Which one?

[Raestloz]

Basically it's to choose which one you'll get: a $120 GeForce 9600GT or a $320 PSP-2000?

I have $100, which I get from my parents as New Year's gift. I'm planning on buying a gfx card, GeForce 7200 GS is horrible. At the same time, I want to get a PSP. The IDOLM@STER SP is coming this year, and I wanna play it, what with many other games I wanna try too.

Here's the condition:
1. I'm getting one of them as my birthday present, and only one of them, can't both
2. I have $100, which means I can lift the burden of my mother up to $100
3. My PC's armed with Intel Core2 Due E4600 2.4 @GHz. Which might make GeForce 9600 GT a bit less powerful

Here's the considerations:
1. In a PC mag I read on the other day, an article said GeForce 9600 GT won't be fitting to play the next-gen games in the next 5 years, which might make me hesitate to get it

2. In the same mag, in another article, PSP2 will follow-up PSP-3000 in 2009, which makes me hesitate

3. Getting a PSP-2000 for $350 is around the same with getting a pack of Intel Q6600 and GeForce 9600 GT, which comes out at $380. $30 difference, yet so much difference in result

Which one shoud I take?

 

[da_head]

welllllll i have the 9600gt, with a core2 duo 2.0, and i can run every game i've played on max, except for gta iv and crysis. personally, i think it would be fine for the next 3 to 4 years at least. though how much use are you gonna get out of ur psp? u'll be bored with it within months, and it costs way more...

 

[notnarb]

I think 120 for a 9600gt is far too much, you could get a 4850 for that much

 

[B-Blue]

though how much use are you gonna get out of ur psp? u'll be bored with it within months, and it costs way more...

yeah I agree, stay away from the PSP...
Mine is collecting dust, seriously there's dust under the screen which looks like dead pixels, IT'S DRIVING ME CRAZY!

 

[Raestloz]

Ah, okay... I'm planning one playing Assasin's Creed, CoD4, DMC4, DW6, and Hitman: Blood Money, not excluding Counter Strike: Source too (all of them are sitting patiently in my HDD, waiting for me to play them). I was wondering how powerful can a 9600 GT with Core2 Duo be, since all my friends use Intel Core2 Qs, and every games bow to them. What games have you played? Do any that mentioned runs well?

I do plan on playing GTAIV. It's a waste not to play it, now that it's on PC

About the PSP... I dunno... maybe you're right. It's way pricier, and it's not like I'm going to play it so often. My buddies got a PSP, so we can play together, but I think making use out of games installed in my HDD is much wiser than taking a pricier option.

with a 4GB card, Lion War lags too much for me to enjoy ol' good Kingdom of Ivalice. The positive side is that I can play ol' good games like Tomba! and FFVII. Well, guess Assassin's Creed is better than Crisis Core. I think I've decided. Thanks!

Actually, I'm thinking of getting an ATI GFX Card too, however, I don't know anything about ATI. nVIDIA's unique way of using numbers is easier to learn. but I can't think of a good ATI GFX card. And many games places nVIDIA logo on them.

I heard that HD4650 (or was it HD 4850?) is good, better than 9600 GT in various ways. It's just that 960 GT got CUDA and Phsyx, although I doubt I'll use them

Actually with todays' rate. It would be $100 for 9600 GT. My New Year's gift is exactly around $100 too, so I actually can buy that GFX card by myself. However, if I buy it myself, I don't know what I should get for my birthday. Should I get an i7? That's too much I guess.

Also, my RAM is 2GB, and is running Vista Ultimate SP1, do you think I should get another RAM? it's a single 2GB RAM, in case you're wondering, so I think I still have 1-2 space for RAm in my motherboard

 

[MicShadow]

Don't get an ATI card. As bad as nVidia can be, ATI can be worse. But you knwo thats just from my experience.

And good choice of picking the 9600GT

I have a 8800GT, with a 2.6 Core Duo and ive played every game ive thrown at it perfect. Just make sure the cooling is good enough for your card, as new nVidia cards can heat up something huge.

