need help choosing gfx card

[Q3ark]

I'm looking to upgrade my gfx card and am not sure which one to go for. My budget is rather limeted. I have a gforce 8600GT installed at the moment which is no good for SH5 and stuggles with empire total war.

The cards I am looking at are the 9500GT with 1GB memory or the 9800GT with 512MB.

Any pointers would be most welcome :salute:

[Feuer Frei!]

What budget are you working with?
What are your current system specs?
ie cpu, psu, mobo, ram, o.s.?
What sort of games do you want to be able to play?
The latest and greatest?
Or just some?
All these factors come into your final decision.

The GeForce 9500GT has been designed with an entry-level user in mind, and will apparently sell for less than $100. The clock speed is set at 550MHz, while the standard version will provide its users with 1GB of DDR2 memory, running at 666MHz. Despite the obvious "devilish" association, the card's performance level is rather on the low side, offering a speed of 1400MHz for the Shaders and a memory bandwidth of 10.7GB/s. On the other hand, the low performance level makes it possible for the card to be used with a single-slot cooling system.

The mid-range GeForce 9800GT is set for more demanding tasks in terms of graphics, offering a GPU speed of 600MHz, while the Shaders are standardly clocked at 1500MHz. There are 112 Stream processors which, when coupled with the 512MB of GDDR3 memory, should provide some fairly generous frame rates. This card is also equipped with a single-slot cooling solution, which will probably be capable to withstand some overclocking. As with the 9500GT card, the mid-range 9800GT supports NVIDIA's SLI and PhysX technologies, which should increase the graphics performance of your desktop system.
Both are fairly "old" cards, having been released in 2008.
The price you pay for that 9500GT you are way better off spending it on a ATI 4670.
9500Gt is not a gaming card for todays newest games.
The 9500GT is a budget GPU, a little better than integrated video.

[Q3ark]

Thanks for the information :up:

I went for an XFX 9800GT with 512MB DDR3 memory, should be here tomorrow. There isn't realy any point in me getting a faster card as my system isn't powerful enough to make use of it. My system specs:

Intel core 2 with both cores @ 1.8Ghz each
4GB of DDR2 ram
No idea what the bus speeds are, not blisteringly fast by todays standards tho.

[Feuer Frei!]

Not a problem,

here's a link about the card you are getting, it may be a interesting read for you!?

http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/xfx_9800gt/

Note: 2008 review, but still relevant.