Recommend me a video card

floppybootstomp

floppybootstomp

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Please :D

I was playing CoD_WaW_2 single player earlier this evening and noticed that during some graphically intense parts the game stuttered a little.

Graphic settings are high but not maxed out but so far no other games have exhibited this fault.

So if this is the way games are going I figured maybe time for a video card upgrade and so am going to ask the good folk at PC Review what may be a good choice.

Due to financial restraints I am going to stay with my base system for a while which is:

Pentium Core 2 duo 660 dual core 2.4Ghz
Asus P5B deluxe motherboard.
4Gb Corsair 8400 Memory
Two WD Velicoraptor 150Gb 10,000 rpm Hard Drives in a RAID 0 Config
Samsung 500Gb Hard drive SATA 2
Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 7.1 sound card

The video card is a BFG Nvidia 9800 GTX with 512Mb of memory.

Specs are:

Clock: 700
Memory: 1100
Shader: 1728
Shaders: 128

I’m wondering if within my budget of £140.00 it’s actually worth upgrading?

Would any improvement be worth the money?

And the first person to say ‘If you spent a little more….’ Will have their naughty bits placed in a vice and have the vice handle turned slowly over a three hour period until they shout ’Ok, the budget is £140.00 and not a penny more, now please release my gonads and let me limp home’

So now that’s clear what’s, uh, the deal, as Pink Floyd once titled one of their lesser known songs.

I must confess I’m leaning towards ATI which will be the first time I’ve considered buying one of their cards since 2002.

My board, incidentally, is one of the few Socket 775 boards which caters for an sli setup rather than crossfire but I’m figuring this should make no difference to a single card setup.

And any comments/views on latest ATI drivers would be appreciated.

So, gimme some suggestions folks.

And FWIW my favoured suppliers atm are Kustom PC's; E-Buyer; Scan and Aria, in that order.
 
Thinking quickly, the best card for that price is gotta be the 1gb 5770? Will be faster, has DX11 etc.

As for Drivers latest NV's sound good, if you stay with them.

ATI drivers it has to be the 10.3 Press release betas. They are awesome!

http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1771637#post1771637

As to if its worth upgrading at the mo? Dunno. I'll have to see some reviews etc and see whats up. DX11 is good looking though, have a look at the Dirt 2 thread for my screenies.

EDIT: I know this is from OcUK, but is just an example.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-219-AS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1515

Thats the ASUS 5770, go with either them or MSI as they both allow (If your into this that is) Voltage control without flashing the cards BIOS. :cool:


Out of interest, show me a GPU-Z Screenie of your card at the mo. if you dont mind.

http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/


:)
 
This one caught my fancy but a gut feeling tells me I'd prefer to stick with Nvidia, esecially with all that talk of Crossfire in the spec when my board is configured for sli/nvidia.

I already had GPU-Z, admittedly version 3.8, but here's a screenie:

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http://www.techspot.com/review/206-his-radeon-hd-5850/page13.html

"Final Thoughts

It's crystal clear by now that AMD has managed to deliver the fastest and second-fastest single-GPU graphics cards money can buy over the past month. At $260, it doesn’t take a great deal of cash to get your hands on a Radeon HD 5850, and the performance you'll get is nothing short of amazing. Moreover, there doesn't seem to be a Nvidia counterpart around the corner, giving the new Radeon series launch an extra edge. We expected the Radeon HD 5850 to be at least 20% slower than the HD 5870 based on the specifications that were given to us just a few weeks ago. However, in reality the card works out to be just 10-15% slower while costing a little over 30% less. You could say the Radeon HD 5850 offers the best value proposition of the two, while the Radeon HD 5870 certainly remains the best performer.

The more affordable HD 5850 also offers a few other advantages, including lower power consumption, reduced heat output and quieter operation; not to mention its size allows it to fit in any standard computer case."


http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3650&p=12

The results speak for themselves. Check out the real time gaming results.

Personaly I recon it is a waste of money buying anything less than a 5850 or a 5870 at the moment especially if you are a serious gamer.

:p
 
Well, personally I prefer Nvidia, or at least I did, and I won't be swayed by someone so obviously bigoted who considers the whole 'battle' one of underdogs against monopolist capitalist scumbags.

I remember a time when the same argument was levelled against Vooodoo cards versus Nvidia and then, as Voodoo were the market leaders, Nvidia were considered the underdogs. Strange.

I'll go with two things: performance and pricing. Nothing else.

This misbegotten 'underdogs vs bad guys' crap is silly.

Having said that I'm not blind to the advances ATI have made recently.

Does their control centre still rely on Microsoft's FX Network software? Nvidia's doesn't.
 
Although im gonna stick with an Nvidia card for my next upgrade - I have to say, ATI are currently the best bang for buck right now.
 
"Well, personally I prefer Nvidia, or at least I did, and I won't be swayed by someone so obviously bigoted who considers the whole 'battle' one of underdogs against monopolist capitalist scumbags."

Ain't got a clue how you got this from my post :confused:

"Does their control centre still rely on Microsoft's FX Network software?"

Ain't got a clue.

"I'll go with two things: performance and pricing. Nothing else."

Thats exactly what my post was about.

happywave.gif
 
Abarbarian said:
"Well, personally I prefer Nvidia, or at least I did, and I won't be swayed by someone so obviously bigoted who considers the whole 'battle' one of underdogs against monopolist capitalist scumbags."

