What graphics card for £150 - £200?

[Andy-Jones-OC]

I brought a gtx 260. Love the card, flys though most games without a prob.
Overclocks really well. And no driver probs like what some people get with the 4870.

 

[sibeer]

I know it isn't a graphics card, but my first call would be to order a P35 motherboard such as the Abit one here:

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MB-143-AB&groupid=701&catid=5&subcat=913

That will be ideal to either overclock a nice cheap E5200 to over 3Ghz, a Q6600 to over 3.0Ghz or a E8400 chip to over 3.6Ghz. The only thing it won't do is SLI. Personally would probably get the cheap E5200, half the price and some clock to 3.6Ghz and higher. Add 4GB DDR2 1066 memory and you then have a system worthy of a 4870 1GB or GTX 260 (216SP). Add in the fact that there is exciting new products in the GPU area in a month whilst little is happening in the CPU market and it is clearly the right way round to go

 

[zytok]

You don't have to use CCC...I certainly don't.

seconded. Use ATi tray tools instead. Much more customisable than CCC and you can set per game profiles as you can with the NV drivers.

 

[ekam]

an 8800GT can play mist games fairly well plus its cheap direct x 10 and quite small it also uses low power.

 

[ekam]

an 8800GT is perfect for that price as it is direct x 10, it can play crysis very well at decent spec and u can still afford another to give twice the performance

 

[reflux]

Not quite. 8800GT SLi would definitely require the OP to purchase a new motherboard, and he would therefore probably end up with an inferior Nvidia 650/680/750/780 board. Also the frame buffer is only 512mb, and if you're running SLi at the most beneficial resolution (1920x1200 or above) you really want 1GB of frame buffer per GPU.

Not to mention the power, heat and compatability issues that sometimes crop up with dual-gpu solutions.