 

[Raestloz]

Intel chipsets are worse though

8800 GT is a litle 'old', so to speak, it's still good but we need the youth you know?

They pack more punch and are ready to go. Anyway, I think my cooling system is good, as long as I don't go nuts with it, like letting it on for a week or so, my friend (whose CPU got 5 fans) went overboard and did it. Gues what? His 9600 GT broke lol. Good thing it can still be used to display the monitor, or he's screwed for good

 

[MicShadow]

Ouch, 9600GT broken, not cool. They cost like a fortune here

lol and perhaps 8800GT is a little old, but it still kicks well. Except for when its temp can rise to 130 degress celsius

Still works though...

Intel chipsets... *shudders* the family PC has one, and its almost painful to do anything on

 

[Raestloz]

Yeah, so he act like nothin' happened, take the safe side, and told the vendor "My GeForce suddenly stopped working, what happened? I was using it normally and it suddenly crashed!"

amonth later, he got a new one, 3 weeks without game, coz his GeForce will crash whenever he starts a heavy-gfx-processing app. Gee, what a pain.

My friend got one of those 1337 Intel Chipset, a laptop, what do you expect? And he ran Dynasty Warriors 6 there.
1 phrase: Not good

 

[Diablo1123]

You could always try overclocking your CPU if it bottlenecks the new graphics card when you get it.

If you stick with Valve, I think you'll be able to play new games for a while, I've got an old computer with an Nvidia 4 Series I think it was, and plays CS:S fine.

On lowest settings.

But fine nevertheless.

 

[Raestloz]

Hmm.. I'm no technician, I've heard about overclocking but I can't do it, and taking it to a PC shop is too much work, since I have to take 3 buses to go there (yes, it's far. I live in West Jakarta, the shop is in North Jakarta).

I can play CS:S fine with lowest settings, but you know... it doesn't feel lively. i wanna see it in full power like in consoles, you know?

 

[TLSpartan]

Here's the considerations:
1. In a PC mag I read on the other day, an article said GeForce 9600 GT won't be fitting to play the next-gen games in the next 5 years, which might make me hesitate to get it

I was told my Windows 95 box can't play Crysis

 

[Raestloz]

Okay... I might detect sarcasm there...

The reason is this:
The mag staff did a test with 3 top $100 GFX cards.

It was ATI Radeon HD 4830, nVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT, and nVIDIA GeForce 9600 GSO

The testing game used was Quake 4.

They used a high resolution, around 1024x768 and 1280x1024

the result is Geforce 9600 GT shows a great fps loss when the resolution increased, almost around 35%. That's why the mag says 9600 GT won't be useful for too long. Useful, but not that long.

What? the mag did the test, not me. i was looking for references

 

[Joe88]

Hmm.. I'm no technician, I've heard about overclocking but I can't do it, and taking it to a PC shop is too much work

well bascially first thing is to find out if your motherboard even allows that

if it was custom built or an enthusiast comp from some company then the bios will be fully opened and everything at your disposal (enthusiast comps might have limits set in)

if you bought a pre-made computer from dell, emachines, sony, hp, (insert other company's here)
then it has a locked bios on the motherboard
all you can do is change the time/data and boot order basically

 

[Trolly]

It seems you've already come to a conclusion, but I'll just cement that by saying you should definitely get the 9600 GT. It'll play games fine until the next generation consoles, then all PC gamers will probably end up getting new graphics cards.
But yeah, I never regretted getting a new graphics card, and I use it way more than I would ever use a PSP.

 

[da_head]

since no one has mentioned it yet, yes u should most definitely get more ram, especially if you wanna play gta iv or crysis lol. besides, ram is dirt cheap nowadays

 

[Raestloz]

@Joe88: My motherboard eh? I buy my PC piece by piece, so I think it's possible to overclock it. By the way... what does the motherboard has to do with overclock? Isn't it the processor that we want to overclock? Does it mean virtually all processors can be overclocked?

@da_head: Okay, heheh. I'll get a new RAM. Might as well buy that by myself. I'll take one 2GB memory. I'm looking forward to upgrading, but my mom won't be here in one month. Gotta wait till then, but at least I've got my checklist of what should I buy

 

[Sonicslasher]

Get this card here.

 

[Raestloz]

Sorry, mate. I'm in Indonesia. I don't think the shipping cost to here is free

Ah, how I wish I live in America...

 

[da_head]

Sorry, mate. I'm in Indonesia. I don't think the shipping cost to here is free

Ah, how I wish I live in America...

america's overrated. s'all about canada