Ain't got a clue how you got this from my post :confused:
Click to expand...

Eek, that does look a little harsh in the cold light of day, sorry bout dat ;)

That view of where you may be c oming from wasn't necessarily gleaned from your post above but from a series of your posts over a period of time where you almost exclusively recommend ATI/AMD/Linux/Mandriva.

Go on, deny you ain't fond of them things :D

In much the same way Mucks is convinced ATI cards suck and Capt Zed thinks the Internet is laden with decent free software one builds up a mental portfolio of some forum members.

And I don't wanna know what people think of me, lol

As for the video card, within my budget all Nvidia video cards have roughly the same spec as their ATI counterparts but the ATI cards sport a gig of memory as opposed to Nvidia's 896Mb and the most crucial difference is that no Nvidia cards within my budget support DX11 whereas ATI cards do so atm it seems like a no-brainer really, apart from some hesitancy on my part to use an ATI card with my Asus P5B.

Nope, the real question here is whether I'd get £140.00 worth of improvement over my 512Mb Nvidia GTX9800.

I can put the 9800 into my AMD machine and that will make an Nvidia 640Mb 8800GTS card redundant as I have no use for it in other machines but I guess that will be easy to sell, still have the box and all the gubbins.

Wonder how much 8800GTS's are going for? It would some subsidy over the new card wouldn't it?
 
"Go on, deny you ain't fond of them things"

Yup yer right I always did like style and perfection
nod.gif


"Nope, the real question here is whether I'd get £140.00 worth of improvement over my 512Mb Nvidia GTX9800."

Doubt it very much.
user.gif
If you had a lower spec card then I would say go for the 5770 or 5750 as they seem to get a reasonable boost in crossfire. So get one now and a bit down the road when they are cheaper then get another, a decent way to progress if you could not afford the 5850 or 5870.
You have a decent card and getting the 5700 range would not see much of a benefit.
However if you hold on and save up a bit for one of the 5800's you would get a decent jump in quality. Further down the line when you need a mobo, get one with crossfire capability, then get a second 5800 which should give you a pretty decent jump in quality at low cost

"http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/INNO-3D-GEFOR...raphics_Video_TV_Cards_TW?hash=item2eab68ca58"

The above 8800 is at £30 with 8 bids and nearly 2 days to go. So I recon if you are lucky then you might get £40 or more for yours.


"It would some subsidy over the new card wouldn't it?"

Yes.

Now if you follow my excellent advice you may end up very soon with a,

ATI/AMD/Linux/Mandriva set up.

laughingsmiley.gif
laughingsmiley.gif
 
Aye, you confirmed what I was thinking, well, about the video card upgrade anyway ;)

Current specs:

Clock: 700
Memory: 1100
Shader: 1728
Shaders: 128
Physical memory: 512Mb

Proposed new specs, ATI HD5770

Clock: 850
Memory: 4800
Shader: ?
Shaders: 800
Physical memory: 1Gb

That's definitely an improvement but, even assuming I get 30 quid for the 8800GTS, is it £110.00's worth of improvement?

I was kinda hoping for a quick economical boost but, as ever, advice given is 'Buy a more expensive card' which kinda cheeses me off a bit.

Undecided.
 
floppybootstomp said:
Does their control centre still rely on Microsoft's FX Network software? Nvidia's doesn't.
Click to expand...
.NET Framework. It does indeed. Though to be fair the chances are you will need it at some point anyway. :)

apart from some hesitancy on my part to use an ATI card with my Asus P5B.
Click to expand...

Flops, out of interest why do you say this? You know that board does support Crossfire and not SLI?
Supports ATI CrossFire graphics cards (blue @ x16 mode and black @ x4 mode)
Click to expand...
http://uk.asus.com/product.aspx?P_ID=bswT66IBSb2rEWNa


Regarding the issue of whether you will get your monies worth out of the upgrade, Well this is gonna be tough, what res do you game at? 1920x1200? (you have a 24" monitor don't you)

So going by that, the extra vRAM will certainly help, by how much exactly i'm not exactly sure tbh.

If you have a look at THG's GPU charts you can see there is quiet a difference in the two cards, maybe worth a look. :)
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/...e-3/Sum-of-FPS-Benchmarks-1920x1200,1700.html


My option of the 5770 was indeed to stay in budget, but (as much as i hate to agree with Abarb. :p ) I cant help but think that the 5850 would be your best pick, i know its above you original budget but that would definitely be worth the upgrade IMO.

There is a little more to consider other that clock speeds etc too, fill rates and bus size etc all plays a part in the overall speed of the card.
 
My board supports Crossfire? Well I never, I must be having a senior moment as I always thought it supported sli. perhaps I'm getting confused with my Asus M2N-Sli deluxe board which takes an AMD CPU yet supports sli.

I've just looked through the P5B Deluxe manual and it doesn't mention Crossfire anywhere. It does mention dual video card usage though with an instruction to make a change in the bios if using.

I've taken info you all have supplied on board.

A 5850 averages £250.00. I can't afford that, so I won't be upgrading.

I think I'm just going to hang on in there until SSD prices get reasonable and go for a big upgrade (assuming enough work comes in) sortta like i7/DDR3 x 3/5850 or 5870/SSD primary drive/suitable motherboard.

In a year or two's time.

Thanks for the feedback guys, it is apreciated :)
 
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