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The good ole' is it worth upgrading malarky

carrot1401

carrot1401

carrot1401

Soldato
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4850 512mb to gtx 260 216sp on a 20" (1680x1050) screen, much of a boost?
And also, is it really true you can have a 2nd nvidia card for physx on a crossfire board?

EDIT: And what 2nd card is required for decent physx?
 
4850 to 260 would be a reasonable boost but only worth it if you play at atleast 1680x or above, at your res of 1680x its going to be pushing it as to if its worth it or not depending on the games you play. I would do it personally as the 260 are fairly cheap atm and a lot more future proof than the 4850 512.

You can have a 2nd GPU for physx on XP or Win7 but not (as the posters above said) on vista. I'd say 8800GS or 8800GT would be the best card for that... however at the present time there simply isn't enough games using hardware physx to make it worth doing unless you happen to play one of the small number of titles, for everything else the 260 would handle physx + rendering fine.
 
I think going to that card would see a good boost for you if you like to use AA and AF in games . I went from 8800gts (similar to your 4850) upto 260gtx and seen a definite worthwhile improvment. I dont think you will have any problems running any games out at the moment at that res with a 260gtx

Go for it !
 
Yer should be able to do the jump between cards for about £40-£50 depending on what I sell the 4850 for, will prob get Win7 in the future and leave physx for now. Main games I play are Far Cry 2, Crysis TF2, L4D, Company Of Heroes and at the moment, Flock! :p
 
[QUOTE='[ZiiP]Main games I play are Far Cry 2, Crysis TF2, L4D, Company Of Heroes and at the moment, Flock! :p[/QUOTE]

Just for those games alone I would say this is an essential upgrade
 
At 1680x1050 there will be no need for a Physx card because the 260 is powerful enough to handle both graphics and Physx.

My most recent upgrade has been from an highly overclocked 4850 to a GTX260. The 4850 was good enough to play any game, but the 260 allows all the bells and whistles and maintains much more consistent frame rates. I think the upgrade is well worth it, even on a 1680 monitor.
 
555BUK said:
At 1680x1050 there will be no need for a Physx card because the 260 is powerful enough to handle both graphics and Physx.

My most recent upgrade has been from an highly overclocked 4850 to a GTX260. The 4850 was good enough to play any game, but the 260 allows all the bells and whistles and maintains much more consistent frame rates. I think the upgrade is well worth it, even on a 1680 monitor.
Click to expand...

Thanks for that :) thought its time I dived into Nvidia again :D
 
Got another option, crossfire 4850's. Got one, can grab another as I have asus p5e x38 board. Maybe upgrading to 1920x1080 in future too. But would that power supply handle 2 4850's, e8400 @ 3.6ghz, 4gb ram, 1 dvd-rw drive and 1 hard drive, with 5 120mm fans? PSU Calculator has it at 297w for 1 4850 and adding another ups it to 380w. What ya think, worth it?
 
Have you tried clocking it?

I've got the single slot noisy sapphire 1GB version, just bought it off the MM and it came today. On the stock cooler I've managed to achieve 760/1120mhz core/mem! I'm eager to see what it will do when I put it under water.
 
gurusan said:
Have you tried clocking it?

I've got the single slot noisy sapphire 1GB version, just bought it off the MM and it came today. On the stock cooler I've managed to achieve 760/1120mhz core/mem! I'm eager to see what it will do when I put it under water.
Click to expand...

Probably very little. I had a Sapphire 4870 and failed to acheive any higher clocks under water than the stock cooler (with better thermal paste applied). Just silence.
 
My HIS 4870 1GB was not a very good clocker either...but I've just put my Sapphire 1GB 4850 under water and given it 1.32V load and .99V Idle and and I've achieved 840mhz stable. Might put a tad more voltage to 1.35-1.38 through it to see if I can squeeze another 20mhz or so out of it...but I'm very pleased with it as it is now.

Oh, and at stock voltage I have managed to get 780mhz out of it under water as opposed to the 760mhz on air. This is my 3nd awesome clocking RV770 chip out of 5.
 
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