That's exactly what I've found. Looking at some benchmark tests on Tom's Hardware and the Radeon 2900XT scores higher in many tests than it's more recent 3xxx series cousins, so if I could get my hands on one of those I'd be well happy.

You know I think even the 1950XTX will offer better performance than my 2400XT. It doesn't offer DX10 support, but I'm not really fussed about that anyway (well not from a TF2 point of view!).

Cheers for all the help on this, much appreciated.

Ohh dont you worry- Graphics cards is one thing I just looove to rant about. Some guys like cars and engines, for me it's GPUs

So yeah, the higher end, later chips of each series will usually outperform the newer mid range cards these days.
e.g. 8800 over a 9600, a 7950 over an 8600.

I know the X1950s are very good value now, and as they were the top end 1xxx card it's worth checking benchmarks against the lower 2xxx models.

Also are you running Vista or XP mate? As I'm sure you know DX10 is Vista only and, in my opinion, only worth pursuing if you can gaurantee to fill the performance gap that comes with Vista. DX9 is perfectly OK right now and it will be a long while before mainstream DX10 only titles become the norm.

Not to mention the actual visible difference between the two is quite hard to spot. As much as i go on about it the extra detail is only really noticable if you stop and walk right up to a texture, or certain smoke and motion blur effects. DX10 cards will run under DX9 though ofc.

If youre checking out the Radeon X1950xtx (maybe still too long?) then have a nose at the Nvidia 7900gtx or 7950 too. The 7950 X2, much hyped in it's time for being the first card with two on-board GPUs, is limited stock now and cheap if you can find it. Though I'm guessing, again, too large

Women for me.
However GPU's tend to be cheaper.

*Awaits impending slap*

You're damn right there Spider m8!!!!

Women were my last hobby but I couldn't afford the upgrades!

I'm running Vista32. The thing about DX10 is it's great for Vista effects, but as TF2 uses DX9 anyways, chances are I'll get significant performance gains from the 1950xtx, so I'm gonna check it out! Cheers for the tip.

The length of the card shouldn't really be a problem either, it's the height that's the killer for me.

Plenty of room for extra length *ahem* as you can see..



GFX card is at the very bottom of the pic.

You're not wrong about the girls either, very expensive habit!

The height should be ok on the single slot cards- but not sure. My cards seem standard height. Here's some picture of the 8800GT to show it's single slot width.

It's amazing that it's got a faster clockspeed and memory speed than the GTS, even my cards i think. Only less stream proccessors and bandwidth. Quite amazing really for a single slot card.

Time to get the tape measure out maybe?

Too tall

I require a half height / low profile if it's going in my current case.

Here's the card I have currently, notice the difference between the back plates relative to the height of the DVI connector.



Even the x1950 xtx you mentioned seems to be full height everywhere I look

A tip from me dont get the 2900xt they are out perfromed by 3870 which is cheaper uses less power is smaller cooler and a hell of al ot more pwerfull, plus they dont sell 2900 xt's anymore due to all these reasons.

Cheers Ares, thanks for the tip.

Alas it seems that the only more recent card to my 2400 from either ATI or Nvidia is the 3450 /3570 in the half height form factor, and even then I'd have to change the mounting plate. All that for the small gains I'll get from it, I'm definitely not going to bother.

I'm coming round to the idea of building a new rig over the next couple of months, I've never built a PC from scratch either so I'm curious.

So I think there's a moral here for any non-tech game players looking to buy a new PC. Definitely don't bother buying a slimline PC! It's not worth the disappointment once the initial shine has worn off

Good news for you.
Low profile 9600GT on the way
http://en.expreview.com/2008/05/17/gala ... 0gt-blade/