Okay, i'm looking at upping my graphics card, and my goal is to be able to play Crysis with Not drop dead graphics, but a simple wow(so above medium to high) I saw the new 3850/3870 cards that came out are pretty great in price/performance, but i also saw some Nvidia 9600 cards that didn't have too bad specs at all either. I would just like to know which card would be better for my system: 2.5g ram, AMD athlon x2 5000, and like a said, fun crysis on wow? thanks
The 9600 will probably play Crysis at the same speed as a 3870, but the 3870 has newer features that make it more futureproof. The 9600 does not have support for DX10.1 - and comes with a single slot cooler which will most likely be loud and not cool the card that great (8800GT for example).
Either the 9600GT or HD3870 are suitable for the task. They perform very similarly, and will run the game maxed at 1152x864 resolution fine, and will at 1280x1024 if you're willing to live with a slightly lower frame rate. Personally, I think the shadows in Crysis are hideous, so I max all the settings EXCEPT shadows, which I leave low. This gives me great graphics without the jaggedy shadows and doubles my frame rate, makes playing at 1280x1024 no sweat, you could probably even turn on some AA.
