Graphics Which Graphics Card...

I've always been a NVidia fan, but I'd recommend the HD 4870 (costing ~£170) or two 9800GTX's in SLI (costing ~£100 each)

I'm sure two GPUs is better than one?

 

Almost certainly not... 2 in SLi = 1.3-1.7 x single card, typically.

Plus extra power and heat... I certainly wouldn't recommend it.

 

+1 sli is for show e-peen merchants and noobs who dont know any better

 

buy the card that gives you the best performance in your price range!

cant stand fanboyism, why affiliate yourself to a company that doesnt care jack **** where its money comes from

 

From me and my group of friend's experiences, the exact opposite is true

At least 2 of us now only buy ATI for the superior drivers nowadays

 

i would go for the 4870 1gb

have a look at those, after market cooling, overclocked (slightly) and a nice price

http://www.gainward.com/product/product_detail.php?products_id=185

or the palit one, there identical

http://www.palit.biz/main/vgapro.php?id=969

 

if u use it for any 3D work... and even maybe substantial photoshop work (for cuda benefits) go Nvidia.. if ya purly games get a 4870 and enjoy the cheap performance hehe.. I would.

 

You hit the nail pretty much dead on there, they are 1 GB so I wouldn't have to worry about higher res issues and they have after market cooling making the cooler and quieter.

Now the problem is going to be price and availability. So yea, ty karsh, definitely given me something to think about.

@ steelblade - I do very little 3D stuff (a bit of sketch up now and then) and not a massive amount of Photoshop, certainly not enough the CUDA would help much.

 

Pissssssst, little secret here

even tho i got my GTX280 for £244 couple of months back, i regret it. I went top end nvidia to mate it with my 24in screen, as i was upgrading from a 8800GTS 320MB.

Right now if i had to spend my cash i would go for the 4870 512mb DDR5, the extra frame buffer isn't really need, well i cant see a use for it.

The main reason i regret buying my GTX280 is the fact that i have started doing far more 3D work and a Quadro would have been far more useful for me.

Make sense of this tho, running My Quad at 3.4GHz and GTX280 stock i could only raise 20-25fps in the crysis demo at 1920x1200 setting at max for DX9 (still running XP). Me thinks Crysis is a hardware selling game...

 

Don't do: "If I can run Crysis smoothly at max settings then I can run any games for the nest 10 years."
Crysis is a more badly programed games then anything else. Look at Crysis 2, that one runs smoothly on about anything and still have the great graphics as before.

Me too I can make a game, where it forces to video card to render everything that you don't even see, and make sure I use no optimization at all.

 

I am well aware of what crysis is like, lol! I actually bought the GTX280 for RD:Grid, with hope of getting into more games in the future, i.e GTA 4, and now maybe Farcry 2. The crysis demo i played was aditictive, but annoying aswell.

 

Everyone seems to be banging on about the high price of the GTX280, but I picked mine up (BFG GTX280 OC) for £210...

The GTX280 is still the fastest single GPU card out there so no issues with drivers, just straight up, hassel free gaming pleasure but you sound like an AMD fanboy;

To be fair there is very little to choose from with the latest offerings from both card makers. If you're playing at High res then more ram in the card WILL help and as you're running a 64bit OS you won't lose any system ram. Just shop around and look for the best deal you can find and don't get too upset when a better card is released three weeks after you get yours

 

You can always add an aftermarket cooler yourself at a later date. I'd like to see you try to add extra memory...

 

Good answer. I never am Its the way of technology.

That is a very good point, only I wanted to avoid having to do that this time, I think I might just suck it up and do it. It wasn't exactly difficult to do it on my 3870.

Akava

 

The Force3d black edition card seems to run a bit faster than a stock card, and the non-stock cooler was superior(as much as 20C). The 1GB card only provided a few fps advantage in the more demanding games, so I'm going to suggest it's not worth the price.

Review here
http://www.techspot.com/review/120-force3d-radeon-4870/