vininfinite Posted April 14, 2008 Share Posted April 14, 2008 Currently I got a Nvidia GeForce 6800 in my rig. ($40 on eBay) It's great for SA and sh*t, but seeing how it handles Portal and Bioshock I know it's barely up to the task of running GTA 4. Currently I'm looking for a graphics card between $150 and $250. I've found a huge selection, but I don't want to go over $200 if I don't have too. I've been looking around and have found the "EVGA GeForce 8800 GT" for about $170, but I don't want to get something cheap that's under qualified. Can anyone give me some guidelines on what I should be searching for??? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SyphonPayne Posted April 14, 2008 Share Posted April 14, 2008 Only reason it's "cheap" is because of the rebate. It's an awesome card I have that exact card (OC'ed) and I can safely say it's pwnage. Awesome graphics for the money, certainly better than anything Xbox 360 / PS3 could do. It could definitely handle GTA 4 with better gfx too. Oh and seeing as you have quite an old card (6800 Vanilla I'm assuming) make sure you have an ample power supply and of course a PCIe slot. Get. That. Card. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vininfinite Posted April 14, 2008 Author Share Posted April 14, 2008 Ya, my new power supply doesn't come with a 6 pin for the graphics (didn't think about it) but I can always get a converter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ILovePolarBears Posted April 14, 2008 Share Posted April 14, 2008 We don't even know if/when GTA IV will arrive on PC. If your only motivation for upgrading is to play GTA IV, you're better off waiting to buy a card until the game is released; you'll get more bang for your buck as new technology pushes the prices of current cards down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SyphonPayne Posted April 14, 2008 Share Posted April 14, 2008 (edited) Ya, my new power supply doesn't come with a 6 pin for the graphics (didn't think about it) but I can always get a converter. My vid card came with the molex to 6-pin pcie converter (I didn't need it though.) Edited April 14, 2008 by SyphonPayne Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Democrab Posted April 14, 2008 Share Posted April 14, 2008 We don't even know if/when GTA IV will arrive on PC. If your only motivation for upgrading is to play GTA IV, you're better off waiting to buy a card until the game is released; you'll get more bang for your buck as new technology pushes the prices of current cards down. He may as well get one now, since when IV is out on PC, I doubt it will require much more than a 7600GT to play it, with a 7800 to play it smoothly. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ILovePolarBears Posted April 14, 2008 Share Posted April 14, 2008 Even if he goes for the bare minimum, whatever card that may be, it'll be cheaper however many months down the road when GTA IV comes out on PC then it will be now. If the OP is wanting to upgrade only for GTA IV, to buy a card now would be to flush money down the toilet. I am a rather superfluous discretionary spender, but even I would heed this logic were I in such a situation. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nabo45 Posted April 14, 2008 Share Posted April 14, 2008 IMO you should get a 9600GT, so you are prepped for any new games that are coming out 2008-9. But if you're only buying it because you want it to play IV, then you should wait untill it's released for PC. Then the card will be cheaper too . 9600GT - $169.99 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Picolini Posted April 14, 2008 Share Posted April 14, 2008 We don't even know if/when GTA IV will arrive on PC. If your only motivation for upgrading is to play GTA IV, you're better off waiting to buy a card until the game is released; you'll get more bang for your buck as new technology pushes the prices of current cards down. He may as well get one now, since when IV is out on PC, I doubt it will require much more than a 7600GT to play it, with a 7800 to play it smoothly. Each car in the game has about 20K polies (versus about 5K for SA) from the looks of it, and the terrain has about twice as many polies itself, and probably twice as large textures. That's quite a bit over SA, and while even my 8600GT can take SA on highest even on SAMP with out missing a beat, my guess is it'd struggle at x2 AA for IV. I would say an 8600GT would be totally decent for IV, but far from perfect. I would go with what PolarBears said and wait it out. If you've got the money now, put it away. By the time it (if it does) come out for the PC you'll have a better idea of what you'll need and a better choice of what's available. It won't come to PC until near the end of this year if it ever does, and that's plenty of time for newer cards to come out and older ones to get cheaper. