Was looking for 4850 replacement, pretty surprised at what is out there

[PingSpike]

My wife's PC has my hand me down 4850 in it and its been doing a good job. I noticed some weird behavior when displaying webpages the other day and thought the card might be dying. It probably just needs the dust cleaned out of its craptastic stock cooler but I started to look around for a replacement in case, thinking ATI would have something in the $50 range that would hand its ass to it.

It seems I was mistaken. The 7750 seems to be a little bit better but not significantly so. It has better power consumption stats for sure but the cheapest one on newegg was $80AR. I'm pretty sure I paid about $200 for it brand new. Its worth at most $40-45 on the used market now it seems and a $80-90 card doesn't even do much better than it. That's pretty lame since the card was introduced almost 5 years ago...and it was only a midrange part IIRC. I knew things had slowed down but I didn't think it was that bad.

I guess I'll clean up the fan on that unit and hope that is all that is wrong with it since paying $80 just to replace the thing seems kind of crazy.

Nvidia might have a more competitive option here, I haven't looked yet. I stopped buying their cards after they kept screwing up fixed aspect ratio scaling over and over again.

 

[Ken g6]

I'm pretty sure I paid about $200 for it brand new.

So why are you surprised that you'd have to pay $200 for something significantly better?

Using a more modern video card also turns on DX11 effects, so the modern $80 video card may look better even at the same frame rate.

And nVidia doesn't have anything more price-competitive. They just raised top end of the graphics card market to $1,000.

 

[EXCellR8]

yea nvidia will be more expensive, shoot for a mid-range amd

 

[aaksheytalwar]

A 7750 is night and day faster. Like twice as fast if not faster. And has a tone of additional features and support.

 

[Termie]

A 7750 is night and day faster. Like twice as fast if not faster. And has a tone of additional features and support.

First of all, that's just completely wrong. Proof: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/513?vs=535. The 7750 matches an HD4870 on average, and the HD4870 was only 20% faster than an HD4850.

More importantly, however, the OP has identified an $80 card that is both slightly faster and uses about 1/4 the power of a card that cost $200 when it was released in June 2008. That's progress.

Point being, the 7750 is still a great pick, and given that the only problem the OP is having is corruption in an Internet browser, it will certainly do the job. But if the system isn't used for games, why bother with a gaming card? An inexpensive HD6450 will do the job for Internet browsing.

And OP, cleaning out the fan won't fix the problem if the card isn't actually overheating. That's very easy to determine. Just open Catalyst Control Center to monitor the temps while browsing. My assumption is that the card is actually broken and will need to be replaced. GPUs have a limited lifespan, particularly that generation of cards, which was the last to be built with single-slot fans, which failed to properly cool relatively hot chips.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

Then that was probably 7770 which is a tad slower than a 6850 which is twice as fast as a 4850.

 

[PingSpike]

My wife actually does game with her PC. Mostly Minecraft lately but she was playing Skyrim on there for awhile. So I don't really want to go with a cheap card. Plus I have a number of cheap cards lying around anyway. I haven't really had a chance to troubleshoot her PC, my house is kind of falling apart so I have to attend to that first.

The performance seemed great with the 4850 but considering I see used ones sell for $35 dollars sometimes I would have expected more out of a card costing 2.5 times as much. I know I know, the old card is used. And I know the old card uses more power but I'm not seeing the 1/4 as much power you suggest either. Comparison of the 4850 and 7750 isn't easy since anandtech's charts don't have identical benchmarks of about 60watts delta idle and something like 0-30watts delta load. Ballpark math seems to suggest it uses 2/3s the power at idle and like 8-9/10s at full load. The idle value isn't anything to ignore but its not anything to go bananas over either unless you leave your PC on all the time.

Its been 5 years though. PC hardware just isn't moving at the rate it used too I guess. I was just hoping for a cheap replacement part. Honestly, I don't think this is really anything to new. I just haven't been shopping for new video cards because I haven't had much of a need so I've just kind of forgotten.

 

[Termie]

My wife actually does game with her PC. Mostly Minecraft lately but she was playing Skyrim on there for awhile. So I don't really want to go with a cheap card. Plus I have a number of cheap cards lying around anyway. I haven't really had a chance to troubleshoot her PC, my house is kind of falling apart so I have to attend to that first.

