Windows 7: New GRFX card advice:

here you can read them for yourself but as you can see..... a 5850 is only about 10 fps slower in farcry 2 then he 295 with the 5850 at 90 and the 295 at 100..... so yes one of these will max it... and.... the 5870 is faster than both
Radeon HD 5850: Knocking Down GTX 295 In CrossFire : Introduction - Review Tom's Hardware
now.... its to bad you can't just get the 5970....... its the fastest card in the world..... period

well........IMO

the fact you have an Nvidia chipset would push me to get a GTX285, & then in the new year i'd begin my hunt for another, SLI 285s are EXCELLENT, or i'd hold off a little while & see if i could get a ''Fermi'' card (then SLI later on) , though it may be quite a wait..

a single slot solution is certainly preferred over SLI or CFX, but its not always the best option if you have an existing card you can use.

if you buy right now into Nvidia you'll miss out on DX11 until the next time you upgrade your GPUs (which in most ppl's cases is not too often )

if you go the other way...ATI 5xxx, you assure yourself DX11, but your limited by your chipset, so as you've said its gotta be ''high end''

so..... how desperate are you to upgrade

Well i been thinking about it and i think you are right, i will just have to wait for nvid to get there gpu's into gear for DX11.

the GTX285 is the best nvidia card, but the only thing that makes it the best is the memory interface is 512bit where as the 275/295 is 448bit, but the stupid thing is they still utilized the older openGL 2.1 but the 275 uses 3.0. talk about a backward forward upgrade in technology.

i just dont get why nvid takes so long to release DX11 cards, unless they are waiting for the right moment to release something that is capable of beating the HD5970 and also uses DX11.i dont know what happened to their so called upcoming release GT300 GPU's, obviously that went astray or something. but what bugs me even more is they release lower end cards (like the base model GT200 series cards) that are basically old 7 or 8 series cards with a new fancy name, what the heck is the point? cant they put that money into designing something truly worthy of advancing in development instead of going backwards?

but i do like the looks of the HD5970, its got some awesome technology, and a reasonable price tag for it too, $1200 might sound high, but when you consider the stuff in it, it is reasonable....if only at least the i7 chipsets are crossfire/sli compatible.

i did try cleaning out the cards today, i actually have 3 980GX2's, but one was a water cooling setup gone wrong but still worked before i bought 2 new ones through insurance. i will have to try testing the other one again. pulling them apart is a slow task on its own.

does anyone know what sort of thermal pads they use? its a white putty sort of stuff, when you touch it, it leaves a white oily film on your skin and it has like a woven mesh in it? i can reuse the old stuff but i was wondering what it was called and where i could buy it as i have never seen that sort of thermal transfer pad before.

hm... its not the same as whats on a cpu?

who's not the same?

oh the thermal pad? no they use thermal paste (i just use AS5) on the actual GPU but the RAM chips they have to use a form of pad as there is a gap between the chips and the giant heat sinc which was another stupid design flaw of that model. i have tried using those heat pads that are like jelly similar to what they use on ddr ram coolers but that stuff just doesn't work the same as the white crap.

hm... idk then.... there must be someone that sells it

For the answer to Nvidia's release dates.... Officially they don't have any US releases for any major DX games, and STALKER is the only huge game I know that's comming out with DX11 (Well it's out but not in the US yet, makes me ****in angry is what!) and they are probably going to delay it just so they can fully support the games and have decent testing done. As for them not having it out now? Well really they should have, but since there are only 2 DX11 games I'm not really too angry.

For the seccond note on the thermal pads? You can make them yourself, as all you need is thermal paste and gauze.... Yeah that's close enough to what they really are, it's just a thermal compound with gauze. Pretty ****in simple really, it's just there to transfer the heat and fill the gap and that does it just fine.

Hey thnx 4 the input, with the thermal pads, it is strange stuff, you can mould it like blue-tac and break it and re-roll it in your hand to form what ever shape you like, it just leaves a white layer of crap on your hands.lol. but if you used thermal past with gauze it wouldnt be a putty type of pad, i am trying to figure out its name.

thats what i dont get with nvidia, they create descent products but they sure drag on doing it, so by the time you upgrade to the new ones ATI has already made something better. im seriously thinking i should hold back and build an i7 setup with a pair of ati cards. i have always been an nvidia fan cos of there little extra features (mainly 3D vision, its awsome in games like fallout3) but now cos of all the bull**** im reconsidering....thanks NVIDIA!

EDIT: i took a pic (excuse the overbright on my phone) of the thermal pad pulled apart, you can just make out the strands of the gauze crap inside of it.

hm... maybe it will work.... and you would like the i7.... good and fast

Well knock me down with a feather...