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New card £150-£200 Approx

wozencl

wozencl

wozencl

Associate
Joined
27 Jul 2009
Posts
590
Location
UK
Hi, I am looking for suggestions on a new card. My current card, nvidia 9800GT, seems to be dying so it looks like it's time to move on.

There is a ATI 5850 for around £220 is it worth it or would I better off saving some money and getting a 5770?

Any advice will be greatly appreciated, graphic cards aren't really my forté.
 
Always buy the best card you can afford assuming the rest of your system will not hold it back. Recommend the 5850 but the 5770 is, in my opinion, underrated and a very capable card.:)
 
Something I would consider is this.

Yes its £235 BUT you get Dirt 2 and CODMW2 with it. You'll get a minimum of £20-25 back on COD on ebay and probably £10 for Dirt 2, making the card £200-205. The card itself is cooler than the referance cards and is Pre-overclocked.
 
What's the maximum resolution your monitor supports? The asus has an unlocked bios for overclocking/overvolting past the normal limits and its covered by the warranty. The powercolor is bundled with 2 great games though. Is that powercolor pcs a reference board?
 
Cheers for the replies guys, I am thinking it's best to go with the 5850 then.

As for resolution at the moment 1280 x 1024, it's a 19" Samsung but I'd like to be able to upgrade at some point.
 
I can see its their own cooler, i was asking if it's a non reference board as you cannot flash some non reference boards to bypass the overclocking limits.

From the review you posted, the pcs 5850 seems a really poor clocker although TPU got better results.

"Our overclock testing revealed that we were only able to increase the GPU frequency by 25MHz more, up to 785MHz. The memory was able to overclock up to 4.5GHz. We had hoped for higher, especially considering the larger custom PCB and heatsink/fan unit employed on this Radeon HD 5850 based video card. We are not entirely sure the extra length and added heatsink surface area is actually benefiting enthusiasts very much here without overvolting capability."
 
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As I said the board is about an inch longer, which inadvertantly answered your question. :)

The easy answer being, No you can't overvolt this board. BUT I managed 900 core and 1200 MHz memory without it, haven't tried any higher yet, but not expecting much more.
 
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wozencl said:
Cheers for the replies guys, I am thinking it's best to go with the 5850 then.

As for resolution at the moment 1280 x 1024, it's a 19" Samsung but I'd like to be able to upgrade at some point.
Click to expand...

There is the option of a 5770 now as one is easily enough for 1280x1024 and another 5770 when you get a higher resolution monitor. Crossfire 5770's are a lot faster than a single 5850.
 
Robes said:
Something I would consider is this.

Yes its £235 BUT you get Dirt 2 and CODMW2 with it. You'll get a minimum of £20-25 back on COD on ebay and probably £10 for Dirt 2, making the card £200-205. The card itself is cooler than the referance cards and is Pre-overclocked.
Click to expand...

Think those games will be downloads.:)
 
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