Video Card Help

Asus NViDIA 8400GS/HTP 256MB

Good or bad for playing GW?

And if not, what is a better choice(preferably in the 100-200$ range)

Thanks

anything above a 7600FX can run GW excessively easy.

I think (not sure, i'm in europe) the 8800gt 512mb is about $200, and the performance is the best in that price range (200 bucks). If you wanna play other games with high resolutions, get a 1gb version.

It's decent i guess(if only asking for gw). It'll play it but not too amazingly. According to the friend of mine who has one their framerates aren't too much better than my 3 year old radeon x700 i used to use.

The 8400 is not a gaming card, so yes it will run it but as said previously the framerate won't be too high.

And the performance of this card is lower than that.

Although I agree that the 8800gt is a good price/performance card, the 1gb version isn't worth it at all. Any benchmarks show that the gain is non-existent in real world gaming, and any advantage it may have is in unplayable framerates either way.

To the OP: I'd advise against it, it really is an awful card. Atm the moment the absolute best price performance card on the market is the ati hd3850, at $150, it offers 5 times the performance of the 8400gs, and will be able to play guild wars at any resolution with max quality and filters, and most likely also be able to play guild wars 2 at decent settings.

Thanks for the replies !

As for the framerate, I'm used to 10-25 fps, so if it's around there I will be content. But if it's lower I won't bother and get something better :P

I'm mostly looking for something I can play gw with without having pixels of people stretched across the screen XD

Nvidia 8600GT is a Budget Gaming card for around 100$ or less now.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130085 And it has a 30$ mail in rebate, so you're looking at around 80$ for a card like that, you can't go wrong.

I have one of these so I could recommend it, It can run pretty much every game at max graphics with no problems, runs my Guild Wars at 60 FPS constant too.

Or like mentioned above you can practically buy one of the best gaming cards on the market (Exempting the 9 series which is barely out yet) http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814130318 Nvidia 8800 GT 512 MB, 200$ after it's mail in rebate, so if you really want to over achieve then get this one.

9600 is $199.99 on sale at Best Buy, just bought it and it's awesome

I know, but that card is only the tip of the Iceberg for the 9 Series, I'd wait till later and more powerful high end versions of the 9 series comes out. That's kinda why I mentioned that it's ''Barely'' out.

If you're gonna recommend an 8600GT then i'd suggest a factory overclocked model, Such as this one. I run this same card myself and it's quite good for an 8600. Reasonably faster than a stardard GT(especially on the shader clocks) and Overclocks further over factory very well too.

A factory overclocked card won't be able to overclock to any speeds higher than a stock. AFAIK all they do is stick a different bios in it with higher clock speeds and supply a warranty (overclocking by yourself voids warranties).

Tom's Hardware is a great site that has graphics card benchmarks and an article about best graphics cards for the money.

Not true at all. It doesn't complain about those settings at all either.

I decided to go with this one, unfortunatly I live in Canada and that site doesn't ship here I don't think

That's more expensive than an MSI NX8800GT on Newegg ($186.99 after $30 rebate) and doesn't perform as well. I'd link but I'm not on a PC at the moment, and my phone doesn't support copy and paste yet.

FYI, it's actualy a nutered version of the same chip in the 8800GT cranked up in speed. Nothing really "new" about it.

Well, if that is truly the case (which I've been hearing) then I think I'll upgrade to an 8800 later, assuming that it is still worth it, and the prices seem to be dropping.

No it's not... The 9600GT uses a G94 chip, the 8800GT a G92.

From my experience, MSI is a bad graphics card manufacturer, they don't overclock at all.
EVGA however...

Are you playing anything else?

gaming on the WHOLE is like this
Ensure that you have a decent setup, without fluff - read, spyware, indexers, hoggish antivirus scanners (Norton I'm looking at you).

you want
1. enough ram - 1 GB is bare minimum. more is better, 2GB will cost about $60 nowadays!
2. A current cpu architecture - not totally necessary, but certain effects use cpu extensively. Shadows for example. If you're on an old socket A athlon xp for instance, disabling shadows, and running lower geometry and physics can bring fps WAY up, simply because it's reducing load on the cpu. A pentium4/D setup is fine, but again sacrifices must be made. Running an athlon64/x2 or core setup and you're probably going to get by with maximum settings.

3. I'm mentioning the video card last. it's 2008, so it's been 12 years since commercial 3d cards started. it DID take a while for this to happen, but it's not necessary to buy a completely new gaming rig anymore when games come out. this is the big turnoff for a lot of pc gamers. As long as you've got a current rig - i.e. not expensive but current! - all you need is a card.


This game is really close to bottom of the barrel for gpu needed. that said, a $65 card like the 8600gt
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814150229

will EASILY play this game, maxed out. Even on higher resolution monitors. While the 8800gt is undoubtedly better, it's not necessary. If you go for the rebate, or one of the lesser known cards which don't have a rebate but are about that price (e.g. zotac). Then that $65 amounts to a substantial amount of graphics horsepower.

Overclocking of these cards is nice and all, but this is all marketing. It's not going to make any game any more playable at equivalent settings compared to other cards (VERY rare). It's especially not needed for Guildwars.