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What to buy?!

oxygene

oxygene

oxygene

Soldato
Joined
20 Aug 2004
Posts
3,115
Location
Bournemouth
Ok I really havent been keeping up with graphics cards for a long while. No idea what models are good or bad and what to buy. Heres how things go:

Amd X2 6000 (3.1ghz)
8gb ram
28" 1920x1200 res monitor.

So yeah my current gfx card is a 7900gtx. Very ncie piece of kit when I got it a while back. It plays Supreme commander, red alert 3, CoD4 etc on high details at max res. CoD5, Empire total war, world of warcraft even, it wont work beyond low detail. I play warcraft the most atm and I do keep getting asked why I am happy to play it on lowest detail max res, instead of high details medium res :(
So anyhow I am looking to spend about £200 max on a gfx card that can play Blu-Ray, max detail max res wow, and all the other games much nicer.
Any help would be appreciated as I really dont know whats good these days.

*edit - Also far cry 2 I loved playing but only run it on 1680 low details...
 
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4870 1gb or GTX260 216 and keep some change.

For your full budget get the 4890 or GTX275.

It really is a toss up as to which you get as some are better in some games.
 
Have they done something to the WOW engine recently then as last time I played it (when the first expansion came out) it was pretty old looking even then with pretty low res textures etc.?

Best card for £200 you could get I would think is an ATI Radeon HD 4890 with 1GB of RAM (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=56&subid=1403). The 4870 is a nice alternative and a bit cheaper, tends to have about 10% less performance than the 4890 but is 20 to 25% lower in price.

Here's a sample benchie from Anandtech

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Full article: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3539&p=1
 
Thats fantastic, thanks to both of yuo! Especially for a farcry2 benchmark :) From the first reply I was looking at both those cards and already liked the 4890, I think the benchmark from post 2 nailed it :)
 
You will be very happy I am sure. Not much in it between the cards even in Far Cry 2.

From memory WOW runs better on Nvidia cards so you will win on some, lose on others but as already said the cards are very closely matched.
 
Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4890 1024MB GDDR5 TV-Out/Dual DVI/HDMI (PCI-Express) - Retail is now winging its way to me, and aparently tis a good overclocker too. Been reading that link you gave me KraniX and all seams very good for the res I will play at and the games I play most lol so I will be very happy. Next thing on the list is to figure out how to OC it when it arrives.
Aparently the cooler is quite noisy but I wont need it that high as I have an antec 900 case full of fans to keep the air flowing.
 
I wouldn't have got the 4890 off the back of that FarCry 2 benchmark, as 4 frames isn't worth an extra £50/£60 over a 260-216/4870 1gb.
 
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Wasnt just on the farcry benchmark :) Lots of other benchmared games I play too. Hell its all a massive leap above my crappy 7900gtx! I hate being several generations behind lol
 
KraniX said:
Really? Doesn't the 4870 give the best price vs performance at this level?
Click to expand...

Nah. They are evenly priced with the 4870 being better in some games and the GTX260 being better in others.

The GTX260 overclocks like a demon and easily gives GTX280 performance or more.

Also cooler and quieter.

Physics on the GTX too but how much you put to that is up to you.

I went from a 4870 to a GTX260 and I am happy with the move. Everything slightly quicker and smoother.
 
Not likely I'd overclock so temp not a problem but the volume is a def. issue for me. Did you find the 4870 to be that much louder over your 260?

I'm still trying to make my mind up on which of the 2 to go for, the performance generally seems bit better on the ATI card but I've not been a fan since I had lots of driver issues with an X1800 ages ago but thought it time to forget that and try again.
 
KraniX said:
Not likely I'd overclock so temp not a problem but the volume is a def. issue for me. Did you find the 4870 to be that much louder over your 260?

I'm still trying to make my mind up on which of the 2 to go for, the performance generally seems bit better on the ATI card but I've not been a fan since I had lots of driver issues with an X1800 ages ago but thought it time to forget that and try again.
Click to expand...

I do. I leave my fan on 40% with the rest of my system watercooled and it's much quiter.
 
If you are concerned with volume, avoid 4870/90 reference coolers. The nvidia reference coolers are much better in terms of performance and noise.
 
To be honest the 4870 doesn't make a lot of noise at stock settings - it does get warm though ('bout 69C idle for me at the moment). I set the fan to 35% and it was significantly noisier than stock (which typically hovers around 20-28%, idle-load) - 40%'s pretty unbearable. I set it to 100% for kicks and giggles once, no joke, my whole desk was actually vibrating. The thing's fan is extremely powerful, which is why it gets so much noisier with more aggressive fan settings.
 
The newer version of the sapphire 4870 1gb
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-188-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=939
has a good cooler my fans sit at 50% and tbh i cant hear them at all keeps my temps nice and low as well 42 idle and about 62 load , temps were even less when i just had the 1 card in there
But yeah compared to a 260 they dont over clock that well so if you are looking to oc then i would say get a 260 keeping them at stock get a 4870
 
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oxygene said:
Wasnt just on the farcry benchmark :) Lots of other benchmared games I play too. Hell its all a massive leap above my crappy 7900gtx! I hate being several generations behind lol
Click to expand...

I recently went from a 256MB 7900GT (albeit very overclocked) to a 1GB 4870, so you're in for a very similar jump, and oh my it's a jump. Games looked much better at the same settings, which I wasn't expecting, and you can really go to town with the eye candy. I have a 1600x1200 monitor and I just max all the graphics settings. The increase in image quality has indirectly saved me the cost of a new monitor. Which is good, because my new toys money went on a blocked drain and a malfunctioning boiler :(
 
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