Graphics card to replace an old HD4870?

[sastusbulbas]

Hi all,

Wondering what is recommended as a replacement graphics card for an old HD4870 these days.
Most games are played, old and new, Battlefield, Crysis, Minecraft, WoT etc. Single 1080p monitor. Decent frame rates and settings would be nice.

The old PC will be getting some CPU/motherboard upgrades in future, so anything added will be transferred later.

Old system.
Gigabyte EP4-DSP3 P45 motherboard.
Intel Q9550 CPU.
BeQuiet Dark Rock Advanced or Noctua NH-U14s CPU cooler.
Corsair PC8500 8GB memory.
Sapphire HD4870 1gb Toxic graphics card.
Samsung F3 500 and 1tb hard drives.
BeQuiet PurePower modular 630w psu.
Windows 7 Ultimate 64bit OS.
Gigabyte GZ-X1 case.

Cheers

 

[murah]

a 270x would be a good replacement I can see it working well with your CPU anything more powerful and you might be in bottleneck territory but since you are getting a new cpu/mobo what about a 280x ?

 

[arc@css]

Budget?

The above suggestion is a great one, though it will be held back a bit until you upgrade the rest of the system. Regardless, I'd still go for a 270x if you can, as they are the best bang for buck at the moment. Some are around £150 for near 7950 performance.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/product/1043?vs=1033

 

[sastusbulbas]

Cheers guys, 270X looks ok, maybe also consider the 780 and 280X. That would be £150 - £200 budget.

The 270X comes in two variants, 2GB and 4GB. Not a huge difference in price, what about performance? How does it perform in crossfire?

 

[murah]

always get the highest Vram you can get, if the games coming out at the moment are anything to go by eventually you will need that extra memory might as well future proof yourself a bit more now rather than replace later for higher memory cards

270x in Xfire would perform great, although if your getting two of them...just get a 290/780 (Some 290's can be unlocked to a 290x) though if you have the money ..780 would be my personal choice.

The problem is with a more powerful card you wont see much of a gain on the current system you have as the cpu will hold that card back until you upgrade.

270x - Cheap, good little card, can add a 2nd later for xfire
280x - Not so cheap, very good card and can xfire later
290 - maybe out of budget, possible black screen issue but they are getting round to fixing that, very good price-performance ratio, possibly can be flashed to a 290x!
GTX 780 - again maybe out of budget, solid card will last years, overclocks without effort and will beat a Titan. Price-performance ratio still acceptable and its mature technology whereas the new cores on the AMD lines are not.

AMD or Nvidia doesn't really matter both have ups and downs Nvidia is a bit more expensive and doesn't have mantle (Although that could change with the future!) they have Gsync monitors lined up and they are pretty amazing. AMD is the underdog, cheaper and they seem to be doing good with their drivers now days and they have mantle out at some point

I know its all confusing information I apologise but work out your budget (isit £200?) and We can suggest some specific cards for you

 

[arc@css]

Cheers guys, 270X looks ok, maybe also consider the 780 and 280X. That would be £150 - £200 budget.

The 270X comes in two variants, 2GB and 4GB. Not a huge difference in price, what about performance? How does it perform in crossfire?

Well, as you'll be upgrading the rest of the system, you could wait for a 280x to be on special offer. Otherwise, stick to the 270x.

If the cost of a 4gb card is relatively good value, then fair enough. However, I think spending too much more won't really give you that much extra benefit, unless you're going multi-monitor / higher res / multi-gpu.

The 270x will perform well in crossfire.

 

[humbug]

Your going to have to spend a truck load of money on a new CPU and a Motherboard for it to live on if you want a 780 / 290 as with that setup they will not perform any better than the 270X.

My advice, stick with the 270X / 280X and use the money you save on getting your self a used i5 and Motherboard.
The 780 is only about 10 to 15% faster than the 280X anyway, its an extremely capable card.