan has speed controls wired in so you can control their speed manually. Big plus in my opinion. And it's QUIET. Not to mention the power source is on the bottom of the case rather than the top, so you don't worry about hanging up a huge power source (like the one I showed you) and heat goes right into the upper fan.

If you don't grab this case, this is definitely one to compare things to. READ REVIEWS. Trust me, if something is going to go wrong it is in those reviews. Those $50 awesome looking cases on there will fall to bits and people will tell you.


Rule of thumb: You get what you pay for. Again, read the reviews. Dig deep and make sure you know what to expect when everything comes to your front door. The parts I listed to you, after all the sales I got them for, ran me $1,250. I'd make that your overall budget line.

Hell, here's a copy of the invoice I have for my rig. It should give you a good idea of what you should look for, and should expect to pay for:

http://i170.photobucket.com/albums/u250 ... nvoice.jpg

You're not far of on a good rig there FastChapter. But the way the CPU+GPU market has tilted today you can choose to make a cool/silent system with an AMD CPU and an ATI graphics card and get a decent systemor you can just put raw muscle power in it and go Intel CPU and Nvidia graphics.

Personally I'd go with Intel Core 2 Duo with the 45nm size. Thes things overclock so easily and you really don't need that much knowledge. You just gotta get a motherboard where you can increase the system buss a few megahurtz and then test it a while with some gamesystem benchmarks for stabilty. Worked well for me and the thing is at 3.4GHz from standard 2.4 and I haven't turned the fan up to any noisy level. And quadcore is only needed if you know you need it. I work with 3D so my fingers itch to upgrade. Rendering uses the power like 90% per core.

:P Well I was on a bit of a budget, but there's definitely room for improvement on all the parts I suggested. What I built is a solid rig capable of running Crysis at nearly full-bore, so if all Kinuki wants is Oblivion at full, that'll suit his needs.

I'm not a huge fan of overclocking, just for the fact that you kill your warranty when you do it while also dropping the lifespan of your processor. Granted, you can add a good 30% or so of power but man, I wouldn't risk it even if I was well versed in it. I'm a frugal little turd, ^^

True but it all depends on how eager you are to tamper with things. I've been at it a while but you don't do it that often. Mostley when you get a new rig. Overclocking was more dangerous (and fun hehe) with AMD's really old CPU's that started to burn XD. These days they build them with it in mind. But you often get far on standard clockspeeds. But if your rig run Crysis at full then i'm impressed. Its a bigger challange on a 24" screen :P

:P Just 22" here. But it's widescreen, so there's that. :)

Ok *clears throat* first off. If you want good performance go Nvida, if you want value for money go ATI. I personaly reccomend getting an 8 series card. They have plummeted in cost and where great for running Crysis and Oblivion (Yes i have a 8800GTS and they both run fine), next up CPU; Intel are greay for gaming i cant complain because im running a Pentium D @ 3.2ghz and it runs quite happily at 38oC. Id go Core 2 they are quite nice considering their current pricing. RAM. 2G+! 1G will get you nowhere, 2G is now the minimum for gaming, DDR2 none of that silly DDR3 crap, at least 500MHZ. Id reccomend sticking with XP, its a much better system for running games, considering that Vista uses more resources than half the games your running xD.

Enjoy ;)

I have a 9800GTX for my gfx card it's around the 200 dollar mark and good performance

i say OS wise go with w2k if you *have* to have windows, more than 2cpu? w2kserver or server/03.
theres loads of compatability layers for windows to linux out there that should run more than well enough on those kinds of systems.
hell my system is at least three years out of date and it can run pretty much any of those games in WINE under ubuntu 8.04 with compiz fusion all out enabled... and thats games like half life2 with all options enabled...oblivion i havent tried[read: internet is too slow to torrent] but it should be able to handle it no problem, it takes anything else i toss at it with no real trouble. all i lack in it is a real good graphics card[agp8x, but only a 4200 TI 128mb or sumfin like that. i want a 7600, or at least 6800AGP]

yesh i hate microsoft and apple. i think things should be free. what of it?

Sorry, but I don't have the patience for Linux. The one time I tried using it was enough t put me off of it for life. As for Macs, they're ok, but only for non-gaming stuff, like image, photo, video, or audio editing. Workstation stuff.

Anyways, thanks for the suggestions fastchapter, I'll give 'em a thought. After looking around Newegg some, this seems like a solid video card. What do you guys think?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130318