This has cheesed me off.

I have just bought the above for £70 and found that it doesn't run Crysis to as well as one might hope. It runs OK (and by OK i really mean BAD), at medium settings on 1024. However, you really want it on high settings to get the full experience it deserves - medium just doesn't do it justice.

Now i know the GFX market moves fast - probably faster than any other sector of the market, but to spend £70 on a relatively new card (half the price of a whole Xbox 360) and not be able to play a game that was out last year is a bit much.

Not as bad as nVidia renaming the card and calling ti the new 9500. You need to look around before plunking your money down. Im a yank, but here for a few bucks more you can get a vastly superior card, like a 9600gt or a 8800gt

Yeah, it does seem cheaper over there.

£70 is a fair whack though, i'd have to say. You'd expect more for your money. 9600gt is selling at about £100 ($200), and 8800gt is selling at £130 ($260).

Yes, do some research before parting with cash. Personally, I had a budget which i stuck to, but i incorrectly assumed the card would work well on recent games, although tbh performance is ok on everything i've tried apart from Crysis.

Crysis is considered no cards land. It isnt fair to judge your card against that game. Heres a good place to get info on future purchases, as many here build not only theor own, but for a living as well, and know whats what out there and how it performs. Good luck and good gaming, and dont slam your purchase because it wont play Crysis, as most cards wont either, even the uberist SLI setups

Well, of all games it's Crysis i really want. Even playing on my shoddy setup the gameplay is engrossing, i just think its deserves a bit extra.

My mate owns a 8800gtx and reckons he can max it out on 1280.

In DX10 ultra, maybe in certain parts of the game, its playable, but it still hasnt been truly conquered

Unacceptable in my view. Imagine if you bought an Xbox game and it didn't run properly.

I don't think developers should have 6800gt owners in mind. But the 8600gt was the schiznitz just 18months ago.

I'm certainly not forking out £100+ just to play one game. But trust me, its a close run thing...its that good.

Maybe in a year I'll get a 9800gtx when they're around the £100 mark. Then I can play Crysis. ....but not the next new game

When youre on the cutting edge , this happens. Its supposed to be this way. Keep moving the target back, so there has to be better performance, which only makes for better consoles too. The consoles wouldnt dare do this, as theyd be lambasted in an instant. PCs are the cutting edge, and have to go in this direction.. There really isnt a upgrade option with consoles, so the challenges you see using PC gaming is only consoles gains, tho theyre limiting, as you get what you get with a console, with no real upgrading going on, and the PC? Just spend more money heheh

Yeah cutting edge. Also fecking expensive as it turns out.

Just like anything "new", you pay for it. And if it lasts, youre setup, but in high tech, nothing lasts, not even our wallets

Well i aint playing. I'll wait 12-18mnths then buy a card cheaply and play Crysis.

Theres newer architectures coming in the graphics market, probably quarter 3, they hold much promise, and maybe by then , Crysis will be tamed

Yeah...and a snip at £250-400 for the newest cards. No ta!

I'm aiming for 9800gtx in like 12 months, should be around £100 by the (I hope!!)

In the meantime, Bioshock, COD4, Medieval Total War 2, X3 Reunion all look great (although a bit laggy sometimes).

PS the 8600gt doesn't overclock well.
PPS save another £60 and buy a 8800gtx
PPPS don't get a 9600gt. anything nvidia with a '"6" or a "gt" is bad.

The 8600gt was never "the schiznitz." It was meant to be an affordable mid level card to begin with. For every generation of graphics cards, there are tiered naming schemes, like 8200/8600/8800, with 8200 at lowest performance level and 8800 highest. Next generation would be something like 9200/9600/9800. The new card would perform slightly better than the previous generation card on the same tier, but will often be significantly slower than higher tier card in the same previous generation. Your 8600gt is a mid tier card, has never been the top dog, at any time, and is significantly slower than the previous generation 7900.

will 7900 play crysis better?

The 8600gt was never considered a good card even at first release (1 year ago) it had a very luke warm reception, it was considered an overpriced underperformer in comparison to last generation dx9 cards and dx 10 features on the card were pure marketing .

