video card

[tek33]

hi i have a q6600 on cosmos case 4 fans eah top 4850 video 2 wd hd 2 dvd drives antec neo power blue 650 psu .my question is would like to upgrade vid card would 1 of the new 400 series card with all my other stuff tax my psu ? with card would work best and the performance upgrade from the 4850 thanks

 

[RussianSensation]

GTX470 for sure and even GTX480 will probably work on your power supply. Like a lot of other power supplies from Antec, the NeoPower comes with three 12V rails rated at 19A. The total combined power of the 12V rails is 624W!!!

Unless you overclock that CPU to 3.2-3.4ghz, I think a GTX460 1GB for $200 is a good upgrade for that CPU. Faster cards are going to be bottlenecked.

If you are willing to wait 1 month, HD6000 series should launch with a direct competitor to GTX460 (most likely better than the 460 too). Another alternative is to get a 5850. Still I would wait 1 month for price drops on current cards or to see what HD6000 series offers.

 

[tek33]

u say is ok with all other stuff running on psu ? any specific model stand out over another?

 

[RussianSensation]

If you must upgrade now, MSI Cyclone GTX460 and Gigabyte GTX460 are my favourite due to quiet aftermarket coolers. If you using a monitor with resolution below 1920x1080, you may even get away with 768mb versions of these cards (although I'd grab the 1GB myself).

On the 5850 side, $240 XFX 5850 looks good because of its lifetime warranty. MSI TwinFrozr II is priced very low but it has poor reviews.

On the GTX470 side, Gigabyte for $250 is a good deal.

Your choice of card will depend on the games you want to play. Besides Final Fantasy 14, GTX470 is faster than 5850. NV's performance advantage grows with DX11 games like Dirt 2, Lost Planet 2, Metro 2033, STALKER: CoP, BattleForge.

Bang for the buck - 460
Quiet and great performance - 5850
Fastest - 470.
Review: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/nvidia-geforce-gtx-460_11.html#sect1

If you place more emphasis on having a quieter card, skip the 470 on that list as it's on the louder side.

I would probably not buy a 5850/GTX470 for a stock Q6600, however. Overclock the CPU.