Hi everyone, a bit of background first. I have a (pre-overclocked) XFX 8800GTS 320mb in my PC that's been serving me quite well. I then won a competition a while ago that netted me a 8800GTS 640mb, that I couldn't really be bothered to replace it with because its just a standard one and I doubt the extra memory would have made THAT much difference. Well, a CEX store opened near me recently and I traded in the 8800GTS640 for £86 credit, cos I'd had it for ages and was fed up of it lying around devaluing etc, never did get round to putting it on ebay or whatever. Also an old game for £5, bringing the total to £91. Now I'll be trading in an old iPod for £45 soon, and an old phone for £25, perhaps even more stuff, bringing the total to £161. I just wondered if some people here might kindly advise me if I should use this credit to get an even better graphics card. Here are the options I saw in store: 8800GT XFX Alpha Dog 512mb - £110 8800GTX 768mb - £145 I could also order one online, a bit more of a hassle as I need to post the trade-in voucher to them etc., but I will do it if necessary. I could get this for example: 9800GTX 512mb - £160 I would be very grateful if someone could advise me which I should get, if any - if you think there wouldn't be much improvement and I should just stick with my 8800GTS320 please say. Thanks in advance.
This will be faster than all of the above: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146705 Also notice it's cheaper. The HD4850 is about 5% faster than the 9800GTX+, 10-15% faster than the 9800GTX, 10-20% faster than the 8800GTX, 30% faster than the 8800GT, and around 70-90% faster than the 8800GTS 320MB.
Thanks for the reply. I've never used an ATI card before but that 4850 looks good, and so does the 4870. These are £125 and £170 respectively at CEX. One thing to note is that I don't know how good my cooling is particularly; it's a custom build PC (but not built by me) and I don't know much about cooling. Also, the 4870 apparently needs 2 power plugs or something, and I've no idea if I have these. Do you think one of those 2 cards would be a good option?
£125 at CEX for an unknown brand one, or £118 at Ebuyer for a decent quality card. Your call. What case and power supply do you have?
The HD4850 still beats the 8800GTX by a significant margin and is £20 less. By the way, having reread your first post I didn't realise you only had credit, not money to spend wherever you like, so my apologies.
For the 4870 You'll need two PCI-E power cables coming from you power supply, pictured as below. The 4850 requires one of these.
Correct. The cards often come with an adapter for one of these (two normal power connectors such as the ones you plug into some fans, or most CD-ROM drives, and one of those PCIe power plugs at the other end), but if you actually need to use one, you should ask yourself if your power supply is actually up to the task of powering the card at all. Fortunately the HD4850 doesn't use as much power as the 8800GTS. The HD4870 uses a bit more, but not that much.
mate when your buying expensive gear like a graphics card make sure you look at objective data like benchmarkings and not just take into consideration subjective opinions. anyway for your budget this is an excellent value graphics card: http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146705 if you can pull out an extra £70 id go for the HD4870 PS: make sure you check your power supply to make sure it will be able to cope with the extra power consumption of a more powerful gfx card hope this helps, Mubs
I'd hold off on buying a 4870 in the UK just yet, following the big price drop in the US, they may be about to get cheaper, hopefully dropping to around £160.
