New Graphics card £150ish

[Chris1303]

Hi Guy's, Been awhile since i was last around, since updating my pc begginning of the year i've hardly been able to use it, damn work!

looking at buying a new graphics card around the £150 mark,

Currently have MSI Nvidia 7800GT (pretty old)

Dont mind Nvidia or ATI, used to have ATI but moved to Nvidia awhile ago as played more games and they was better at the time, been out of the loop for awhile so thought i would come to the guys that would probably know the most.

Discuss

 

[Sgt.Bilko]

Best Graphics card

Have a look at tomshardware.com Article "The Best Graphics Cards for the Money: October 2008 ", here you'll find all you need to know about recent graphics cards.

 

[Chris1303]

Ok, so i have altered my budget to an extra £50

Any comments on the Powercolor 4870 1GB?

 

[thelongster]

I think the Radeon 4850 for £125ish or Radeon 4870 for £175ish.

......Just read your extra £50, you could get a "new" GTX260 with 216 stream processors for £200ish. (I'd go for this)

do you play games at very high res? If not then then having 1GB graphics memory is probably not worth it as it wouldn't be used.

 

[Chris1303]

i do play at max res normally so the 1GB card is kinda in there.

Just out of curiosity why the GTX260 216 over the 4870?

 

[thelongster]

"Just out of curiosity why the GTX260 216 over the 4870?"

There's not much in it, but from what I read it consumes slightly less power and usuallys performs slightly better in dx10 games. Nvidia cards produce a lot more on folding @home as well.

But like I said, there isn't much in it for gaming alone.

 

[Chris1303]

ah fair do's

I do really do just gaming mostly, F@H is mostly done on ps3 but on pc also.

 

[Sgt.Bilko]

Just go with your gut feeling on this on M8.

Doing a bit of research won't hurt, like the article on Tomshardware says, it depends in what titles you play.

I'd check out their Graphic card charts, just pick your benchmark and resolution settings, you'll see some surprising results.

It might pay to look at two cheaper cards and run them in SLI.

To get the best out of any of these cards you'll have to consider overclocking your CPU but that's not a problem as you have an excelent overclocker in the Q6600!

Good luck and happy gaming M8.

Bilko out.

 

[!TIMMY!]

Also think, would you put in another 260 at a later date? I believe you have a SLI mobo.

 

[Chris1303]

finally made the decision, having the powercolor 4870 1gb

Also got a corsair hx620 psu.

 

[Sgt.Bilko]

Nice chioce, let us know how you get on with it M8.

I'm thinking about one of those myself.

 

[Chris1303]

Will do, arrives today so have all weekend to have a play. Quite looking forward to seeing Crysis properly... rather on low-med lol.

Hopefully this will increase benchmark from being dismally low at the moment to somehwere reasonable. Although as you mentioned before, i need to work on O/cing the CPU as yet i havent had it stable for long enough as my pc runs 24/7. i tend to wake up the following morning with it hung.

 

[Rastalovich]

I don`t think u`ll be let down by the 4870.

 

[Chris1303]

Well i can say i have no regreted buying the 4870 in the slightest. it is awesome.

Together with buying the Corsair HX 620. However i have discovered how useless PC Arena are, DO NOT USE comes to mind, i cancelled my order on the site yet they still processed it delivered it and charged me. (This was last thursday) and i'm STILL awaiting a responce and a RMA number.

 

[AuraIndigo]

I`ve just received my Xpertvision 4870 today. What impresses me most is the dual fans. I`ve heard that some 4870s can overcook but this is sweet as a nut. Decided to not use manual fan control as I had a look at the bios and there`s aboot 8 fan profiles in there already, the thing is silent!

Performance wise, I`m not blown away. Reason being is that I purchased this card on the back of an RMAd 4850 (passive version, was too hot). Man, the 4850 was a terrific card considering the cost is like £60 cheaper.

But, there is improvements. FC2 full on at 1680 x 1050 looks and plays superbly

 

[Counter Terrorist Zombie]

Great to hear.. I just purchased the 4850 and was thinking of upgrading to the 4870 - I get really bad fps on TF2 1680x1050 (40fps minimum, intense action).

 

[AuraIndigo]

4850 is a way better overclocker too. Mine was (core) 640 stock, up to 700 no problem. Memory straight up to 1100. Best I`ve seen is a pencil mod getting the core up to 880!! I`m not gonna bother clocking the 4870, no need to!

But, 40fps min in TF2 is fine, is it not? Any AA etc on that?

 

[SuB]

40fps in tf2 for a 4850 is pretty bad?

i will double check later but i'm sure my 8800 does far better than that

i will check though

 

[Counter Terrorist Zombie]

It's 40fps min on a 32player server - max settings (AA and Filtering, motion blur/hdr etc) maybe I expect too much from it?

 

[AuraIndigo]

Yip, as he says SuB that`s minimum.

Here`s a FC2 benchmark I did, note the min. but average is great