OK guys, I got an 8800 GTS 512, and am thinking of upgrading the card. I haven't kept up with what cards are good value since I got this one, and thought I'd ask your opinions. My budget is around £150, but I'm not entirely sure what would be a good card for that money. The specs of the rest of my PC are: Intel Q6600 CPU Corsair HX620W PSU Asus P5KC Mobo and 4 GB of RAM running on Windows 7 x64.
Due to the fact that Nvidia decided to arrive fashionable late(?) to the party, I'd have to suggest an ATI HD5770. You can pick up an XFX5770 1GB for a shade over £130 from Scan. http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1GB-...z-GDDR5-GPU-850MHz-Cores-800-2x-DL-DVI-I-HDMI
Thanks guys, I'll have a look at that one. [Edit]I've had a look at that card, and compared it to some other models of the 5770, and came across this one: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1GB-...0MHz-800-Cores-DP-DVI-HDMI-Aliens-vs-Predator The clock rate on that one is 4 times the cloack rate on the one you suggested, but it's only a few quid more expensive. Is this one a better card because of it, or am I missing something?
You're missing something . The cards are the same spec, the 2nd one has simply had the memory clock written as the effective speed rather than actual speed (or a typo). plus it supports Crossfire X (not much point), and has AvsP thrown in. Get the second one as you are getting a game for £6
Shame the new AvP sucks, though I suppose for £6 you can't go wrong. The only card that can beat the 5770 price/performance wise would be the 4890, but then power consumption becomes a large concern (admittedly not with your PSU, but 80W at idle alone is a bit of a mick take) along with extra noise.
80watt idle is from were i want to know my mams pc has a 4890 in it and is only ran from a 300 watt psu amd 250 + 4890 4gb mem 5770 will save you £2-3 a year on electric if you care. you would save more by not using the cooker or washing machine for a few days. I know that from a bill the biggest users are cooker and washer dryer machines. As during winter our bill goes up alot, During summer it drops. sandwitches + dry stuff outside. ( heating is gas) id still take a 5850 if you didnt need to upgrade and wait it out. Your 8800gts is still enough to play most games at 1280*1024 ( you stated no rez so this is me assuming) if it was my money id save up 1 more month for the 5850
I was also looking to upgrade my graphics card, mostly to play Dawn of War 2 and C&C4 when it comes out, and wanted to spend less than £150. My PC is quite an old one, so it only has an Asus A8N-SLI Deluxe and a Tagan TG480-U01 PSU. Will the motherboard accept a PCI-E 2.1 card and is the power supply enough for it as well? At the moment there's a HIS X1950XT IceQ3 in there, and as I mostly use the PC for day to day things and playing the occasional game I never bothered upgrading it or getting a new one. Any advice greatly appreciated.
If you're going to get a 5770 i would just make sure the cooler is not one of those egg ones, as they dump all the hot air into the case. Which i am not a fan of!
Egg-like......You mean like one of these ?.....(and there are others, very similar)..... http://www.eclipsecomputers.com/product.aspx?code=GCA-XR577H1&af=50
Christ man, a 4890 on a 300W PSU is the worst idea I've ever heard, what make is it? How did it have the two PCI-E power connectors at that wattage?
You mean the 5770? Yes, your PSU is more than capable of handling it. It's going to be quite badly choked by your CPU, though.
Sorry, yes the 5770, probably this one (that I think was mentioned earlier). Any idea if you can use a PCI-E 2.1 card in my motherboard? It came out when PCI-E was a new thing...
AFAIK, PCI-E is backwards-compatible (like USB 1/2/3) so it should work. But it's going to be crippled by the memory bandwidth, I think. I wouldn't put £130 into your computer in this manner when £150 would get you a new i3 530 and a Gigabyte H55M-UD2H...
I can see what you're saying, but to be honest once you add memory and possibly a new PSU (I don't know if PSU connectors have changed in the last 4 years) then you're looking at a £250-350 investment. Since the main use of my PC is non-intensive (ie. surfing, iTunes, watching downloaded video, word processing etc.) it doesn't seem worth spending the money. I was just thinking of buying a reasonably cheap graphics card so I can play the odd strategy game but it sounds like it wouldn't be worth putting a new graphics card in a 4 year old PC.
Get something like a 9600GSO or 4670, they're a good bet for relatively good performance against cost and power consumption. You can get both for around £50. With your PSU, does it have a PCI-E 6 pin power connector (?), looks pretty much the same as the 4-pin for the motherboard but obviously with 6 pins. The 9600 needs the extra power while the 4670 doesn't at the expense of a little performance. Btw, PCI-E versions aren't massive bottlenecks AFAIK, v2.0 was just a nice bit of extra bandwidth for futureproofing.
Not trying to thread jack but I am somewhat on topic still I just bought a i5-750, Gigabyte UD2 P55M, 4GB G.Skill 10666 CL8. It's an upgrade from the rig in my sig, and I'm suspecting massive performance increases because I've been running benchmarks and comparing them to numbers from reviews here on bit, including a bunch from SisSoftware, Cinebench, Futuremark, Wprime, etc... the i5-750 platform blows away my OC'd C2D, as expected. I was considering upgrading my video card but decided to wait on it. I went over the benchmarks again and again and I decided I could better spend my money elsewhere. It just goes to show how good of a product the 8800GT really is. It's either that, or devs just aren't pushing the PC envelope any more as everything coming out these days is being built for consoles and therefore being held back graphically. That said, I will probably be upgrading it "soon" and in doing so, will want to do one of two things: See if Nvidia releases a GF100 mid-range class that is faster than the 5770 at a similar price, or if the release of GF100 causes ATi to lower prices on the 5830. If neither of those occurs, then I'll go with the 5770, but right now, the 8800GT still runs everything I play at 1680x1050 reasonably well at high settings.
