Vid card recommendations?

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RogueHelicopterPilot

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I was hoping I could receive some advice deciding what a good video card to buy for my system would be.

Recently, I had to rebuild my PC when my old motherboard crashed. I had a 6800GT AGP8x on my old system, and my new mobo supports PCI-E. When I was buying parts, I obviously needed a new graphics card. It was the last thing I bought, so I didn't have enough money left over for anything better. I bought a budget BFG 7300GS.

I'm not happy with it to the say the least. I'm looking for something that can play newer games like Oblivion, Crysis, STALKER, etc. on medium to high settings, but still reasonably priced ($250 is probably going to be my limit). I really don't know what to look for in the newer generations of cards hence my post here.

Another issue for me is going to be the physical size of the card. My tower is very old and somewhat cramped. When I purchased my 6800GT, I wasn't expecting it to be so long. When I installed it, I had to rearrange my hard drives in their cradle so it wasn't poking into their ribbon cables and also so I had enough room to connect the video card's power cable. I'm assuming a lot of the newer cards are comparable in size if not the same, so hopefully a higher end model will still be able to fit snugly.

Here are my relevant system specs:

Abit AB9 Pro 775 (PCI-E for vid card)
Intel Core 2 Duo 6420 @ 2.13Ghz
2Gigs DDR2 RAM
I can't remember my power supply capacity, but I'm pretty sure it's between 500 and 600 watts.
Forgot - WinXP SP2
 
8800gt if you can find one

or spend a little less and get a ati 3850 or 3870.

I'll bet everyones answer will be similar to mine.
 
8800gt if you can find one

or spend a little less and get a ati 3850 or 3870.

I'll bet everyones answer will be similar to mine.

^^^^^

LEave the GTS alone unless it has 512mb of ram, otherwise it's inferior to the GT and will cost more.
 
^^^^^

LEave the GTS alone unless it has 512mb of ram, otherwise it's inferior to the GT and will cost more.

right on, the 8800gt is the biggest bang for the buck Video Card currently (on nVidia's side) the hd3870 for ATi
 
OK, sounds good. I'm not sure if I want to spend $270 on one, though. Does anyone know its physical dimensions? I'm worried it would not fit in my case and I'd rather not have to buy a new one because I am cheap.
 
You would be able to Max Stalker and Oblivion with a Hd3850. You should overclock your CPU. Get it to at least 3GHz and you will notice a large difference.
 
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