From the July 2007 review on the midrange cards including the 8600:-

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/HD-2 [...] -2362.html

"We fear that those buying "DX10" cards in the hope that they will play the highly anticipated game titles due out later this year will be sorely disappointed in the performance levels"


Its a shame the budget wasnt a little higher for £78 you could have grabbed a 3850 and got well over double the performance I budget was hard fixed I would have probably looked at the 2600xt which has slightly better performance but is considerably cheaper.

I run the 8800GTX and have done since launch, personally I think graphics maxed at 1280x1024 looks far worse than graphics maxed at 1600x1200 but then Im playing on a CRT so I get a decent dot pitch and scaleability. Unfortunately the 8800gtx does struggle at 1600x1200 when running AA.

Not sure where you got that impression from as it was released as a mainstream card and has always been considered average or even sub par. It's best to do a bit of research before buying any sort of hardware, and a simple google search of "8600gt" brings up many dissapointing reviews and information like the following:

The Geforce 8600GT has been considered disappointing and underpowered by many, the main criticism being that it does not actually outperform the previous generation Geforce 7600GT by a wide margin ie. only average of 20 percent improvement in framerates in most games (though it operates at a much higher resolution), and is actually, in some games, slightly slower or on par with the 7600GT.

Architecturally, the GeForce 8600 series in particular is hampered by its lack of sheer processing power - it has just 25% of the full G80 core's stream processors - and also by its comparatively narrow 128-bit memory bus. Older video cards in the same price range, such as the GeForce 7900GS and GT, featured a much wider (and hence faster) 256-bit memory bus.


So expecting a midrange £70 graphics card to play Crysis (a Game designed to push high end hardware (Graphics cards of £300+) for the next few years) on high settings is a bit of a leap. You won't be able to play this game at full settings for a while yet, and certainly not with a cheap card as you are planning.

Anyway, I play Crysis at Medium settings at the moment (on my friend's year old £400 PC) and it still looks gorgeous. You should be happy that you got a card that cheap which can manage medium. As for the comment about an Xbox 360, it's cheap, yes, but there's a reason. It's a console and can pretty much only be used to Game and play movies. Microsoft also lose money each time they sell an Xbox, but make up for it with the games that cost twice as much as the same game on PC (except those games on a PC are modable, usually have more content and always look better on a half decent PC). PC's are far superior and infinately more useful than consoles and more than make up for any extra initial cost. I do everything on my PC, browse the net, listen to music, watch films and TV shows, organise my entire life and most importantly... gaming! Hell, I can run all the latest games perfectly and have recently been playing all my old games (the earliest being more than 15 years old!) as well! No console has such a large back catalogue of games that work on them, hell, they have trouble supporting the previous generations games!

Sorry, got a bit ranty there, but basically what I'm trying to say is that a PC is an investment that will serve you well for a long time, but you can't cheap out and expect excellent results. I understand that money situation plays a part, but I'm in that boat too. I've been planning my gaming PC build for over a year now (it's changed an awful lot as new tech comes out and I have researched more) and will finally be in a position to buy it at the end of this month. It'll be replacing an 8 year old PC that I spent quite a lot of money on building it at the time, but it still works, and while I can't run many of the newer games, it still handles World of Warcraft fine, plays my entire retro gaming collection (which is huge!) and all my non gaming needs. I'm expecting the new one to last at least 3 years and still be able to play all the current games at relatively high settings, so that to me justifies the cost.

Ummm, hope that helps, or even makes sense. Kinda trailed off at the end.

My friend's PC runs it perfectly on Medium (some high) with a 7900GS, an E6300 @2GHz and 2 GBs DDR2 800, so it may be better, but it's not going to be a huge leap or anything.

[quotemsg=1806733,17,296362]a PC is an investment that will serve you well for a long time, but you can't cheap out and expect excellent results.

I'm sorry but £70 for one component is not what I would consider being cheap. this goes back to my original point that you can buy one half of an Xbox 360 for this money.

For a cheaper, safe ,easy, sometimes descent graphics experience, a console is perfect. For cutting edge, upgradeability and yes cost, PC is the way.