Help choosing video card

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superme1

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 31, 2009
Messages
147
Hello Hardforum, I'm a new member, and relatively new to the hardware scene....basically im a n00b

Can you please give me feedback on which of these videocards you think is better? I'm building a gaming computer on a 700-800 dollar budget:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130475

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133270

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102830

If you have any other recommendations for other parts, or any info that would be useful for me to know, I'd appreciate that too

PS (what are stream processors and what is their affect on game performance)

-Thank you
 
Welcome to the forum!

As far as which one is best, I think it goes 275=4980>260. What res do you play at? As in what is the resolution of your monitor? This is really importance since the performance difference between a 260 and a 275 depends on the res. and you might get away with saving some money bygoing with a 260 if you play at a low res.
 
Thank you for the feedback,

as for resolution, I'm totally rebuilding my desktop, including monitor

the build im going for will be able to play a 19" monitor easily, and I will probably be getting a 22" or so, playing games like farcry2, COD5, possibly crysis, etc....

also, do you know what stream processors do?
 
superme1 said:
the build im going for will be able to play a 19" monitor easily, and I will probably be getting a 22" or so, playing games like farcry2, COD5, possibly crysis, etc....
also, do you know what stream processors do?
Click to expand...

Presently a 260 should handle a 22" at 1680x1050 just fine. A 275 or 4890 might last a little longer perhaps. I'd probably go with a 260 with that setup. They're close enough in performance that the game that makes you want to upgrade will probably render both of them annoyingly slow. At least that's been my experience. Everything is just fine and then someone releases a game that seems great but eats my GPU for breakfast.

As for the stream processors, you might think of them as being sort of like CPU cores. Graphics processing can be spread across multiple processors very effectively. Instead of having 1-4 very complex cores like CPUs, GPUs have many smaller, less powerful processing units.

Stream processor counts are not comparable at all across brands or GPU architectures. NV's SPs are more powerful but ATI has a lot more of them, so it pretty much evens out. They're sort of useful along with memory bandwidth and clock speed in sorting the cards in a given series, but that's about it.

There are a couple of exceptions involving NVidia cards though. The GTX 260 was redesigned with more SPs, so if you go with a 260 you'll want to look for the newer 216 SP model instead of the slower, older 192 SP model.

There's also some funny business going on with the 9600GSO, though you won't have to worry about that since you're looking at higher end cards. There are two versions. One has 96 SPs and the other has 48. The 96SP model has a "weird" amount of ram on it usually (384 or 768MB), while the slower 48SP model has 512MB or 1GB.
 
What PSU do you have, and does it have the extra power connectors that the Perormance cards need?

6 pin and/or 8 pin power cables, depending on the card.
 
Yes, a 260 can handle crysis fine on a 22" monitor (assuming its 1680x1050 res).
 
superme1 said:
I'll be getting this power supply (unless you would suggest otherwise): http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817703015
Click to expand...

While a quality PSU, it is too expensive considering that the BFG LS-550 550W PSU is only $70 over at buy.com

But that Antec 900 + Antec EA650 is a decent deal assuming you like the Antec 900 case.

Oh once you're done selecting all the parts of your build, post it in the General Hardware subforum for them to critique it. Make sure you answer the stickied questions when you post a build list in General Hardware.
 
Get the GTX 260. It is not a whole lot weaker than the other two but it's a whole lot cheaper. Better get back on the resale is awesome.
 
Have you played Crysis? Chances are you'll be playing anything but Crysis once you've beat the game once... :p
 
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