<$200 Video card question.

[freeman2k6]

Hello video gurus. Right now I'm working on a hardware upgrade for my gaming system I built about two years ago.

What brings me here though is I'm mainly trying to make sure I don't buy a video card that will become quickly obsolete while yet providing me a great bang for buck upgrade.
Heres what I"m looking at getting
Sapphire HD 4850 1GB

It will be going into an
ASUS PQ5 Pro
It's going to be replacing my old
BFG GeForce 7800GT

I'll be gaming on my CRT still as the flat screen is coming next after the go faster parts are put in. Manufacturer's recommended specs at 1600x1200 @ 76Hrtz, however mine only runs up to 72.
Samsung 19" 990DF

To summarize, if there a better card I should choose as a better bang for buck video card around the same price? And how worried should I be about becoming obsolete in the very near future?

Thanks alot.

 

[AltTabbins]

http://www.hardforum.com/search.php?searchid=11100288

 

[alg7_munif]

Since you are going with a crossfire mobo, I would suggest you to get an ATI card. The HD 4870 512MB fits your budget but the smaller RAM is actually holding back it performance. The 1GB version would be faster at a higher resolution with AA.

For the HD 4850, the amount of RAM won't make any difference but if you have crossfire in mind, stay away from the 512MB version because in Crossfire, the memory would be duplicated so you will still have 512MB effective memory. 512MB effective is too small for two HD 4800 cards.

My suggestion is the HD 4870 1GB eventhough it is over your budget.

 

[Kazappin]

If you don't plan to go crossfire, then a single 4850 will be more than sufficient. Since you have a 1600 x 1200 monitor (that must be tiny font on a 19"?) it's going to be mainly gpu-bottlenecked, and a 4850 can't be bottlenecked on too many games

512 MB would be enough onboard memory if you're not going into crossfire.

 

[freeman2k6]

Right on, thanks for that. I am fairly restricted on the budget which is unfortunate. I'll definetly stick with the 4850 512MB then. Depending on how cash flow goes over the next couple weeks I may be buying half of the parts here shortly and the other half in a month and a half or so. Hopefully nothing goes too far obsolete by then hehe. Thanks again for the thoughts.