Best budget PCI-E card?

Well, until last October I was happily running an ATI 9800 Pro, then upgraded to an 8800 GT. The difference is not far from night and day -- you'd have to be blind not to notice it. Given that the HD 4850 is better than the 8800 GT, I think you'll get my drift ... :cool:

A more "raw" comparison would be to say that 1 HD 4850 = 6 9800 Pros in "Super Duper" Crossfire ;)
 
Danny Bui said:
Significantly better. At least 90% better.
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90% better would not even be twice as fast. heck my 8600gt is well more than twice as fast in modern games than a 9800xt. the 4850 is way way better than 90% faster. ;)

OP if you had to ask how the 4850 compares to a 9800xt then it makes my wonder about your other components you will be using in this pc.
 
Get an HD4850. It is comparable to the 9800GTX (which is better than the 8800GXT) and has far better video decoding and color quality than any NVIDIA card.

It is waaaay faster than the 9800XT. Like 400-500% faster.
 
cannondale06 said:
90% better would not even be twice as fast. heck my 8600gt is well more than twice as fast in modern games than a 9800xt. the 4850 is way way better than 90% faster. ;)

OP if you had to ask how the 4850 compares to a 9800xt then it makes my wonder about your other components you will be using in this pc.
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I haven't payed attention to hardware in a while and I haven't upgraded in a while. I'll be going from a AMD64 3.0ghz to a Phenom or X2.
 
TheCommander said:
I haven't payed attention to hardware in a while and I haven't upgraded in a while. I'll be going from a AMD64 3.0ghz to a Phenom or X2.
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Well since you've been out of the loop, Intel's Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad are dominating the market, and totally beat out AMD's offerings. Do yourself a favor and go Intel.
 
Yea if you can spend a little extra for the HD4850, you should definitely get it, as it's the best deal around.
 
At your price point, its the 4850. Becuase you say you haven’t been paying attention to hardware in a while, you might find this interesting. The 4850 is based on the RV770 GPU. That GPU has 800 stream processing units. At two floating point ops per unit, times 800 units, times a 625MHz stock clock speed you get to a teraFLOP of performance! But of course it takes 110 watts to achieve that feat, so I would suggest you put a compact fluorescent bulb in your office lamp to make the situation carbon neutral!

By the way, it has only been just over a decade since the first supercomputer in history crossed the TFLOP threshold. Think about that for a moment.
 
msabo said:
At your price point, its the 4850. Becuase you say you haven’t been paying attention to hardware in a while, you might find this interesting. The 4850 is based on the RV770 GPU. That GPU has 800 stream processing units. At two floating point ops per unit, times 800 units, times a 625MHz stock clock speed you get to a teraFLOP of performance! But of course it takes 110 watts to achieve that feat, so I would suggest you put a compact fluorescent bulb in your office lamp to make the situation carbon neutral!

By the way, it has only been just over a decade since the first supercomputer in history crossed the TFLOP threshold. Think about that for a moment.
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If the 4850 if this good, imagine the 4870X2! *drool*
 
How do the hd3850s compare? I'm either going to get a hd4850 and a dual processor or a 100 dollar vid card and a quad processor. So it comes down to whether I want a better CPU or better vid card.
 
TheCommander said:
How do the hd3850s compare? I'm either going to get a hd4850 and a dual quad processor or a 100 dollar vid card and a quad processor. So it comes down to whether I want a better CPU or better vid card.
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3850 is slower than a 9600gt. the 3870 and 9600gt are about equal overall. why in the heck would you go with dual quad cores? perhaps one quad core and a 4850 would make much more sense. also the way you worded it makes no sense.
 
cannondale06 said:
3850 is slower than a 9600gt. the 3870 and 9600gt are about equal overall. why in the heck would you go with dual quad cores? perhaps one quad core and a 4850 would make much more sense. also the way you worded it makes no sense.
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Ya that was an error there. I did not mean dual quad cores. I meant a hd4850/dual core CPU or a vid card in the range of a 100 dollars and a dual core CPU.
 
cannondale06 said:
3850 is slower than a 9600gt. the 3870 and 9600gt are about equal overall. why in the heck would you go with dual quad cores? perhaps one quad core and a 4850 would make much more sense. also the way you worded it makes no sense.
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Isn't the 3850 512 equal to the 9600GT/8600GT, and the 3870 512 equal to the 9800GT/8800GT ?
 
TheCommander said:
Ya that was an error there. I did not mean dual quad cores. I meant a hd4850/dual core CPU or a vid card in the range of a 100 dollars and a dual core CPU.
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Make sure you back all that up with some decent ram not to be bottle necked.
 
iPearl said:
Isn't the 3850 512 equal to the 9600GT/8600GT, and the 3870 512 equal to the 9800GT/8800GT ?
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um no. also the 8600gt is not even in the same ballpark as the 9600gt. you need to go do some research and come back. :p

From a performance standpoint, the Radeon HD 3870 comes out slightly ahead by outperforming the 9600 GT in one more game (and two benchmarks). The 9600 GT, although winning fewer benchmarks, manages a higher margin of victory in those games that it does win in.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3235&p=4
 
cannondale06 said:
um no. also the 8600gt is not even in the same ballpark as the 9600gt. you need to go do some research and come back. :p

From a performance standpoint, the Radeon HD 3870 comes out slightly ahead by outperforming the 9600 GT in one more game (and two benchmarks). The 9600 GT, although winning fewer benchmarks, manages a higher margin of victory in those games that it does win in.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3235&p=4
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Not talking about performance. Market wise.
We all know 9600 GT are faster Than the 3870s

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=575&card2=544
These card look alike to me though.

Not a big fan in nvidia so my knowledge in it is, limited. Bought my first Nvidia card today. And i worded my post as a question not a Fact, before you start making smart ass remarks.

I rest it at that, b/c i can see you will try to turn this into a ati vs nvida flame war.

Why don't you wait till the 4870x2 is on the shelfs and see how the prices are on the 4870?
 
iPearl said:
Not talking about performance. Market wise.
We all know 9600 GT are faster Than the 3870s

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards.php?card1=575&card2=544
These card look alike to me though.

Not a big fan in nvidia so my knowledge in it is, limited. Bought my first Nvidia card today. And i worded my post as a question not a Fact, before you start making smart ass remarks.

I rest it at that, b/c i can see you will try to turn this into a ati vs nvida flame war.

Why don't you wait till the 4870x2 is on the shelfs and see how the prices are on the 4870?
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an ati vs nvidia flame war? why in the hell would you even suggest that? a guy asked how the 3850 compared to the 9600gt so I told him. you quoted me and said the 3850 was equal to the 9600gt/8600gt. now you are saying that you are not even talking about performance. please make some sense if you are going to quote me. :rolleyes:
 
Better Vid or Better CPU? What will this comp be doing most of the time?
 
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