The performance seemed great with the 4850 but considering I see used ones sell for $35 dollars sometimes I would have expected more out of a card costing 2.5 times as much. I know I know, the old card is used. And I know the old card uses more power but I'm not seeing the 1/4 as much power you suggest either. Comparison of the 4850 and 7750 isn't easy since anandtech's charts don't have identical benchmarks of about 60watts delta idle and something like 0-30watts delta load. Ballpark math seems to suggest it uses 2/3s the power at idle and like 8-9/10s at full load. The idle value isn't anything to ignore but its not anything to go bananas over either unless you leave your PC on all the time.

Its been 5 years though. PC hardware just isn't moving at the rate it used too I guess. I was just hoping for a cheap replacement part. Honestly, I don't think this is really anything to new. I just haven't been shopping for new video cards because I haven't had much of a need so I've just kind of forgotten.

The 7750 uses about 50w. The 4850 uses about 120w. I'm not sure what you're looking at, but you'd have to extrapolate this information from Anandtech's Bench, which shows system power consumption, not VGA power consumption. My estimate of 4x less took into account idle, which is definitely 4x less - at load it's 40% of an HD4850, not 90% as you figured.

And by the way, an HD4850 might sell for $40 used, but it's completely worthless. Every card from that generation has no resale value due to the poor cooling design.

And like I said, you found a cheap replacement card. $80 is cheap for a gaming card. AMD and Nvidia just don't make much on $50 cards, which is what you were looking for, so there's a HUGE dropoff in performance under $80. They could make worthy gaming cards at that price point, but they've chosen not to.

 

[PingSpike]

Yeah, I see that the total power consumption figures aren't are all that is on there and without knowing what the rest of the system is I can't really compare them so you're probably right.

Edit: Here's a close to direct comparison using a 5750.
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/radeon-hd5770-hd5750_5.html

 

[Termie]

Yeah, I see that the total power consumption figures aren't are all that is on there and without knowing what the rest of the system is I can't really compare them so you're probably right.

Here you go - load power of 43w: http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/his_radeon_7850_ipower_iceq_4gb_review,6.html

The HD4850 obviously isn't on there, but it's about equivalent to an HD6850, which is 114w in that table.

 

[GlacierFreeze]

Its been 5 years though. PC hardware just isn't moving at the rate it used too I guess.

Why? Because you compared a 5 year old upper-mid level card to a bottom of the barrel low end card? To see how much hardware has moved, you should compare similar price points. Your card cost $200 when you got it. How does it stack up to a current $200 card? Probably not very well. Quite a bit of movement.

You're expecting too much from cheap video cards. The price range you're looking at is something one would use to slap into a computer to get it working for moderate use/web browsing/emailing. And low end gaming. If $80 video cards gave the performance you wanted, then $300-400 cards wouldn't sell because everyone would just run 2-3x $80 cards in CF/SLI and load up Battlefield 3 at medium/max settings.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

Why? Because you compared a 5 year old upper-mid level card to a bottom of the barrel low end card?

And here I thought the Geforce GT610 was the bottom of the barrel... :biggrin:

The 7750 is a very good low-cost card, especially when you figure in the very low power consumption. If you get one of the low profile models that would properly be even lower.

 

[poohbear]

OP to be fair u need to compare price points. $200 got u a decent graphics card 5 years ago, what would it get u today?? A 7850 thats what! Its a fantastic mid range card that overlocks like a beast to 7950 levels! Now THAT's progress!

 

[PingSpike]

Yeah, its not so bad. I was hoping to get a replacement for $50 new. But I've seen some 5770's for sale for $50 and I guess I could just buy another used 4850. IIRC I hand me downed that card instead of selling it when I upgraded my machine because it didn't seem to be worth anywhere near what I paid for it. The logical thing would be to take advantage of that situation on the other end.

 

[Insert_Nickname]

But I've seen some 5770's for sale for $50 and I guess I could just buy another used 4850.

Do get the 5770. The 4850 was always terribly power hungry at idle. Somewhere around 50-60W idle. Compared to around 18W for the 5770. The 5770 is also slightly faster then a 4870.

(I have owned and used both)

 

[Veno(V)]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...%20cooler%20l2

Get this ARCTIC Accelero L2 Plus VGA Cooler for $20 if it's overheating. I installed it on my old Asus EAH 4850 512mb when the fan in the shroud went bad last month. The thing is dead silent now. The loudest thing in my machine is the Hyper 212 LoLz.

I'm still able to run new games like Sniper Elite: Zombie Army with medium settings on a 1920x1200 monitor.

And I concur about a $200 card back then still holding it's own (speedwise) 4 years later to a present $80 card.


Veno(V)