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next video card

meem

meem

meem

Associate
Joined
7 Jun 2005
Posts
108
Currently using BFG 8800gts 320mb (quite an early version too - G80)

My girlfriend bought an 8800GT G92 512mb much later, and her graphic performance/smoothness is far far superior to mine, looks better/sharper, runs smoother, etc

Other specs are different but quite similar, crysis recommends medium settings for me, and highest settings for her...

mboard is asus P5k / Wifi-AP
q6600 quad core cpu
4gb crucial ballistix

So, what is my next move?
budget (not what i want to spend, mind, but what i will not go over, period) is definately below £200
 
Easy choice really. If spending almost all of it then buy a 4870 or GTX260.

Budget buy would be a 4850 for £117. That would be a major step up from your card and even your gf card.

Even a 8800GT would be a good step up and they can be had for a bargain price atm.
 
Greebo said:
Easy choice really. If spending almost all of it then buy a 4870 or GTX260.

Budget buy would be a 4850 for £117. That would be a major step up from your card and even your gf card.

Even a 8800GT would be a good step up and they can be had for a bargain price atm.
Click to expand...

How do the 4870 and gtx260 compare? stock speeds / price, and OC capability?

Another thing that made me sad is I could barely oc my 8800gts before getting artifacts, her GT easily got double or more on an OC. I doubt I would have paid the extra for bfg (or any better brand) if i'd known the OC would be so restrictive. So i don't want to make that mistake again

I run at 1440 x 900
Vista 64bit too btw

thanks :)
 
The monitor is pretty new, I don't have space for anything bigger (wider) on the desk.

What brand then, for radeon? I guess the majority vote is 4850/4870 over geforce.
I can't see my res going up, isn't it still worth paying a small bit extra for the better card though? (assuming 30 quid or so, i didn't look at prices yet!)..... or at my res will there be *no* difference period?
 
At that res 4850 will do very well.
The 4870 is quicker than the GTX 260 so would go for that if spending more than the 4850 price. The difference would be that you would get higher FPS on the 4870 but it may not be visible to you (most people cant discern past 30FPS its said), but you can add more eye candy if req and will also help later on for games using more advanced engines.

As for brands depends on what youre after. Personally i really like the HIS ICEQ 4850 (would have got it if it was out when i got my 4850). Or if you go for the 4870 it would be out of 2 cards for me. The Powercolor ATI Radeon HD 4870 as its the cheapest or the This Week Only Offer for the Asus ATI Radeon HD 4870 512MB with the 3 year warranty.
 
Ditto the 4850 at that res. Why pay for more when you don't have to.

The 4870 is quicker than the 4850 but not by the pro rata price.

And g80 GTS cards weren't too good at overclocking (some were) whereas the newer GT/GTS G92 cards were much easier to overclock.

Just buy the cheapest 4850 you can find. Pot luck whether you get a good overclocker.

The 4850's overclock better than the 4870 anyway which makes the performance gap even less.
 
ok, so i don't need the extra power of the 4870 "at my resolution"... but I notice the 4870 is GDDR5 and the 4850 is GDDR3 - where is this memory speed increase noticable? Or has that already been included in the decision making above?
 
for games out now the 4850.for games coming out in the near future,(farcry2)ect,4870 will have more grunt.
 
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