NVidea 7800GS Superclocked
This week my Ati Radeon 9800 Pro All-In-Wonder Graphics Card died. I'd had the card for about two years enabling me to play my favorite PC Games.
I only play four games and four games only:
1) EA Sports NHL2007 (might get the new 2008, not sure yet).
2) G*T*R (FIA GT Racing Game)
3) GT Legends
4) Colin McRae Rally 2005
In order to play any of the above you NEED a quality graphics card.
I wonder how many people have purchased a computer in the $500 to $1200 price range, took it home only to find out it can't play games.
Computer manufacturers do not put quality graphics card in machines of that price range.
Sure computers are good for other things. But I have my Core 2 Duo iMac for that. Macs are great but they don't do games.
I have a PS2 and about a half dozen games with that. But a SD television screen cannot come close to the realism and resolution you can achieve with a computer screen. Not even in the same ball park.
So I prefer the computer games. And I need a Windows-based computer for that.
My current computer is about three years old. It an HP a620N with 160 GB HD and 1 Gb of RAM. It has the AMD Athlon 3200+ CPU.
It's old and outdated but it's fast enough for the games I like, especially with a good graphics card. It has the old AGP Bus so it limits the cards I can still acquire.
Anyway I got my new card yesterday. It's an Nvidea 7800GS (Superclocked), about 2 to 4 times faster than my ATI AIW 9800. The stats show this is one smokin fast card, not the fastest but near the top of the heap. Sweet!
The Future Shop site indicated it needed just a 300W power supply, which I thought was standard in most machines.
However when I purchased it I read it needed a minimum of 350W and even further to my surprise I found my a620n only had a 250W supply. Yikes.
Well I played NHL 2007 and it ran sweet and smooth as silk. But that game probably doesn't demand too much power-wise.
Colin McRae 2005 is the absolute best simulation of any kind that I've seen. The graphics are dazzling, its pretty darn close to virtual reality. I've played this "game" for probably thousands of hours.
It played well but I could see some areas where it should have performed better.
So now I am convinced I need to upgrade my Power. For 69.99 I can get a 400W unit.
That's on top of the $179.99 + tax I paid for the new card.
Yikes.
So I'm off to Future Shop now to get one of those bad boys, hoping it will fit my machine. Later..
Ok I have my new Dynex 400Watt power source installed, very easy installation. I'm set to go.
When my Radeon Card died I was very tempted to buy a brand new computer. The thing is I already have 5 (five) computers up and running and online in my home. Collecting computers and watching them become outdated is getting to be an issue.
But are they really outdated? The computer I was looking at was from Future Shop, an HP M9080N sold for as low as $1799 (reg $1999).
Yes, expensive but we are talking about an Intel Core 2 Quad Q6600 2.4GHz CPU, 3 GB of RAM, 1 Terrabyte of hard drive storage, and the deal maker, an NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS.
That's impressive credentials. But the more I thought about it the more I realized those specs were an exercise in overkill.
The HP I have now runs at 2.2 GHz, yes it is a "single core" but I don't multitask on it, when I play a game that's all I do I play 1 game. Its fast as I need it to be. I have a Core 2 Duo iMac and honestly its not that much faster than the single core CPU on the old a620n.
3GB of RAM. So what, who needs it? It most cases I don't come near even using the 1 GByte I already have, I doubt anyone does.
A Terrabyte (1000 GB) of storage. That's just nuts. Yes the dream machine is PVR capable for recording television but I already have two of those. Additional storage is cheap. And what happens when your hard drive crashes and everything you have is on it? It's wiser to forget about the huge hard drive on your machine and just get an external hard drive for back ups and something you can grab easily in case of a house fire.
The NVIDIA GeForce 8800GTS is near the top of the food chain as far as graphics cards go. But the Nvidea 7800GS card I just bought is not far behind.
So I'm happy I saved my money. My games run great on the equipment I have. The fancy dual and quad core processors are probably overkill, most people will never use their capability unless you are doing a lot of video editing and other tasks at the same time.
I think it's going to be difficult selling desktops in the future. People who have computers are satisfied with their speed. Most computers sold in the last 4 years have plenty of storage and, as I mentioned, additional storage is cheap.
