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$140-200 GPU Budget (Raised Budget)

TurtleCrusher

TurtleCrusher

Lifer
It's tax time and I'm finally looking to upgrade my 4830! Unless the Fiance' gives it the ax, I'm doing it! I like the 4830 and all, but it just doesn't play Battlefield Bad Company 2, DiRT 2 or Starcraft 2 at the performance I want.

I game at 1680x1050, typically want to run games maxed with 2xAA/8-16xAF.

On all high I get 30-45fps in bad company 2, with drops to 15 (suspect GPU, my Q8200 is surely fast enough). Starcraft 2 can also be pretty crummy at times. DiRT2 gets mostly playable frames with drops below what I would desire. Grand Theft Auto can play awful at time with the draw distance up.

I don't consider rebates as a discount, only a novelty feature after the purchase. So $150 or less before shipping. DO NOT factor in rebates.

All I can see on the Egg is a 460 768mb at $149.99, with the rebate knocking it down to $119.99. Any other place I should be looking? Any recommendations? Is it not worth it and I should use this cash to upgrade my CPU or MB/CPU instead?

Update: Selling my netbook today, so my budget goes up a bit. Not having to dip into my taxes much.

I'm seeing the 6850 at about $175 or so and the 460 1GB at about $200. Which one would be better? Would I notice a major jump between the two? I Play SC2, BC2, DiRT 1 and 2, and Bioshock 1/2.

Also, is my TruePower Trio 550w (Three 18a 12V rails) enough to power my system? Or am I cutting it close?

Edit again: There is also a Diamond 5850 1GB for $185 before rebate. That looks like the best deal in my price range.

Update 2: Went with the 6870 for $199.99 shipped with a $20 MIR. I will be posting a mini-review when the card arrives with benchmarks between the 4830 and the 6870.
 
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A 3GHz quad-core is fine for a GTX 460 1 GB or Radeon 6850, so I'd upgrade the GPU first.

Finding either of them at $150 without $30 rebates is going to be tough though, if you insist on $150 before rebates you might need to buy used (FS/FT forum) or settle for the 768MB 460.
 
gtx 460-768 is the only card that fits your bill right now. I use one on 16x10 and it's very solid, especially after a little tweaking from afterburner. It's also nice that you don't need a forklift to carry one or a dustbuster to cool it.
 
Prices went up slightly across the board today. I am joining the US Navy at the moment and I will be finding out in 2 days whether I ship out soon or not. That will be the deciding factor.
 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127551
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814161348

These two cards are essentially equal in speed, and after shipping and rebates, are essentially the same price, so if you are looking at the cheapest option available then it becomes a matter of which brand you prefer.

If you want to spend an extra $20, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814127518 this card will be slightly faster than both, comes with a really good cooler, and has lots of overclocking head room.
 
One vote for the 5850. It's about as good as you're gonna get at that price range and will blow your old 4830 away.
 
GaiaHunter said:
You can also consider a 5850 like this one http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...-085-_-Product -

The 5850 is faster than a GTX460/6850 at stock clocks - don't be fooled by the name.

There are other 5850 models but are slightly over $200 before rebate.
Click to expand...

I was thinking this. It benched in at similar load and idle power. Is Diamond still a reputable vendor? I never hear about them anymore.

The 5850 is at 6870 performance in most games... Interesting...

Edit: Will I have problems with my current power supply?
 
I'd go with a HD6850 over the 768mb variant of the 460 myself. With the 1gb version it's basically a wash so I'd just go with whichever is cheaper. Unless you consider PhysX and the somewhat better drivers a factor then you won't miss out on much with ATI over nvidia. ATI also has MLAA (which some people like) and their 'worse drivers' reputation is mostly overstated; it's really just the Catalyst Control Center and not the drivers themselves that are the problem.

I can't speak for your particular PSU but my crappy 500w Cooler Master PSU went into overdrive with a 1gb 460GTX. The HD6850 that replaced it fares much better in that regard as it needs a good bit less wattage.

The card it replaced was an HD4850 (so a bit faster than yours) and the difference was quite noticable.

Edit: As far as I know, the 5850 should be a better match for a low end PSU than the 460 series.
 
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Mr. President said:
I'd go with a HD6850 over the 768mb variant of the 460 myself. With the 1gb version it's basically a wash so I'd just go with whichever is cheaper. Unless you consider PhysX and the somewhat better drivers a factor then you won't miss out on much with ATI over nvidia. ATI also has MLAA (which some people like) and their 'worse drivers' reputation is mostly overstated; it's really just the Catalyst Control Center and not the drivers themselves that are the problem.

I can't speak for your particular PSU but my crappy 500w Cooler Master PSU went into overdrive with a 1gb 460GTX. The HD6850 that replaced it fares much better in that regard as it needs a good bit less wattage.

The card it replaced was an HD4850 (so a bit faster than yours) and the difference was quite noticable.

Edit: As far as I know, the 5850 should be a better match for a low end PSU than the 460 series.
Click to expand...

Does MLAA work on the 58xx cards?
 
Scholzpdx said:
I was thinking this. It benched in at similar load and idle power. Is Diamond still a reputable vendor? I never hear about them anymore.

The 5850 is at 6870 performance in most games... Interesting...

Edit: Will I have problems with my current power supply?
Click to expand...

I also have an Antec Power Trio with a Phenom II 555 @ 4 cores and a Gigabyte 6850 factory OC and it runs fine. The 5850 has similar power consumption so should do as well.

I have no recent experience with Diamond.

Scholzpdx said:
Does MLAA work on the 58xx cards?
Click to expand...

I think a recent driver hotfix added support, Otherwise you can get MLAA with a regedit command or something. 11.2 cats (so this month iin a couple of weeks) is supposed to add MLAA officially for the 5000 series.
 
Here's a good performance summary for most of the cards discussed in this thread:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/NVIDIA/GeForce_GTX_560_Ti/27.html

Considering your $200 max budget (I think?), I'd say the toss up comes down to a 5850 vs. a 6870. To answer that question, how much do you plan on overclocking? The 6870 is a great card if you want to leave it at stock and $180 is a great price for it: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814102913 . It's newer tech, is better designed for DX11 games, and is a well-balanced GPU. However, it doesn't have much head room when it comes to overclocking (10-15% on the core). While the 5850 is slower at stock, most models, especially reference models, are monster overclockers and will overclock 35%+ on the core. While this makes it much faster in older/DX9 games, the fact that it lacks some of the 6xxx series optimizations brings down its performance slightly in newer titles, and this trend will probably continue. My advice is to grab the 6870, as I never think it wise to grab old tech.
 
Well, I went for the 6870, which was the absolute max of my price range. Sapphire again!

Sapphire 3850 512MB>4830 512MB>6870 1GB

I was somewhat interested in getting an nVidia card on the cheap to try out CUDA apps, but who am I kidding. I buy video cards to game with. This 6870 is at 900mhz stock, so I assume there isn't much OC headroom. I don't like OCing my GPUs much, so that's no bother to me.

I take it the games listed above, L4D1/2, Far Cry 2, and everything else will run nearly flawless?
 
Scholzpdx said:
I cancelled my order. Which one should I go for?

:\
Click to expand...
I think he was being sarcastic, the 6870, on average, is 12% slower than the HD 6950. Nothing earth shattering lol.

Edit: You game at 1680x1050 so here is a chart with different cards to compare at that resolution:
perfrel_1680.gif
 
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