Opins: Time to upgrade my GPU?

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WintersFury

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Hey all, it's about time for my yearly GPU upgrade. So I'm looking for some suggestions as to what would be a decent bit faster than my current card while not breaking the bank?

I've been looking around at the cards currently out, and it seems like any of the ATI 4xxx cards would be faster than a 3870, even the 4830 for under $100. Which is a price range I like a lot. Though the 4850 does look like it'd be a fair bit faster for only $50ish more.

As for NVidia, I'm confused as heck, as they have the 9xxx and 2xx series of cards out and well the 9xxx ones don't seem all that impressive and the 260's are $200+


Also, seeing how I don't currently play any games that make me really want to upgrade, it may be better to wait for the next gen of cards to come out. But I haven't seen any speculation as to when that will be.

So any advice would be great. Thanks in advance.
 
What are you playing? I went from a 3870 to a 4850 and theres a pretty big difference in alot of games.
 
If you like to OC your vid cards, the 4830 has some good bang for the buck.

Another option is the 4870 cards as they can be found for as little as $150 or so if you wait for a good rebate deal. The 4850 is only good if you can get it for around $110-120 as any more than that and it gets in the range of the 4870.

Personally, if you're not playing any games that require an upgrade, I'd just wait and see what happens with the upcoming releases.
 
Mainly playing EvE Online & Fallout 3. Both of which run pretty well on my 3870.

However I'm looking to get a new monitor and go from 1680x1050 to 1920x1200 which may put the hurt on my card as EvE needs a decent bit of AA as is aliases something fierce and ATI cards can be a bit spotty with AA performance.

And there are a few games that will be coming out this year that look like they will put the hurt on my card and I'm thinking I may want to preemptively upgrade for them. But they won't be out till Q3 or Q4 so waiting a while shouldn't be much of a problem.


Thanks for the opins guys.
 
kirbyrj said:
That's what I just did for a 1920x1200 monitor. I wouldn't upgrade though until you upgrade your monitor.
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To get slightly off topic, what did you get for a monitor. The displays forum isn't as quick with advice as the Video Cards forum, lol.

And I was planning to at least wait until I got the new monitor, but that may be in a few weeks so I wanted to start thinking about a new gpu while I was at it.
 
I have a 28" HannsG TN panel. They run $350 or so from Newegg if you catch them on sale. Honestly, it has way too much backlight bleed for my taste, and TN panels can only do so much. Decent for gaming though, but movies it doesn't do well with.

I have used this with a 4850, 9800GTX+, 7950GT, and am going to put a 4870 512mb on it as soon as it comes (Monday). The 4850 and 9800GTX+ seemed to do ok with that res. I played through Call of Duty World at War and didn't seem to have any issues with it being unplayable. The 7950GT was unplayable though. I had to drop the res to 1280x720 and it still wasn't very playable.
 
i have a gtx260. overclocks to higher than FTW speeds. runs my 1920x1200 monitor great with every game i have thrown at it. fallout 3 looked great, as did farcry2, and every other game out there lol.
 
for 1920x1200 a gtx260 or 4870 1gb is certainly what you want and theres really no point in going with anything less. either will comfortably max every game except for Crysis/Warhead very high/enthusiast DX10 and Clear Sky enhanced DX10.
 
The 4870 is a solid deal right now. I went with a 4850x2 because I like massive amounts of AA/AF at 1900x1200 and I run a 42" TV as a second monitor as well.
 
kirbyrj said:
I have a 28" HannsG TN panel. They run $350 or so from Newegg if you catch them on sale. Honestly, it has way too much backlight bleed for my taste, and TN panels can only do so much. Decent for gaming though, but movies it doesn't do well with.

I have used this with a 4850, 9800GTX+, 7950GT, and am going to put a 4870 512mb on it as soon as it comes (Monday). The 4850 and 9800GTX+ seemed to do ok with that res. I played through Call of Duty World at War and didn't seem to have any issues with it being unplayable. The 7950GT was unplayable though. I had to drop the res to 1280x720 and it still wasn't very playable.
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Glad I talked to you, as I was contemplating getting one of those screens over another Dell. And I watch a lot of movies and am a Semi-Pro Digital Photographer (I actually make some money with it, lol) and was looking at upgrading to get more space for photo editing. And it sounds like it'd be pretty bad for photo editing.

And I know what your saying about cards. When I got my 1680x1050 monitor I had a 7900GS that was massively OCed and couldn't run most things at the monitors native resolution well which is why I got the 3870.

Schmiggy_JK23 said:
The 4870 is a solid deal right now. I went with a 4850x2 because I like massive amounts of AA/AF at 1900x1200 and I run a 42" TV as a second monitor as well.
Click to expand...

I see that a 4850 is almost as fast as a 4870 and a 4850x2 costs about the same as a 4870 1gb. But wouldn't the 512mb frame buffers in the 4850x2 limit the AA/AF more than the less speed in the 4870 1gb at high resolutions?
 
WintersFury said:
Glad I talked to you, as I was contemplating getting one of those screens over another Dell. And I watch a lot of movies and am a Semi-Pro Digital Photographer (I actually make some money with it, lol) and was looking at upgrading to get more space for photo editing. And it sounds like it'd be pretty bad for photo editing.

And I know what your saying about cards. When I got my 1680x1050 monitor I had a 7900GS that was massively OCed and couldn't run most things at the monitors native resolution well which is why I got the 3870.



I see that a 4850 is almost as fast as a 4870 and a 4850x2 costs about the same as a 4870 1gb. But wouldn't the 512mb frame buffers in the 4850x2 limit the AA/AF more than the less speed in the 4870 1gb at high resolutions?
Click to expand...

I think you'd want the higher end Dell panel for photo editing as the color reproduction is much better. They aren't as good for gaming as you will get ghosting since the refresh rate isn't as high, but I think you'd be happier overall.

The 4850x2 comes in a 2GB version that has dual 1GB memory which would help with the AA/AF. I'd probably get the 1GB 4870 over the 4850x2 1GB model for that reason though.
 
If you've already got a 3870, I'd get a new card after you get a monitor as you'll save some money with prices coming down pretty fast.
 
Its a slippery slope right now with the good cards being seperated by so little price.
$90-100= 4830
$120-140= 9800gtx, 4850
$155-170= 4870 512Mb
$200= 4870 1GB, gtx 260

At those price points you cant go wrong with any of those cards bang for the buck. Id really suggest getting a card with more than 512Mb ram @1920x1200 though.
 
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