I recently purchased a new pc for gaming and render work! Unfortunately its not living up to expectations. The specs are as follows: Intel Core 2 Quad 6600 2.4Ghz, 1066MHz FSB, 8MB Cache 3Gb DDR2 Ram Dual 350 Gb Hard Drives 7200rpm Nvidia GeForce 8600GS 512Mb (Is this card any good?) Let me know if you need other specs! It runs at moderate speed when doing general tasks such as itunes, desktop, office, media player etc. However when I task it to render somthing or play a game it stutters and the graphics settings have to be minimum. This still doesnt smoth out the gameplay. I cant understand whats wrong. I've tried everything I can think of! I would appreciate any comments on the topic or help! Cheers.
Everything else looks good, but the 8600 isnt that great for intense gaming. It's a mainstream card. If you went out and bought a 8800GT, or ATi 3870 then you would see a huge improvement. Also, if you're not that tight on cash, a 8800GTX would complete that system.
I may just get a new one and sell the other, but should it not still run reasonably well? Should it not run on lower settings? Is it that bad a card?
Are you talking about the computer itself? If so, dont! It just needs a better graphics card! 3GB of ram is more than enough, and most people have duel core processors, not a quad core. You're still ahead of the game, except the graphics card is holding you back.
Cheers for your help? on the graphics front! I hear that vista can slow gaming too, Are there any ways to optimise it for gameplay that u know of?
I have looked at a few cards and this seems a good deal at £199 OcUK GeForce 8800 GTX 768MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) Wat do u think? Are there any really good sites for component purchases? Also would I need extra cooling for this card?
Well I dont know any good sites since I dont live in Europe, but sammorris does so maybe he could help. As for the after market cooling, you should only need it if you will be over clocking. Although the GTX does get hot, it doesn't get to 90C like the 8800GT does.
£199 (presumably ex VAT) is an absolute steal for an 8800GTX. It's the OEM brand so you don't get any warranty support, but... so..... cheap!
i presume this is the one: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-051-OK that £235 inc vat. A STEAL. and its the one i showed before sam.
for the price, id say you wouldnt have to worry much. aslong as it lasts more than a year, id be ahppy for the performace at that price.
Cheers for your help I found this one for £233 (Inc vat) With life time warranty! BFG GeForce 8800 GTX OC 768MB GDDR3 HDTV/Dual DVI (PCI-Express) What do u think? What 'offer' were u refering to before?
This one: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-056-GW It's as fast as a GTX, but cheaper and also has a decent brand behind it. Now that you've posted the link to that cheap GTX though, I'm not so sure. BFG are a decent brand, and with an 8800GTX for that price, it would be easy to forget that they're old, and just brute-force higher image quality with raw processing power... That said, 8800 cards still have issues with shadows. In oblivion, an X1900XT like mine renders far higher quality shadows than an 8800GTX... Your call really, ridiculous resolution gaming or better image quality for the future (and by that I mean the Radeon HD3870).
