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5850 replacement - £160 budget

jmp_78

jmp_78

jmp_78

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Joined
2 Mar 2009
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612
Location
Nottingham
I've just sold my HTPC video card for £60, and am putting my Radeon 5850 in it's place. This however, leaves a gaping hole in my main rig!

So - with my £60 kitty, plus up to another £100ish - what card should I get that will be at least a little quicker than the 5850?

Am thinking perhaps the MSI 6870 Hawk, or perhaps even a 5870? If I'd been quicker off the mark, I should have perhaps bagged a 6950 DirectCU II on yesterday's 'Today Only' offer.

I game at 1920 x 1080 by the way :)
 
You could get an HD5870,HD6870 or a GTX560 non-TI for around that price but they won't be a huge upgrade IMHO. You will gain improved tessellation performance though in the case of the latter two cards though.

I would probably get an HD6670 for use in your HTPC for around £60 and get a replacement for your HD5850 when AMD and Nvidia launch their 28NM cards at the end of the year or early next year.
 
CAT-THE-FIFTH said:
I would probably get an HD6670 for use in your HTPC for around £60 and get a replacement for your HD5850 when AMD and Nvidia launch their 28NM cards at the end of the year or early next year.
Click to expand...

To be honest, the HTPC is used for gaming in lieu of a console - therefore, a 6670 wouldn't cut it! I tend to 'hand-me-down' components from the desktop to the HTPC when I fancy a change :)

Thanks for other suggestions though. I know that I won't get a massive improvement from a 5850 with my budget, but I'd rather do it this way, then sell the 5850 on in 6-12 months (and so the cycle begins again!)

I'm curious which would be a better buy between a 5870 or a 6870? I am presuming that the answer is 5870... just.
 
Yea, do it the other way round.

Get a cheap card for your HTPC and stay with 5850 for the gaming rig, untill the newer cards are out at the end of the year.

At £160 your not going to do much better than the performance from a 5850...

I would say you would have spend enough to get the 6950 2Gb to make it worth it.
 
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opethdisciple said:
Yea, do it the other way round.

Get a cheap card for your HTPC and stay with 5850 for the gaming rig, untill the newer cards are out at the end of the year.
Click to expand...

Okay, can anyone suggest a 'cheap' card that would perform better than a 4870 gaming-wise?
 
Not really, that's ~5750 performance, best bet would be to pick up a 2nd hand 5850, but to be honest that's a little silly.
 
Hmmmmm, is by any chance the general concencus that I SHOULDN'T have sold my 4870 for £60!

My initial thought was sell it for a good price while I can, and get a 6850 as a reasonable replacement for another £60 (the unneccesary upgrade bug strikes!). Then I thought, why not find another £30, and just get a slightly better card for the desktop machine, and therefore a free 5850 for the HTPC.
 
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opethdisciple said:
Why do you need such a powerful card in the HTPC?

Would something like a 1Gb 5450 be enough for watching movies, browsing etc.....

Do your gaming using the 5850.
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It's a choice, simple as that - I use it for gaming as much as web browsing and movies. You could ask why do people spend hundreds on games consoles for their HD tellys?
 
You can get a 560ti for that, just google it.

Not a major different in performance, but having one nvidia and one amd/ati card would prove beneficial.

e.g. bfbc2 works better on the ati card so therefore you could use it on your ati based PC.
 
Hazkirby said:
You can get a 560ti for that, just google it.

Not a major different in performance, but having one nvidia and one amd/ati card would prove beneficial.

e.g. bfbc2 works better on the ati card so therefore you could use it on your ati based PC.
Click to expand...

Agreed, thanks. The more I think about this, the more I reckon I need to spend just a little more on the desktop graphics.

Then I could get a 560 Ti as you say, or perhaps a 1GB 6950. This makes more sense :)
 
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