Obviously I want to enjoy BM in all its glory (and Fallout Vegas etc) so I’m looking at changing my 8800GTX… I have two of them but they’re not currently setup in SLi as I dont think my new 650W PSU will deliver the goods…
What card will replace it… 9*** wasnt an upgrade to me as it wasnt any better other than heat/power…
Do I get a SLi bridge from ebay or go for something like a 450/460?
£100 is really my budget but I really want to see a noticeable difference… any ideas?
Send at least one of those cards to me. I’m not sure it’ll improve your system performance but, hey, it’s worth a try.
Go ATi, u’ll get alot better price to performance value. For your budget you could afford an mid level 5xxx series card which will greatly out perform the similarly priced nVidia card (probs the GT 2xx series). This card is right around you’re budget and its a beast.
As eternalness said, go ATi right now, the current nVidia Fermi lineup is a joke price-wise and heat-wise.
It should be noted though that your current card will easily be able to run BM maxed out. Not sure about Fallout Vegas, but the card you have now is still powerful enough to run many of the latest games.
From what I’ve seen, the 2 8800’s you have are more than enough to get the job done. I have 2 9800 GTX’s in SLI and they are almost the same as the 8800 GTX’s. Obviously half the people on here haven’t even seen them in action. Buy a long flimsy SLI bridge and get them running in SLI. Just upgrade your PSU to at least a 750. FYI the performance of your GPU also depends on your CPU, you could be experiencing bottle-necking and not even know about it if you are currently having frame rate issues. That is, if you have an older CPU.
GTS 450 maybe? havent looked into it too much though.
While I agree about ATi, you couldn’t be more wrong. The GTX 260 outperforms the 5770 in 90% of the benchmarks, but it’s not by much.
Cheers guys! appreciate the pointers… the water pump went on the car this morning on the way to work so I might have to stick with the 8800’s 
I suppose I could put them back in SLi - should still have plenty in them.
The CPU is a Q6600 running at 2.8Ghz with 8Gb of RAM… not sure if this is the bottleneck? pretty old CPU now but still seems to demolish most tasks… ?
Don’t worry, the requirements for NV are pretty low
Dual-core 2.0 GHz CPU
2GB RAM
10GB free HDD space
Nvidia GeForce 6 series or ATI 1300XT series video card
Windows XP/Vista/7
And Black Masa should run at full with at least X4 AA. (Even without SLi)
Plus, I would wait for the 6000 series from ATi, as the nVidea cards should drop in price once the 6000 cards come out.
i got pretty much teh same rig, and the only game i couldnt run on full details was crysis and now mafia 2
And you tjinking you will have problems running bm ?
I use a single 8800GTX and it still runs almost all modern games maxed out. If your’s doesn’t then it’s broken, or needs a replacement fan.
The bottleneck in your system is probably your motherboard with that setup, or your HD.
And remember that BM is on the Source engine, which doesn’t require all that much in a machine. Given that it was built in 2004, and even now is only a little more pushing on hardware than it was then. It should run maxed out EASILY on an 8800GTX.
Oh, and keep your drivers up-to-date.
Yeah but BM doesn’t use the 2004 version of source, in fact i can’t really think of any game that still does. Most, if not all, are on the Orange Box engine (2007) and a few run on the the EP1 engine (2006). BM is using a modified version of the Orange Box engine. Please stop praising the 8800 like its a god, ill admit its pretty good card considering its age, but its nowhere near the powerhouse of a card u claim it to be.
I have a single 8800GT and I’m not planning to upgrade yet.
I personally am looking to get either a GTX 260 or an HD5770 for Christmas. More likely the 5770 because it’s cheaper, and supposedly quieter, runs cooler, and is more power efficient, which I believe is a reasonable tradeoff for a bit of power.
I’d go for the gtx CT, it just has more to offer, id also wait till Christmas for a decision on it/price drops.
My 8800gts setup (dual core 3.0 gHz, 4 gigs of Ram) eats every Source game for lunch with consistent triple-digit framerates. In fact, I can run every game I’ve ever tried (including both Crysis games) at a very good framerate with a little tweaking.
Who cares if it isn’t a “powerhouse?” It runs every game on the market.
eternalness is a major ATi whore, is all.
If Nvidia would stop being so bitchy about their products and paying devs ridiculous amounts of money so they can include their propreirty shit, which really isnt all that great and its very capable of being run on ATi cards if it wasnt illegal to do so, just to make ATi look bad, I would like them.
So you have to broadcast your hatred toward NVidia for all of us to suffer through?
Founded in 2004, Leakfree.org became one of the first online communities dedicated to Valve’s Source engine development. It is more famously known for the formation of Black Mesa: Source under the 'Leakfree Modification Team' handle in September 2004.