need advice for a new graphics card

[briansommers]

here are my specs:athlon 64 FX55 at 2.6ghz2GB of ram on boardon board sound80 gig 7200 sata hdasus a8ne ?? mobo i thinkradeon x850 256mb PCI-E vid cardok, well the vid card just died about an hour ago, so I'm thinkin' of getting:EVGA 8800 GTS 640MB PCI-Ethe question I have - can my computer handle this? or is this to much card and not enough of cpu?any advice would be greatthanksciao!Brian S

[Guest baksteen33]

Hi again, Brian. The display adapter should be adopted to the display... So, what kind of display(s)/resolution(s) do you use? Is the 512MB RAM correct? If, I would get a really cheap card (or lend one) for a quick fix and look at the rest too. A 640MB GPU would throw things totally out of balance IMHO. Hope this adds to thoughts, kind regards Jaap

[briansommers]

aaahh! LOL, I don't know what I was thinkin'i have 2GB on board ramnow would that help to balance things out?oh my monitor can only support up to 1280x1024, but I'm looking at a 24 or 27 mon down the road, I want something I can grow into.I'm running fs9 now, but with this card, i want to try fsx with it thanksciao!Brian S

[Guest baksteen33]

LOL, a different story of course! :-) Well, for FS9 @ 1280x, almost any mid-end or better 256MB/DDR3 adapter should be OK. I've never seen FS9 beyond ca 185MB used (GPU). With FSX, the GPU RAM consumption rises as the resolution and AA-levels increase. 512MB or more would give you some headroom. OTOH, if you can live with 512x FSX textures, even a 256MB GPU should do FSX fairly well. Finally, going from 1280x to 24-27" can have severe impact on performance. If you know you're going large screen and FSX very soon, yes, then definitely get the appropriate adapter already IMHO. If not, I wouldn't. Hope this adds to thoughts and kind regards Jaap

[briansommers]

thanks I went and overnighted the 8800 GTS 640MB PCIE card, so I guess tommorrow will tell all!thanks againciao!Brian S