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Is this a good GPU?

jpd1977uk

jpd1977uk

jpd1977uk

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17 Aug 2007
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Maidenhead
I'm thinking of getting the XFX ATI Radeon HD 6870 Black Edition 1024MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card to play games such as GTA4, FEAR3, The SIMs 3 HalfLife ect?

Rest of spec:
Intel Core i5-2500K 3.30GHz (Sandybridge) Socket LGA1155 Processor - Retail
Akasa AK-CC4005SP01 Venom Nano CPU Cooler
Asus P8P67 LE Intel P67 (Socket 1155) DDR3 Motherboard ** B3 REVISION **
Corsair XMS3 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 PC3-12800C9 1600MHz Dual Channel Kit
Microsoft Windows 7 Bundle - Home Premium 64 Bit
- Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB SATA 6Gb/s 16MB Cache - OEM (WD5000AAKX)
Stock Code: SW-000-OP
LiteOn IHAS124-19 24x DVD±RW SATA ReWriter (Black) - OEM
OCZ StealthXStream 2 700W Power Supply
BenQ G2222HDL 21.5" Widescreen LED Monitor - Black
 
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GTA 4: insufficient vram to enable max settings unless you hack GTA 4.
FEAR 3: no idea.
Sims 3 & HL: should be absolutely fine.
 
If your going to crossfire at some-point then it should be fine with that monitor/resolution, but otherwise your going to find your self back here in a year asking what to buy next.

6870's are good performers, but not the best, if your going amd on a single card aim for a 6950, even a 1gb 6950 would do.

If your heading for a 6950 on your budget I would go for this http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-194-XF over the VTX, less vram yes, higher quality, definitely
 
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GTA 4 is poorly optimized. It doesn't look bad on high (instead of v/high) anyway.

All other games you mentioned should be fine.
 
I would stick to the 6870 because it makes no much difference to stretch to 6950 1GB/560 1GB anyway, and 6870 is already overkill for some games you listed on the games you specified.

I'm not going to spend premium for 1GB cards as of year 2011. If you strech your budge for GTA 4 you'll need more than 1GB vram for max settings (or hack and suffer from lag spikes if you must play it with 1GB cards at max settings).
 
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harmony said:
If you strech your budge for GTA 4 you'll need more than 1GB vram for max settings
Click to expand...

The most vram GTA4 will ever use is along the lines of 1200mb, so a 1gb card should be fine, just drop some settings down from 'very high' to 'high' and you'll be well under 1gb, if it were a 512mb card then yes discourage but for a 1gb card GTA4 is more than do-able. Don't forget GTA4 is more CPU hungry than GPU.
 
pgi947 said:
The most vram GTA4 will ever use is along the lines of 1200mb, so a 1gb card should be fine, just drop some settings down from 'very high' to 'high' and you'll be well under 1gb, if it were a 512mb card then yes discourage but for a 1gb card GTA4 is more than do-able. Don't forget GTA4 is more CPU hungry than GPU.
Click to expand...

I agree that you could certainly drop the graphics settings in GTA4. However if you spend premium for the game, you don't want any bottleneck from vram, especially the annoying lag spikes caused by vram shortage.

Of course, there are many famous mods for GTA4, such like ENB, sometimes using ridiculously more than 1200MB vram. However single GPU is not likely to have sufficient GPU power for that.
 
harmony said:
I agree that you could certainly drop the graphics settings in GTA4. However if you spend premium for the game, you don't want any bottleneck from vram, especially the annoying lag spikes caused by vram shortage.

Of course, there are many famous mods for GTA4, such like ENB, sometimes using ridiculously more than 1200MB vram. However single GPU is not likely to have sufficient GPU power for that.
Click to expand...

WOAH! I thought that was irl!
 
In which case you should take onboard that 'high' and 'very high' share little or no differences, at least in my experiences anyway, of course using any of the showcase mods would increase vram requirements, but its not a requirement of the game.

And yes that mobo does run at x16/x4 in CF or sli from what I can make from the Asus spec page, but the gain you would make from crossfire cards at those speeds would hardly take a major hit from the 2nd card running at x4
 
If i were you i would save up a little more and get the 6950 2GB version, my brother has it and it has no problerm running all the latest games at high res/max settings.
 
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