Recommendations for a halfway decent video card?

[NeoHippo]

Just as an example:

My system consists of

P5Q Pro motherboard
E8400 Intel CPU
8 GB ram
PALIT GT 240
3 SATA harddrives
1 DVD writer
3 cooling fans in case
1 cooling fan in power supply

and all is powered by a 550W Antec power supply, with lots of watts to spare.

I just upgraded my system with the PALIT GT240, which I linked to previously, from a Geforce 8800GT.
The GT 240 does indeed require two slots, because of the width of the onboard fan, but plugs into only one PCI slot. The nice thing about it is, that it is only half as long as the 8800GT and it does not need a PCI-E power connection from the power supply. Connectors to hook up to are

1 digital connector
1 analog connector
1 HDMI connector

[Rex Claussen]

1 HDMI connector

My computer does not have an HDMI port, so I'm guessing that connection remains loose?

[Enjay]

I'm pretty sure that the HDMI connector will be an output by the video card, allowing connection to a suitable monitor. Chances are you'll use the digital (DVI) output or the analogue on an older monitor. If you can, use a digital connection (HDMI or DVI) rather than the analogue as the picture is usually sharper and on big monitors, sometimes the full, native resolution (eg my 1920x1200) isn't even available on analogue and some of the lesser resolutions can show "artifacts".

[Rex Claussen]

I just ordered the PALIT NE5T240SFHD01 Geforce GT 240 Sonic OverClocking Edition 1GB GDDR5 from ZipZoomFly.

As a bonus, after I made a decision on the card I discovered that Palit is offering a rebate on it.

[Graf Zahl]

When you get the card, can you run my benchmark on it?

I'm interested in a new GFX card, too, and I'd really like to see how the GT 240 performs. I'd prefer to buy a GTX260 but it doesn't fit in my case.

[NeuralStunner]

Do you have a low profile case like mine? I swear, I ever build my own system it's going to be a tower.

[Graf Zahl]

It's a 3 year old system from a time when such long graphics cards weren't common so the place is taken by other stuff, mostly cables. It's really annoying because I'm missing only less than half a centimeter.

[NeuralStunner]

Ugh. I know how that is... I had a hard enough time finding a good PCIe-x1 card. Low profile wasn't the issue really. The one I got only just fits. (I'm glad I measured the space beforehand, so I at least knew it would.)

I hope you can get a better card too. It's a nice thing to have.

[Rex Claussen]

When you get the card, can you run my benchmark on it?

I certainly shall.

(The rest of my hardware is still relatively low-end:

Processor: Intel® Core 2 Duo™ E4400 (C) DC 2.0 GHz
System memory: RAM 2GB
OS: Windows 7 Home Premium
Game resolution: 1440x900)

However, with the on-board 1 GB of RAM on the video board, it ought to take some load off the main processor & RAM.

[Nash]

The amount of video RAM doesn't determine performence; the clock speed does.

And I see that your processor is rather old by todays' standards; it might be a major bottleneck that'll limit the full performance of your graphics card...

EDIT: What I'm trying to say is - it's a decent modern graphics card (and definitely much better than your old one), but you might not be able to push it to its full capacity for new, modern games because of your C2D CPU.

For GZDoom, you'll most probably see some improvements.

[Enjay]

For GZDoom, you'll most probably see some improvements.

Which should include access to features his current card does not support (eg brightmaps and glowing flats).

[NeoHippo]

Somebody may find this of interest:

As I mentioned, I switched from an 8800GT to a GT240 videocard

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I compared both cards using the Benchmarks, with the following result:

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So, they are virtually the same, give or take a couple of FPS.

I guess the only "upgrade" really was in that the GT240 consumes less power and the added internal capabilities.

[Graf Zahl]

What's your CPU? Also, the entire benchmark values are much more interesting than selectively picking the one value that tells me almost nothing.

[NeoHippo]

System Specs:


Benchmarks:

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[Graf Zahl]

Hm, ok. From these values I think I better save my money. They are approximately 150% of my own system's speed - and the difference is identical for CPU and GPU tasks so it's probably CPU limited throughout and a better card won't give the performance increase I'd like to see...