[redsniper]

Well, I just ordered the card that CP linked to and it should be along in a few days. I'm wondering now: Will my 430W PSU be able to handle it? It's a good quality one AFAIK, an Antec Truepower 2. I'll buy a new PSU if necessary but I'd rather not spend the money if I don't have to. I know that power supplies are pretty good at taking other components with them when they die and that it's a bad idea to skimp on them. So I want to know if I need a new PSU at all and, if so, do you know of any good deals right now, which brands to avoid, etc.?

[IceFire]

The one thing I do like about the Nvidia cards are their AA modes. ATI cards only go up to 6x multi AA, while Nvidia cards have four modes above that with supersampling components. They are too slow in current games and most don't work with OpenGL, but look fantastic in older D3D games. It's a pity that with the 7 series cards, this is offset by the bad default AF quality.

Keep in mind that testing between nVidia and ATI AA shows the ATI ones tend to have an edge on the quality.  I have a 6600GT now and used to have a 9700Pro and I can tell you that 4x AA on the 6600GT is about as good as 2x AA on the Radeon 9700Pro.

In general I'd say that nVidia has a speed edge in overall performance but that ATI has a quality edge slightly overall.  Edge only...the two are so close. Its nice to see this level of competitiveness.

[neoterran]

I wouldn't be buying anything with directx 10 cards about to come out. Enter 1.) Unified Shaders (for ATI) 2.)Geometry Shader

[CP5670]

Keep in mind that testing between nVidia and ATI AA shows the ATI ones tend to have an edge on the quality.  I have a 6600GT now and used to have a 9700Pro and I can tell you that 4x AA on the 6600GT is about as good as 2x AA on the Radeon 9700Pro.

In general I'd say that nVidia has a speed edge in overall performance but that ATI has a quality edge slightly overall.  Edge only...the two are so close. Its nice to see this level of competitiveness.

You may need to turn on AA gamma correction on the Nvidia card. It makes things look better and has no performance hit but is strangely not on by default. I think Nvidia actually has a clear advantage with AA in general. The standard MS modes are very similar with the gamma corrected AA on, but as I mentioned Nvidia's combined and SS modes are quite superior to anything on the ATI cards. The Nvidia transparency AA is also better than ATI's adaptive AA, with OpenGL support (adaptive only works in D3D games) and better filtering on long distance textures.

It's a very different story with AF quality, on the other hand..

Well, I just ordered the card that CP linked to and it should be along in a few days. I'm wondering now: Will my 430W PSU be able to handle it? It's a good quality one AFAIK, an Antec Truepower 2. I'll buy a new PSU if necessary but I'd rather not spend the money if I don't have to. I know that power supplies are pretty good at taking other components with them when they die and that it's a bad idea to skimp on them. So I want to know if I need a new PSU at all and, if so, do you know of any good deals right now, which brands to avoid, etc.?

It should be more than enough.

I wouldn't be buying anything with directx 10 cards about to come out. Enter 1.) Unified Shaders (for ATI) 2.)Geometry Shader

It will be a lot longer before we actually see any DX10 games.

[neoterran]

It will be a lot longer before we actually see any DX10 games.

Crysis will support DX10, AFAIK.

[IceFire]

How do you turn on AA Gamma correct on the nVidia cards?  I have a brief look through the control panel and found nothing.

[CP5670]

Crysis will support DX10, AFAIK.

That game is still a while off and it will only use DX10 after Vista comes out, which will probably be after its release. It's also unclear what, if anything, the DX10 mode will offer over the DX9 one.

How do you turn on AA Gamma correct on the nVidia cards?  I have a brief look through the control panel and found nothing.

Yeah, a lot of features aren't present in the control panel. You can do it easily with nHancer. Just turn it on globally so it affects all games.

By the way, it's interesting that you earlier mentioned competition in this market, since it looks like AMD has bought out ATI and will make an announcement very soon. I doubt it will change anything for the next generation of video cards but the long term implications could be quite significant.

[Mars]

It's a bit over your price range, but this is the deal in video cards right now if the rebate is factored in:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16814102025

R600 probably won't be out until the Christmas period. Nvidia's G80 will come earlier, but is still some months off.

God damn, to think I felt technologically advanced by replacing my old system with one that I will build with a X1300 Pro

[Fury]

God damn, to think I felt technologically advanced by replacing my old system with one that I will build with a X1300 Pro

I feel sorry for you. Have you bought X1300 already? If not, get GeForce 7600GS or 7600GT if budget allows.

X1300 has exactly two pros.
1) It is faster than GeForce 7300.
2) It is cheaper than X1600.

X1300 is low-end card. Buying it will make you buy yet another card if you want to play titles released next year.

[neoterran]

Now that AMD owns ATI, You can look forward to buying an AMD Radeon in the near future, since the companies will operate as AMD.

[redsniper]

Woot! It just showed up in the mail. I'll let you peeps know how it goes. Btw, does Catalyst 6.6 break anything or is it good?

[CP5670]

It works fine, except that you don't get the smartshader effects you may have seen in some screenshots around here (it was inexplicably removed after 6.3, but 6.5 and 6.6 had considerable performance improvements on X1900s so it's not worth sticking with the old driver). 6.7 is actually expected to be out in a few days though.

If you find ATI's CCC too bloated, you can get the "low speed connection" driver package along with two third party programs called ATI Tray Tools (profiles and a ton of other stuff) and ATI Tool (overclocking and fan speeds), which let you bypass the need for CCC completely.

[redsniper]

Wow. The first thing I played with this was FSO and it ran smooth as silk. Oblivion looks effin' awesome with HDR turned on . I'm still getting down to ~20fps in some parts, but I have EVERY setting maxed out except for AA. I've just skimmed through tweakguides' Oblivion guide and some of the options there look promising. Best of all my PC didn't fry.

[Sandwich]

Oblivion is known to bring most GFX cards to their knees.

[CP5670]

Wow. The first thing I played with this was FSO and it ran smooth as silk. Oblivion looks effin' awesome with HDR turned on . I'm still getting down to ~20fps in some parts, but I have EVERY setting maxed out except for AA. I've just skimmed through tweakguides' Oblivion guide and some of the options there look promising. Best of all my PC didn't fry.

I think that's normal for Oblivion. I don't have that game but there is some texture LOD tweak that is supposed to make it look far better with no performance hit. You may also want to try that chuck patch most people are using, if you can tolerate the slideshow framerates.

By the way, 6.7 apparently sucks. I haven't used it but everyone is complaining about slightly lowered performance with it.