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Need advice on upgrade....

Lord Kram

Lord Kram

Lord Kram

Associate
Joined
13 Dec 2008
Posts
94
Hey all, need a bit of advice here if possible....
I currently have the ATI Radeon 3870x2 (1GB) card, but have been having some problems recently, so I'm thinking its time to get a new card/upgrade it
What I would like though if possible, is something slightly better, but not a 1GB model
I have a budget of around £100 (£120 Max) and am going to stay down the ATI route as my motherboard doesnt support SLI, only Crossfire

I will still get another 1GB card if I can get something better than what I have now for my budget
So any suggestions please? :)
 
Hi there,

The 3870X2 may have 1GB total video memory - but each GPU only gets a 512MB share of this, so going for a 1GB card (or even a 768MB one) would be a large step up in terms of video memory.

With that budget - this is the card I would go for.

If you need to stay with AMD, then this is the card to get. However, it costs about the same as the GTX 460, but is ~15% slower.
 
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I forgot to note, I have quite an old motherboard (Abit -ip35pro xe) with a Intel Q660 CPU, is the ATI card you linked above still ideal?
Its been a while since I upgraded anything, so need to double check if 1 of these new cards will work ok without problems :)
 
In that case, if you are using a P35 board then please ignore crossfire options as the second port only runs at PCIe v1.1 x4 speed - which will severly limit the performance of any second card.

In this case get the best single card you can afford - which is the ASUS GTX 460 769MB I linked to.
 
cmndr_andi said:
In that case, if you are using a P35 board then please ignore crossfire options as the second port only runs at PCIe v1.1 x4 speed - which will severly limit the performance of any second card.

In this case get the best single card you can afford - which is the ASUS GTX 460 769MB I linked to.
Click to expand...
^Agreed

The GTX460 768MB is the way to go.
 
Thanks very much for your help guys, but I have 1 more question..
I might not be able to order the card from overclockers, may only be able to get it from a retail shop (pc world/currys etc.) are there any other similar cards you could reccomend if I were to get 1 from 1 of those stores?
I know its cheeky asking on this forum!
 
Lord Kram said:
Thanks very much for your help guys, but I have 1 more question..
I might not be able to order the card from overclockers, may only be able to get it from a retail shop (pc world/currys etc.) are there any other similar cards you could reccomend if I were to get 1 from 1 of those stores?
Click to expand...
Wouldn't recommend it unless you got something against your money :p
They charge anything from £30 up to £100 extra on the same graphic card than you getting it online from etailer :D Just been there yesterday and saw them selling GTX460 768MB for £160, GTX470 for £290 lmao
 
Soz for the mistake above!
Need a quick bit of help again, I might have found a similar card to the 1 above: SYNERGY Edition NVIDIA GeForce GTX 460 PCI-E Graphics Card - 768MB
Would you say this is nearly exactly the same as the asus card? It looks very similar with a different name I know but specs look nearly the same
Is it not as good as the asus? I may go get this later as I might not be able to order the other 1 online
 
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Sorry man, but you will need to remove that competitor link before the mods see it, as it is against forum rules.

The way it works is Nvidia provide a "reference" graphics card design that manufacturers can either stick to or deviate from. The reference design will work fine at the stock speeds of the card and will be relativley cheap to manufacture. On the other hand - manufacturers often don't use the Nvidia reference cooling designs and make their own (which are usually better than the Nvidia ones, but cost more to manufacture) which cool better and allow for factory overclocks.

The ASUS card has one of these custom coolers and a slight factory overclock, the base Zotac card uses a reference design throuout.

Personally, I would suggest looking at this MSI GTX 460 on OCUK which uses a nice custom cooler and a factory overclock.
 
So would you not reccomend the other 1 I posted?
I can order 1 online, but it would be a lot easier for me to be able to go and get it from a shop as delivery will be a problem at the moment
 
The Zotac card is great - buy with confidence. I was just highlighting that for the same (or less) money you can get a slightly faster card with a better cooler.
 
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