Graphics £250 to spend on graphics... but which card?

Hey all,

So far my build is as follows:

i7 930 (Titan Fenrir cooler)
p6x58d premium
3 gigs of ddr3 at 1600 mhz
1TB samsung F3
850W HXUK Modular Corsair (I'm hoping on keeping this a while/going crossfire/sli eventually- thats why its huge!)
Antec 902 case

So the big question really is what would you spend £250 on if you were after a new graphics card?

I have had thoughts on what to buy but dont want to sway peoples' opinions! Is there any advantages of buying ATI over nVidia or nVidia over ATI I should know about?

Also which manufacturers would you recommend?

Any help is appreciated!

 

For that budget and build I'd say a 5850 is a solid card for you.

 

A HD 5850 would fit the price range... or a 5870 if you found some extra cash.
Nvidia has Physx. Ati has the better cards in each bracket for the most recent generation.

 

Yup - 5850 is probably the best bet for that budget, you could get an nVidia 465 though for that money I think?

 

You could get a 465 but you'd be spending more money to get less. The 5850 is without doubt the best card.

 

5850, best performance and efficiency for the price.

Also very low temps.

 

The type of card is pretty obvious; a 5850. However which version of the card is a little more intresting. How about the Powercolor 5850 pcs+. Quiet aftermarket cooler and a slight factory overclock?

 

sapphire HD5850 toxic? youll be getting close to HD5870 performance.

 

second hand gtx 295 will walk all over the 5850.


http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Nvidia-GTX-29..._TV_Cards_TW&hash=item230793ae02#ht_500wt_896

 

True, I run a 295 and it's still top notch - beats the 5870. I wonder why that ebay item has a GTX 285 picture rather than a 295 picture ...

For a new build I'd still be tempted to go the 5850 however. DX11 rather than DX10 and you can crossfire it later. The GTX465 from nvidia will go head-to-head with a 5850 for performance and scales very well in SLI ... but nvidia are struggling with their architecture right now whereas ATI's setup has been pretty elegant.

 

Thank you for all the advice!

As far as a second hand card goes I'm not too keen... I really would prefer to buy new and know it hadn't been OC'd to infinity and was just about to give up!

I did look at the 465 originally, but as suggested the price doesnt satisfy the performance. Will physx be a big loss?

I have taken a look at the Saphire 5850 toxic, which is out of stock atm at scan. Is there a chance it is end of line? The XFX black has similar specs for £20 less.. is this an equally good buy? How does support etc stand on these?

 

I did see that actually! A bit odd... Could be either lol

Yeah it will be built to last for about 4 years so DX11 would be handy.

I read a review somewhere on the GTX 465 and the 5850 came out on top most of the way apart from COD MOD2.

So it will be a 5850.. Does anyone have any recommendations on which one?

Thank you!

 

I would go for an Asus 5850, as it comes with a 3 year warranty and voltage tweaking ability...
________
Philippine girl Webcams

 

Their custom cooler doesnt direct airflow out of the case.. is this not a big issue?

 

You could strap an aftermarket cooler on it but that'd void your warranty.

EDIT: If you have good airflow in your case then it should be fine anyway, it's just nice having the extra ehaust.

 

Well get this one and its on offer as well

http://www.quietpc.com/gb-en-gbp/products/vga-cards/sap-hd5850

There is only one in stock so hurry up

 

And of course right now you can run an Ati card as your main card alongside a lesser nvidia card for physX using Nvidia's 257beta driver.

http://blogs.nvidia.com/ntersect/20...ml#comment-6a00d834515fca69e20133efbb6729970b

 

Are you feeling all right? It looks as though you gave a Fermi card a possible recommendation!

Yeah, £250 is perfect 5850 territory.

You could also be daring and go for 2x5770 crossfire - it can give you performance comparable to a 5870 or more!

Edit: Get 3GB more RAM!

 

Fermi cards are amazing for those who don't like ATI - like me. My past ATI cards have all been crap - unreliable, cheap, nasty and impossible to overclock without blowing up - overall awful. I would therefore be happy to pay whatever amount for an NVIDIA card, because I know they are reliable and overclock well Also the ATI drivers are the most awful, unstable piece of s**t I have ever had the misfortune to use... the amount of problems I had. Numerous BSODs, inability to play some games on high settings because drivers couldn't handle it - just ridiculous. NVIDIA all the way for me

For £250 I would recommend a GTX 285 (http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1GB-...GPU-648MHz-Shader-1476MHz-240-Cores-2x-DL-DVI). If you're OK with ATI then a 5850 (http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1GB-...DDR5-GPU-735MHz-1440Cores-2x-DL-DVI-I-HDMI-DP) would be your best bet.

 

Good point, a 285 is still a decent card if you can find one in stock for >£250.