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Originally Posted by waste gate
OK this is what I decided upon given my budget and equipment.
Radeon X800 XL.
Will it do?
Thank you
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Yes its a good card and should run SH3 on max settings with some AA and AF. Also look for the X800XL without an additional power connector. All AGP variants of X800XL will have the additional power connector, but PCI-Ex versions can do without the additional power connector as the card consumes less then 75W (which a 16xPCI-Ex port can provide as opposed to 42W for AGP8X).
I would point out that this card does not have Shader Modle 3.0 support and can only do SM2.0b, which is just as good but most games don't have the specific code written for 2.0b, only 2.0 and 3.0. For example, the X800/x850 series cannot complete the 3dMark06 tests as it does not have SM3.0 for the latest demos added to the 3dMark06. Also you can go to Toms Hardware and check out the Article on latest features on todays graphics cards. It has picture illustrations of what SM3.0 does better then SM2.0. Basically, the 6 & 7 series from nVidia and x1000 series from ATI has full SM3.0 support.
I would have recommended the 7800GT to you, as I have seen it sold as low as 199 pounds on
www.aria.co.uk and perhaps
www.ebuyer.com some time ago. It was only some 30 pounds more then the X800XL at the time. It does however require a slightly better PSU, i.e., 350W from a decent PSU maker (atleast 18A on the 12V rails). No need to go for overkill with 550W or so power supplies unless you plan on running two 7800GTs.