Upgrading from ATI 4850 512mb

P

Poordevil

Gawd
Joined
Aug 6, 2010
Messages
783
I am past due for a vidcard upgrade. I Upgraded my computer a year or more ago but left the 4850 in there because it was doing pretty good at the time. System specs:

i7 920 cpu
Antec 850 watt power supply
6gb ram
single FW900 24inch crt monitor. Play games in 1920X1200 @85hz

What is the best Nvidia card I could drop in here without upping the power supply? This is a single card solution only, no SLI.
 
Poordevil said:
I thought the 580 was super power hungry and needed more juice than 850 to run it?
Click to expand...

850 will power one GTX 580 just fine.

I am a fan of neither side. I just realized you wanted nvidia only......but.....
I have two GTX 580s, but you can see in my computer I have HD 6950s modified to HD 6970.

My advice, just for the sake of saving some money and getting to play at maximum, I'd get an HD 6970. Also less power requirements as well.
 
I am not opposed to going ATI again. I hear that a couple of the games I play run with less trouble under Nvidia. Age of Conan, and a World War 1 combat flight sim called Rise of Flight.

One thing that could sway me would be noise and heat. A cool, quiet card has something to crow about!

What I am looking for is a vidcard that will keep me set as a single card solution and a single monitor solution for the long haul. The only other upgrade I can possibly see any time soon would be the FW 900 crt. That would only be because I would want a larger screen and higher res. The picture quality of the FW900 is beyond reproach.
 
I'm going with Nvidia this time. That is one decision I have made. The 580 is a great looking card. which supplier has the best noise and cooling answers?
 
Poordevil said:
I'm going with Nvidia this time. That is one decision I have made. The 580 is a great looking card. which supplier has the best noise and cooling answers?
Click to expand...

No problem.
Look at the front news page....Galaxy is dropping their prices on the GTX 580 by a bunch.
The new egg link shows a base price of 484 and a 45 dollar rebate.:eek: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...-_-na-_-na&AID=10521304&PID=3891137&SID=194r0

Just one more thing to think about.....evga now sells a GTX 580 with 3GB of memory, if yopu aren't ungrading for a while, that's what I'd buy. http://www.evga.com/products/moreInfo.asp?pn=03G-P3-1584-AR&family=GeForce 500 Series Family&sw=

For quiet, it's hard to beat this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...7567&cm_re=gtx_580_msi-_-14-127-567-_-Product
 
Thanks Magoo, that is what I intend to get, 3gb of Vram. The ram is a key ingredient, I do not want to be running out of Vram any time soon!
 
Poordevil said:
Thanks Magoo, that is what I intend to get, 3gb of Vram. The ram is a key ingredient, I do not want to be running out of Vram any time soon!
Click to expand...
you will want a new gpu long before 1.5gb becomes the limiting factor at 1920x1200. the only reason they make a 3gb model is for those people running extreme resolutions where they will also need sli.
 
I got the GTX 580 3 GB. Holy cow what a beast!

I have been off line since my first posts. My first 580 I picked up from Fry's was a bad card. I installed it Sunday morning. Downloaded the drivers, set my desktop res, and opened up Rise of Flight to test things out. It is a WW1 combat flight sim on a cutting edge engine. Very demanding game. My old 4850 could run it pretty good, but not with all the video options maxed. 2X AA and terrain on medium was as high as I could go.

I got to run the game about 10 minutes with the 580 and everything just shut down, quit. Instantly, like someone pulled the power power cord out of the wall. I tried rebooting, but there was no power at all. I thought I had a bad power supply. I took it into my computer shop to see what they thought. They build all the computers for Valve Software, Bear Computer in Bellevue WA. They tested it out and found out it was the 580. It had shorted out the whole computer.

So I had to take the card back to Frys. I had the receipt and the box so they were good about taking it back. This new one works fine. I let Bear install it, I didn't want to touch it!

I realize this is really over kill, but I thought I would go all out and spring for this 580 3GB thinking I will be able to keep it for a long time, and I won't have to compromise on any game visuals for the foreseeable future. I will upgrade my i7 cpu before I will ever need to upgrade this 580.

It is no more loud than the 4850, and of course with a single 16 :10 monitor 1900X1200 res there is nothing but head room, the sky's the limit. It wasn't cheap; $590 USD out the door. I never spent over $250 for a video card before now. And those cards have always been adequate at first, but always fell behind relatively soon and I found myself compromising on game settings when I really didn't want to.
 
that sounds like quite an adventure you had, lol. tbh any extra you paid for the 3gb over the 1.5gb was money wasted at your res. oh and make sure you oc that cpu a bit if you have an after market cooler.
 
cannondale06 said:
that sounds like quite an adventure you had, lol. tbh any extra you paid for the 3gb over the 1.5gb was money wasted at your res. oh and make sure you oc that cpu a bit if you have an after market cooler.
Click to expand...

Hmm...

Poordevil, you heard what cannondale06 said, its time for you to get a 30" 2560x1600 monitor! :D
 
I am happy with this PC set up for now. I love my craigslist special FW900 CRT! I may upgrade it sooner than later, my problem is I really prefer CRT to LCD displays. When I see a nice big LCD that blows me away as a gaming display, I'll be tempted; and I will have the vidcard card to support it!

As far as wasted ram... Rise of Flight has GPU memory usage tallied in the video options menu. Every time you click on a higher terrain detail for example, you can see your total GPU ram availability dwindle. Also, the devs are wanting to add more ground targets to the game; armies, gun emplacements, vehicles, you know, war stuff on the ground. The head of 777 studios has posted and warned that if they do that kind of thing ( which everyone of course is clamoring for ) it will eat video ram like crazy. Especially says he, if there is any AI involved, like AA gunners for instance.

So my point is that all this ram may seem like overkill atm but just wait, it won't be long before it starts getting used, if not Rise of flight other games to come along, like Guild Wars 2 perhaps.

I
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top