Originally posted by sammorris:

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The 8400GS is a terrible graphics card for games. To get a smooth frame rate at anything above minimum graphics settings, Call of Duty World at War requires something like an 8600GT or 9500GT. However, your best bet now is to find an HD4650 or HD4670, the former will beat the 9500GT and will certainly play COD:WAW at reduced settings, the latter can actually run the game at pretty much maximum and get a relatively smooth frame rate at 1280x1024, and only costs $80, plus will fit in any case and run on pretty much any power supply.
The HD4830 mentioned before will run even better, but needs a strong power supply, and costs over 100 dollars.

ck: Interesting that the motherboards proved very problematic for them to get to a good overclock, and that they only found a testable setting at 3.8Ghz. One wonders how they backup their claim of it being stable at 4Ghz if they couldn't even install an OS.
Overall, in the games that matter, that's a 40% performance boost on the stock 9950, which isn't bad, but puts the overclocked Phenom II about the same as a stock Q9650. Impressive as that is, the Q8200 is probably the only Core 2 Quad that would have any difficulty matching that.

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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The 2.7Ghz Phenom IIs look like they'll be about 10% behind the 2.66Ghz Core 2 Quad. On that basis, a 4Ghz Phenom II will do very well indeed, in arithmetics it certainly won't catch the i7s at any clock above stock, but it'll be a good competitor for Core 2 Quads, if anything that powers/cools that 200+ Watt monster can stay the course.

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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The one a Phenom II will become by the time it reaches 4Ghz... :P

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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All that is though, is overclocking without voltage addition, or undervolting, which is what all CPUs can do, it's just an automated process. They've got an extra 200mhz out of the CPU like that. Core 2 Quads often gain 500-600mhz before needing extra voltage.

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Originally posted by core2kid:

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What's a good card to run GTA4?

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Originally posted by sammorris:

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Actually from what I've read it's more like 10 and 12. You don't need much to surpass the console graphics, but just as well really, as you need a very beefy CPU to run the game, as most of the effects are processed by the CPU, not the graphics card.

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I assume you meant 8800GT vs 9600GT. The 8600 and 9800 are miles apart!

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To be fair, the 9600GT isn't that bad. Don't you have an HD3870 Soph? It's no slower than that.

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Actually, The 9600GT and 8800GS are about 10% behind the HD3870, that's hardly being walked all over.

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