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vininfinite Posted April 14, 2008 Author Share Posted April 14, 2008 I would go with what PolarBears said and wait it out. If you've got the money now, put it away. By the time it (if it does) come out for the PC you'll have a better idea of what you'll need and a better choice of what's available. It won't come to PC until near the end of this year if it ever does, and that's plenty of time for newer cards to come out and older ones to get cheaper. Agreed, thanks for the advice. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SyphonPayne Posted April 14, 2008 Share Posted April 14, 2008 Oh, well if GTA4 is the ONLY game you want to play on PC then yeah just wait. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
vininfinite Posted April 14, 2008 Author Share Posted April 14, 2008 It's not the only game I want to play. I'm figuring on waiting 2 or 3 months to get a new graphics card. By then prices will be lower and I'll probably have enough time to play other games before GTA 4 will be released for the PC. (I'm guessing 4+ months from now) I'll make my choice when the time comes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Otter Posted April 14, 2008 Share Posted April 14, 2008 I heard a rumor, via Kotaku, that we'll be looking at a November release on PC. Being a rumor, don't put too much thought into it, but I don't think we'll see it any sooner than that. If you want to do some great gaming today, however, the EVGA 8800gts is cheeeeeap these days, easily overclocked, and will provide you with a lot of fun. It may be limited by the rest of your equipment, though, so keep that in mind. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Democrab Posted April 14, 2008 Share Posted April 14, 2008 We don't even know if/when GTA IV will arrive on PC. If your only motivation for upgrading is to play GTA IV, you're better off waiting to buy a card until the game is released; you'll get more bang for your buck as new technology pushes the prices of current cards down. He may as well get one now, since when IV is out on PC, I doubt it will require much more than a 7600GT to play it, with a 7800 to play it smoothly. Each car in the game has about 20K polies (versus about 5K for SA) from the looks of it, and the terrain has about twice as many polies itself, and probably twice as large textures. That's quite a bit over SA, and while even my 8600GT can take SA on highest even on SAMP with out missing a beat, my guess is it'd struggle at x2 AA for IV. I would say an 8600GT would be totally decent for IV, but far from perfect. I would go with what PolarBears said and wait it out. If you've got the money now, put it away. By the time it (if it does) come out for the PC you'll have a better idea of what you'll need and a better choice of what's available. It won't come to PC until near the end of this year if it ever does, and that's plenty of time for newer cards to come out and older ones to get cheaper. Well, since my 6800GS could max out GTA SA @ 1280x1024 and it was bottlenecked by the CPU and RAM (Athlon XP 2600+, 1Gb DDR333 at the time.) I doubt GTA IV is going to require much to run, I bet I could run it @ low on my current rig. (Pentium Dual Core @ 2.5Ghz, x1600Pro, 2Gb DDR2-800) To sum up my point, I doubt IV will use much, since even on my rig from 2004 been able to handle a game that came out in 2005 for PC at full specs, then I think IV would be around the same. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nikobellic614 Posted February 26, 2010 Share Posted February 26, 2010 Probably off-topic here, but I'm new... Anyways, here goes. Seems on matter what I do, my GTA 4 runs kinda laggy. I turn down the game resolution to the minimum (800x600 60Hz) and wind down ALL the game settings (draw distances, etc...) and even turn the video card 3D settings for my ATI Radeon HD 3670 1GB to all high-performance, and turn off Anti-Aliasing and all the other GPU-hogging effects like that. Turned off this new feature called adaptive/additive (it's called one of these two names) A.I., doesn't seem to do much, really. Desktop PC: Processor AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 dual-core processor (Does this mean Quad Core?) 3 GB DDR2 ATI Radeon HD 3670 1GB PCI-e Windows XP Essential with SP2 (registry edited to make GTA IV think it's SP3) And yes, the Catalyst Software is installed. Any recommendations? And would adjusting my (system monitored) virtual memory affect gaming performance? