The Official Graphics Card and PC gaming Thread

Never actually owned a 3rd party card. The X800GTO might count but it was still an ATi reference X850XT PCB. Just a simple BIOS flash and it performed exactly the same as my X850 and detected as one. Its heat death was my fault though because it was using a single slot cooler and not the reference dual slot X850 one. The genuine deal X850XT ran a lot cooler. A bit loud maybe but considering it was the fastest video card in the world at one point, I'm not complaining.

The X850XT still works just fine too. Currently on loan in a friend's build to play L4D until he gets his new video card. The only thing I've done to help the life of the card is polishing the cooler and a new TIM application with some Ceramique. Works like the day it was new.

Almost all, if not all XFX cards use a 3rd party PCB. They can get away with it because their components are almost always better quality than the reference design. I was also a fan of the Palit Sonic cards with the gold cooler. Very nice cards. Only reason I never got one is because my friend received a DOA 8800GT from them a week before I ordered. Thus my move to the MSI 8800GTS G92, a fully reference card and still working like new.

 

The one reference card I had was OK, but I didn't have it for that long, the majority of people I know with Powercolor cards had non-reference ones and they nearly all failed.
My DOA card has been received and is being tested. Here's hoping they're quick about things :S

 

Wishing you the very best of luck on that Sam. Definitely not a small purchase :S

BTW what was the final price you paid? I can't imagine you actually managed a good deal this time like with your 4870X2s.

Oh yeah Cat 10.5 has helped 5850 Crossfire quite a bit. Bad Company 2 is scaling better in the more visually intensive moments. A lot less stuttering and FPS dips. Not that it ran badly before, but now it's just stupid. All maxed w/ 4xAA and HBAO off and it never dips below the high 50s even in intense sh**. Consider the 4870s would occasionally dip into the high 40s with 2xAA on. The one and only game that ever justified my purchase

Heck, I'd consider any major FPS drops a CPU limitation now Still not tempted to upgrade though. This setup just works too well :S

 

£845 delivered. The going rate for normal 2GB 5870s is anywhere between £390 and £425, and the cost of a GTX480 here is, avoiding the cheapest OEM brands, £425-£450, so in relative terms, not a bad deal, but in actual terms, a pretty horrific expense.

The main issue is that the store were only allocated one to sell by Sapphire. Since this was it, and it's DOA, that means no chance of a replacement, so I need to get a refund and buy the one I've seen on ebay (new, from the same supplier, the only UK supplier in fact) before it disappears. There were two available at the weekend, now there's just the one.
Long term I stand to gain assuming I can get the ebay card, as it's priced at £824 delivered, so £21 less.

It's good to hear you're getting good performance out of the 5850s in BC2, I doubt I'll have the same benefits given in raw terms you bought a good 50-60% performance increase, whereas the 4GB 5970 and two 4870X2s are about the same in raw power. Here's hoping 2-GPU scaling is better than 4 for the game, or that 5870 GPUs handle the game better respectively than 4870s do. Of course, DX11 will be nice to try out I'm sure.

 

Areet People I've got £150 for a graphix card would like some feedback of you guys here at afterdawn

motherboard = xfx mi-a78s-8209 http://xfxforce.com/en-us/products/motherboards/NVIDIA GeForceseries/8200.aspx

cpu = athlon 64 x2 5000+

memory = 2x 1 gig sticks

i have a 8500gt but the thing wont run newer games over clever so buget 150 would like summit that will at least play any top shelf game

cheers in advance john

 

For £150 your best buy is a Radeon HD5770. However, you should consider a CPU/board/RAM upgrade in the not too distant future, 2GB of RAM is a bit thin, and the X2 5000+ is getting a bit long in the tooth as well. The graphics card is certainly the most beneficial upgrade at the moment, though.

 

Yeah a 5770 will do you well within that price and play most new games with the details up. But like Sam said the rest of the system is a bit aged so the newest games will still struggle. Example, I doubt Battlefield: Bad Company 2 will run very well due to the CPU limitation. Realistically you're looking at a whole new system before you can truly play top shelf games. But for the most part your current setup with a better video card will get you by just fine. Almost anything within the ~150 range will be a retardedly huge upgrade.

 

As a rough guide, a Core i5 750 (currently the best value gaming CPU) can be had for £150, a good board for it a little over £100, and 4GB of decent DDR3 RAM for it about £105-£110.
The i5 750 is at least 70% faster than the X2 5000+ per-core, and it has four cores rather than two.

The HD5770 is 15 times as powerful as the 8500GT. Where an 8500GT would get 4fps, an HD5770 will get 60, where an 8500GT would get 9fps, the HD5770 would get 135, and so on.

 

Don't forget that it's also going to be bottlenecked by the CPU and RAM as well. So results may vary, but yes you would see a vast improvement.

 

thanks for the info guys was looking around and found this card what do you think?

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/190734

 

This will do the same job for £30 less:
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/199404

 

£30 less ,wud get me

GPU
850 MHz Core Clock
40 nm Process Technology
800 x Stream Processors

Memory
512 MB Size
128 -bit GDDR5
4800 MHz Effective

so £30 more gets me

Bus Type: PCI-E 2.0
GPU Clock: 875 Mhz
Memory Bus: 128
Memory Type: DDR5
Memory Size: 1024 MB
Memory Speed: 5200 Mhz


diffrence in red

 

The differences are marginal at best, depending on what monitor you plan on using

 

the XFX card has been pre-overclocked, but to such an extent that it may get you 3-4% extra performance, for a hell of a lot more than 4% more cost. The 1GB of memory is really only useful with high resolutions, so unless you have a 1920x1080 screen or larger, you don't need the 1GB version. If you do have a screen that size, you should perhaps consider the 1GB version, but bear in mind that when you need more than 512MB of video memory, you often also need something more powerful than an HD5770.

 

well it would be hooked up to hdtv so the 1gb version would probs suit me better also decided to upgrade memory was think out this

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/143844

any info again really appreciated

 

Don't bother upgrading memory in my opinion, you will soon need to replace the CPU, which in turn will require a new board and memory that won't be incompatible with your existing board.

 

It won't be incompatible sam?

 

thanks for all the info lads much appreciated wud there be much diff if i upped my buget to £190 ??

 

Omega: DDR2 isn't going to work with an i5. He could upgrade to a lower-end Phenom but I don't really see the point of that as an upgrade over a 5000+.

JohnyBoy: At £190, yes, you can upgrade to an HD5830. However, you will need a decent Power Supply to run the HD5830. What are you currently using?

 

long time since i have heard areet, your not from gainsbrough are you?

for under £165, yo can get these 5830s:

XFX
http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials...raphics+Card+?productId=40295&source=googleps

or Sapphire:
http://overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-238-SP

but what PSU do you have mate? Caus you don't want your PC going bang.