Hey everyone! Hope everyone's enjoying the weekend  

I know this will have come up before on simv about graphics cards upgrades and your sick and tierd of em!, but here it is;

I have a GEFORCE FX5200 128MB and im thinking its time for a upgrade, so im "investing" in one. I want to spend a miximum of £60 and i know there's got to be some good deals out there, maybe strech it to £70.

Anyone know of anything good????? ???


Thanks alot !

Jimbo

Well, how about getting a nVidia 6800LE? Good cards, i think about £140 and they clock good. I've just upped my vertex shaders and pixel pipes. No trouble at all!
Dan

Surprisinly easily actually. Its all in windows. Go google for RivaTuner, install it and use it. Very easy to use, you can do clock speeds from it too. Im just sticking with the mods I've done until I've tried CoolBits to get my temps. If I can't get the temps then I won't go any further. Im trying to get it up to being a 6800GT. Seems to be working too, and the scroes are going up! 
Dan 

Quote:



AHA!  

Ok, the last time I read about that, he hadn't yet figured out how to do it with the new cards, but that was a long time back since I last got Rivatuner.

Ok, you take one fantastic video engine, employ a marketing expert, get your accountant involved and this is the range of what you get..........

1. A really expensive over rated video card..... ultras etc. These cards are only for those enthusiasts with spare cash to burn, or the mad overclocker type who just can't help it.

2. A good performing card that is on spec with the original plan, still very expensive.

3.  A disabled model for those who haven't got the surplus cash to fill the coffers of the corporates. These cards are still overpriced as they use the fancy name of the good GPU engine, but are usually severely crippled by software or hardware methods.

4. Several sub-categories of even worse video cards to fill the stores the world over and become the bain to us all in poor and inadequate performance, forcing us in the end to fork out huge amounts of money after years of frustration to get a decent card.

5. A plethora of confusing and inadequate information about all different types of video cards and what they do, making it just about impossible for anyone to make an informed choice without becoming an absolute fanatical nerd in the process.

What a success story!  

What Dan has done is an example of how some dedicated enthusiasts and programmers try to circumvent the profiteering video card empire by exposing their little charade and bringing out the real power locked within the cheaper cards in the expensive range.

If there are no real hardware differences, or minimal differences between the expensive and cheap cards, then we can sometimes use software to enable full or part of that card's potential.

There really is no reason that we all shouldn't have fantastic graphics other than profit taking by the middlemen, we simply support a regime of distributors and price has very little to do with the reality of cost of production and very much to do with advertising hype and marketing strategies.

So, very cool Dan, I'm proud of you m8.