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Otter Posted February 26, 2010 Share Posted February 26, 2010 Wow. Wrong section to the max. And bumping a ridiculously old topic. I like your style. Near the top of the main index is the GTA 4 section, where you'll find the PC section with all sorts of help. http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?showforum=120 Good luck! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leik oh em jeez! Posted February 27, 2010 Share Posted February 27, 2010 (edited) Only reason it's "cheap" is because of the rebate. It's an awesome card I have that exact card (OC'ed) and I can safely say it's pwnage. Awesome graphics for the money, certainly better than anything Xbox 360 / PS3 could do. It could definitely handle GTA 4 with better gfx too. Oh and seeing as you have quite an old card (6800 Vanilla I'm assuming) make sure you have an ample power supply and of course a PCIe slot. Get. That. Card. That's far from cheap. I got my 8800GTX for $120. Average price for an 8800GT these days is $90 - $110. But that doesn't really matter because even my 8800GTX wont come close to maxing out GTA IV. Go for at least a 1Gb GTS250, maybe even a GTX 260 if you can find a cheap one. Edited February 27, 2010 by leik oh em jeez! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mike752 Posted February 27, 2010 Share Posted February 27, 2010 Only reason it's "cheap" is because of the rebate. It's an awesome card I have that exact card (OC'ed) and I can safely say it's pwnage. Awesome graphics for the money, certainly better than anything Xbox 360 / PS3 could do. It could definitely handle GTA 4 with better gfx too. Oh and seeing as you have quite an old card (6800 Vanilla I'm assuming) make sure you have an ample power supply and of course a PCIe slot. Get. That. Card. That's far from cheap. I got my 8800GTX for $120. Average price for an 8800GT these days is $90 - $110. But that doesn't really matter because even my 8800GTX wont come close to maxing out GTA IV. Go for at least a 1Gb GTS250, maybe even a GTX 260 if you can find a cheap one. You do realize this is almost two years old, right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SyphonPayne Posted February 27, 2010 Share Posted February 27, 2010 Only reason it's "cheap" is because of the rebate. It's an awesome card I have that exact card (OC'ed) and I can safely say it's pwnage. Awesome graphics for the money, certainly better than anything Xbox 360 / PS3 could do. It could definitely handle GTA 4 with better gfx too. Oh and seeing as you have quite an old card (6800 Vanilla I'm assuming) make sure you have an ample power supply and of course a PCIe slot. Get. That. Card. That's far from cheap. I got my 8800GTX for $120. Average price for an 8800GT these days is $90 - $110. But that doesn't really matter because even my 8800GTX wont come close to maxing out GTA IV. Go for at least a 1Gb GTS250, maybe even a GTX 260 if you can find a cheap one. You do realize this is almost two years old, right? Lol, I'll cut him some slack, at least he wasn't the n00b that bumped the topic . Funny he says that too cause I have a GTX 260 now . SyphonPayne laughs at leik oh em jeez! It's ok we all make mistakes xD . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leik oh em jeez! Posted February 27, 2010 Share Posted February 27, 2010 Only reason it's "cheap" is because of the rebate. It's an awesome card I have that exact card (OC'ed) and I can safely say it's pwnage. Awesome graphics for the money, certainly better than anything Xbox 360 / PS3 could do. It could definitely handle GTA 4 with better gfx too. Oh and seeing as you have quite an old card (6800 Vanilla I'm assuming) make sure you have an ample power supply and of course a PCIe slot. Get. That. Card. That's far from cheap. I got my 8800GTX for $120. Average price for an 8800GT these days is $90 - $110. But that doesn't really matter because even my 8800GTX wont come close to maxing out GTA IV. Go for at least a 1Gb GTS250, maybe even a GTX 260 if you can find a cheap one. You do realize this is almost two years old, right? haha, I didn't at the time. I usually don't check post dates, I just assume that most users don't go around bumping two year old topics. Guess I should have stopped being lazy and scrolled all the way down. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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