I'm in the middle of speccing and buying kit for a rebuild, having settled on a Core 2 Duo/P45 combo I am looking at graphics cards right now. Although I'm not a massive gamer occasionally something comes along that interests me so I'd like to try and future-proof my system if possible, but there's a trade-off between price and performance. My monitor is a year-old Samsung 22", max resolution 1680 X 1050. Bearing in mind the above I'm thinking that the Radeon 4850 looks a good option as I can always add another card at a later date to inject some performance. Does this seem reasonable or is the 4850 overkill at the resolutions my monitor supports?
i'd say you're pretty much bang on there. 4850 will be more than enough for anything at 1680x1050 now, and will most likely be enough for *most in a years time too. I have a 8800GT and same resolution on my miontor, and thats more than enough for high settings on most games, the 4850 is around the same price and a fair bit more powerful.
lol. There is a different between the 4850 and 4870X2 in frames I think you should go for the 4870. and man Check GOOGLE For review. You will see all res and all cards and all info you want. 4850 review 4870 review 4870X2 review those are simple of what you find in google.
of course there is a difference btween the 4850 and the 4870X2, for a start the 4870X2 is TWO GPUs. read what he said... in my opinion, he is the ideal customer for the 4850 - doesnt want ULTRA high end, just something that will keep him going for a couple of years, i believe that midrange cards are designed for these types of users. Plus the 4850 has an awful lot of shader horsepower that will continue to be useful as the drivers mature and games start using it all. Bit-tech's own 4870X2 review points towards that saying that its only really unlocked once you hit the really high resolutions, so i would say save the £40 difference and get a 4850.
Thanks for the feedback, my gut feel says 4850 - price/performance and the fact that I'm not a hardcore gamer, this has helped. Cheers.
I think you are right. It's my bad. I didn't notice that he isn't a massive gamer. So 4850 will be the best bang for him you are right and I was wrong Sorry for any misunderstanding, Good luck
4850 runs everything I've thrown at it so far on maximum at 1920x1200 (admittedly, I've yet to try Crysis... or any game which would really push it, but STALKER, CoD4 and HL2: Ep2 are reasonable benchmarks..). Price/performance wise, it's more or less perfect. I'd still say that at my res a 4870 would be better (especially for Crysis ), but at 1680x1050, you really can't go wrong with a 4850, I wouldn't say.
4850 is the same price as the Geforce 260 GTX. I say go with the Geforce 260, as you have physicX and CUDA. This video card runs perfectly smoothly CoD4, World in Conflict at max max settings, with default nVidia control panel settings, at 1600x1200 (more pixels then what you have).
Ok, I see your point. But given I've decided to go down the P45 motherboard route doesn't that mean I won't be able to add a second card at a later date?
Usually when you feel you need an upgrade newer better cards come out at reasonable prices, so you still get more performance with 1 newer card as a pose to 2 older cards, not always true but I think sli or crossfire is overkill. Just my 2 cents.
A great success, thanks. I can play all my Blu Rays and HD DVDs nicely. Next step is overclocking, that'll be in a couple of weeks' time. My mate's giving me Crysis soon too.. which will be my ultimate test. I'm guessing mostly high settings at 0x AA, maybe 8x AF and 1920x1200.
