Looking for a new Graphics Card

[Tomination]

Hi All,

I think my Nvidia 9800 GTX is bust. After a clean install and every type of fix i could think of i have given up and want to replace it.

I am looking to get a card which is affordable as i dont have the money to pay for one of the 400-500 Pound + cards.

Even though i am not spending much; i want to get an improvement on my current 512mb Nvidia 9800 GTX

GeForce 9800 GTX

I have been looking at a few cards, such as

ASUS NVIDIA® GeForce 560 1GB DDR5 PCI-E 3D & SLI Ready
XFX ATI Radeon HD 5830 1GB Review
ATI Radeon™ HD5830 1GB PCI-E

Problem is the specs all have different names; i dont understand which ones are better, or for that matter; if it is even compatible with my computer

Could somebody in the know help me out?

Thanks, Tom!

 

[Maguscreed]

You'll want to jump up to a 5850 to get a noticeable improvement.
The 5830 just has dx11. The performance of that card is in the economy standard though.

 

[Tomination]

Hi Magnus ,

Is the Nvidia 9800 GTX a top card then? I am able to play any game (until i started to get the blue screens).

I bought my pc a few years back from a gaming computer builder.

This one seems like it is a step up according to the few specs i did understand

Asus 1GB GeForce GTX 560TI DirectCUII PCI-E Graphics Card: Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

 

[Maguscreed]

yeah the 9800gtx is a performance card.
It's only real shortcoming right now is it's lack of dx11 support.
I actually have 2 old 8800gtx's on the machine in the front room and it still runs pretty good. The CPU is actually the bottleneck on that system.

I can tell you one thing though. 1 5850 out performs both those overclock edition 8800gtx's. in SLI.

 

[Tomination]

hmm ok

Ill take a look at that one thanks

 

[Maguscreed]

hmm ok

Ill take a look at that one thanks

Yeah you wouldn't think it to look at the numbers on the performance benchmarks, but real world difference is very notable.

 

[lnav83]

you can't go wrong with the Geforce GTX 560 Ti, I got two of them running in SLI. even when I had one I was able to run everything maxed out, I just got the second one to be able to run the mass of games coming out soon at max FPS.

 

[Maguscreed]

I wouldn't quite go that far, the 560ti is a good low cost alternative to my suggestion, I think you're giving it a bit more credit than it really deserves all the same it's a good nvidia alternative to my suggestion.

 

[paulpicks21]

I certainly wouldn't discount the HD 6870 either as an option.

It's newer than the 5850 and thus there is more choice of cards. Not sure what country the OP is from but in the uk the 6870 is around the same price as the 5850 now as stocks seem to be depleting.

Just chucking another option in.

Goodluck

Paul.

 

[Big Tom]

i'm actually going to grab this one. CompUSA.com | EAH5450 SILENT/DI/512MD2(LP) | ASUS Radeon HD 5450 512MB DDR3 Video Card i dont do any pc gaming at all, mostly just playing media. any opinions on this card?

 

[Schroff87]

Tomination, buy a gtx 560ti. Preferably a factory overclocked version because they have custom coolers. My gtx 460 by gigabyte has a custom cooler and it has performed exceptionally. The HD 5850 was succeeded by the HD6950, not the HD6870.

Big Tom, yes it will do nicely for your use.

 

[Big Tom]

^^^ Thanks

 

[Wishmaster]

You mentioned BSODS.

maybe I missed something, but are you sure they caused by the GPU?

If not, it may be worth checking into whats causing it. Otherwise, you'll get a new GPU and still have the Blus Screen problem.

If you do not know for certain, it may be worth posting in the BSOD section of the forums to have someone help you isolate the cause.

 

[M1GU31]

i'm actually going to grab this one. CompUSA.com | EAH5450 SILENT/DI/512MD2(LP) | ASUS Radeon HD 5450 512MB DDR3 Video Card i dont do any pc gaming at all, mostly just playing media. any opinions on this card?

its alright for media but for gaming its meh i had to overclock it to be enjoyable at higher settings in gaming anyways its not ment for gaming only reseaon i have it is because it came with this pc that i bought because of the good price for having a quad core 3.0ghz with 4gb ram and 1tb hdd anyways i plan on replacing this card soon for me

 

[Maguscreed]

For strictly media purposes something off the electronics shelf at walmart will do fine.

Current codecs rely a lot more on cpu power than graphics power to provide a hd image.

 

[Schroff87]

For strictly media purposes something off the electronics shelf at walmart will do fine.

Current codecs rely a lot more on cpu power than graphics power to provide a hd image.

With DXVA the load is transferred to the GPU. Guru3d's article is very good to demonstrate that.

 

[Maguscreed]

Regardless it doesn't change the fact the best media image I get comes out of my 4 year old laptop with intel graphics.

Both my high end nvidia and mid-high end ati card require color tweaking for almost every video played on them.