Insight on a video card upgrade

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Weaksauce
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Jun 5, 2008
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With a ton of great games coming out over the next few months, I need a new video card. What is the absolute best card I can and should get for $250?

I have in my system now an AMD Phenom 9850 Black Edition, 4gb ram, 500w psu and a 21in monitor playing at 1680x1050

I'm aware the 500w psu might not be enough for newer cards, so that's something I'll probably have to upgrade as well.
 
What is the model of the PSU?
What GPU do you currently have?

Might be able to find a GTX 570 for near that price. Newegg has the MSI for $269.

The 6950 might better fit your budget.

For a little more than the 570 you could SLI two 460s. But that may require more power than you have.

I'd try and strech your budget for the 570 personally.
 
right now I've got a 4850. Got it close to 3 years ago, she's served me well.

The psu I've got is an Antec earthwatts EA500 500W
 
You will find a large number of HD6950's for around that price range, the 1GB models will clock in under $250 and the 2GB will come in at that price point or just over.
 
6950 is a really good card in terms of being power efficient, whereas similar Nvidia offerings tend to draw a few more watts. You should be good with a 500W power supply, according to AMD 500W meets the requirements for a 6950.
 
The psu I've got is an Antec earthwatts EA500 500W
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There's not a lot of point in buying a graphics card that expensive with such a slow CPU to be honest, you might as well save the money and go for something lower down like an HD6870.
 
edit: looking over my options, i think you may be right.

not really feelin a full upgrade right now. dont have the funds. so maybe i should just go with a 6870 instead and stretch it out until jan/feb (income tax baby) when i upgrade more.
 
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You can get a used 6970 shipped for $260... that'd be your best bet. You can hit me up if you're interested :)
 
A 6950 for that price would be a good idea. I'm trying to sell mine (only used it for 3 months too), so if you want you can PM me about it :p
 
m3t4lh34d said:
You can get a used 6970 shipped for $260... that'd be your best bet. You can hit me up if you're interested :)
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that would be a horrible deal for him. he can get a brand new 6850 for almost half the price and never know the difference at 1680 with his old cpu. a 6850 is as high as I would go at that res with a 9850 cpu.
 
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cannondale06 said:
that would be a horrible deal for him. he can get a brand new 6850 for almost half the price and never know the difference at 1680 with his old cpu. a 6850 is as high as I would go at that res with a 9850 cpu.
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Then, if you get a new machine with better res monitor(s), you always have the option to Xfire it at some point
 
Mosher said:
Then, if you get a new machine with better res monitor(s), you always have the option to Xfire it at some point
Click to expand...

thats what I'm thinking now.

I think I'm just gonna grab a 6870 for now, then around february upgrade a lot more. at that point i could xfire the 6870 to stretch it out a little bit, and then a couple months later buy a new single card solution
 
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