Upgrade?
- Thread starter Kantham
- Start date
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Buying a new video card does take some research and planning, but, you must also take into account the rest of your computer hardware. There is no reason to buy a mega powerful video card unless the rest of your computer is also mega powerful. Even if you plan on upgrading the rest of your computer is 6 months, odds are the prices will drop so much over the 6 month period and you will have spent way too much just to get it earlier. If your computer is cpu limited, you will not get much performanceincrease if any just by adding a high end video card, and have to run with lower settings anyway.
I just upgraded myself. I had to, one of my 7900GTX cards go bad in my SLI setup. I bought an ATI HD4870 card to replace the SLI setup with a single card. This is the first ATI card I have bought new ever. When I first installed it, I was horrified to find that my fps was less than half it was using the 7900GTX cards. The default driver settings were all way to high and performance reaaly was unplayable in UT3. Once I found the correct driver adjustmets, I was happily surprised to see I did get a noticable increase in FPS, really great UT3 DM performance now, but only very slight increase in WAR and vCTF performance.
Since I am new to ATI and the catalyst control center, it took some trial and error to get things right. Now I am very happy, but for the first 2 days I was very very pissed off.
I just upgraded myself. I had to, one of my 7900GTX cards go bad in my SLI setup. I bought an ATI HD4870 card to replace the SLI setup with a single card. This is the first ATI card I have bought new ever. When I first installed it, I was horrified to find that my fps was less than half it was using the 7900GTX cards. The default driver settings were all way to high and performance reaaly was unplayable in UT3. Once I found the correct driver adjustmets, I was happily surprised to see I did get a noticable increase in FPS, really great UT3 DM performance now, but only very slight increase in WAR and vCTF performance.
Since I am new to ATI and the catalyst control center, it took some trial and error to get things right. Now I am very happy, but for the first 2 days I was very very pissed off.
Yes. $300 certainly isn't cheap, but as far as graphics cards go, it isn't terribly expensive either. For that, however, I can run Crysis on very high quality (well, via the ccc 2.1 tweaks. Vanilla Crysis settings run absurdly slow) with 8x SSAA, (which looks outstanding) @ 1680x1050 at an average of 30 fps. Which is another way of saying: a $300 card can run any game out there on full settings + AA at a respectably high resolution. This is not really something that has been claimable in the past. DX 11 is right now just a gimmick (Dirt 2 the water is nice but the crowds add nothing and murder the framerate- in the new stalker game it looks pretty sweet, but it's not a biggy), but unless you're someone who upgrades yearly, it will be more utilized in the coming future and it can't hurt to have it as a possibility.
~Jason
I bought an XFX HD4870 with 512Mb for $125. It's the same card as the link excpt for the 1 Gb mem, the 512Mb cards are no longer available. Still, it's pretty darn cheap and it's faster than all the other 5000 series cards except the 5870 and 5850.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150436&cm_re=hd4870-_-14-150-436-_-Product
The fan is very quiet and works great. I have it manually set to 85% speed and I cannot hear it at all. At $169 it's a very good deal. You cannot beat the XFX warranty.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150436&cm_re=hd4870-_-14-150-436-_-Product
The fan is very quiet and works great. I have it manually set to 85% speed and I cannot hear it at all. At $169 it's a very good deal. You cannot beat the XFX warranty.
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i'm still hanging on to my two SLI 7950GT cards for a while. only dx9 and no physx but they are powerful STILL!
Poopy bump. Whatchout!
I still haven't upgraded, which means I'm still running on the same GPU (8800 GTS) and it makes playing newer games a pain in the butt.
I have an eye on this card. I read reviews on the card, apparently it's much longer than it looks, and it's the main worry I have about the card. My XFX 8800 barely fits in if I recall correctly, I did look at some sites for the size specifications, and I couldn't find what I was looking for.
8800 GTS
Radeon 5830 specs
So should I get this? I also plan on getting W7, I'm still on XP 32 bit. :/
I still haven't upgraded, which means I'm still running on the same GPU (8800 GTS) and it makes playing newer games a pain in the butt.
I have an eye on this card. I read reviews on the card, apparently it's much longer than it looks, and it's the main worry I have about the card. My XFX 8800 barely fits in if I recall correctly, I did look at some sites for the size specifications, and I couldn't find what I was looking for.
8800 GTS
Radeon 5830 specs
So should I get this? I also plan on getting W7, I'm still on XP 32 bit. :/
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Hey, I got one of those MSi Twin Frozr OC's (260) and it definitely rocks.
On par with a 280 until you really start cranking the AA and AF.
At under 200 bucks it was a steal.
Just putting in a good word
On par with a 280 until you really start cranking the AA and AF.
At under 200 bucks it was a steal.
Just putting in a good word
Related question here:
I have the same card as Kantham, except it's the 640 MB one. And I have a 3.1 GHz dual-core AMD 6000+ processor.
In NBA 2K10, with everything on high except for animated clothing I get 50-60 frames per second, depending on what's happening. When I turn on animated clothing, it goes down to 15 frames per second. It doesn't have GPU-accelerated physics, so that'd be a processor-related thing, right? I was thinking that my graphics card was older than my processor, but seems like it could be the other way around.
I have the same card as Kantham, except it's the 640 MB one. And I have a 3.1 GHz dual-core AMD 6000+ processor.
In NBA 2K10, with everything on high except for animated clothing I get 50-60 frames per second, depending on what's happening. When I turn on animated clothing, it goes down to 15 frames per second. It doesn't have GPU-accelerated physics, so that'd be a processor-related thing, right? I was thinking that my graphics card was older than my processor, but seems like it could be the other way around.
That's a big, big card, even bigger than the 5850 (why? I have no idea) which JUST fits inside my case (mid-tower). Anything longer and I'd have to cut out part of my HDD bay to make room. It is annoying.
So it may not fit.
@togmkn: the way I understand it that game is very very poorly optimized and the cloth physics screw up the fps for most people.
~Jason
I dont have that problem
I have a thermaltake armor super tower, plenty of space for the gfx card but looks a bit wrong when the mobo I have is mATX.
The XFX 8800 GTS barely fit in my case. It's the Hush NZXT
http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/directron/nzxthush03.jpg
http://lib.store.yahoo.net/lib/directron/nzxthush03.jpg
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I would go with a 5850 instead. The 5830 is decent, but the 5850 seems to be the better bang for your buck. The 5770 isnt a bad choice either. All 3 cards really good if you are going to be running games at a real high resolution though.
I thought about that but then I looked at the picture of his case. Judging by the width of the PCI slots in the back, he has plenty of horizontal room in his case, so I didn't mention it.
I don't know what the hell they were thinking. Break the end power plugs, blame it on the manufacturer, and sue like a real American.