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Bashe

Time for a new video card

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My GeForce 8800 Ultra that I've been running for almost three years finally went kaput not too long ago, and I'm in need of a new video card. For the time being, I'm using my brother's 8800 GTX, but once I get some money, I'm going to decide on a new one.

As of now, I've been keeping my eye on this Radeon HD 5850. It's the highest rated card on Newegg within my price range ($200-$300), and it would also be my first ATI card. I've always been fine with NVidia, but I've never tried ATI so I figured I had nothing to lose. However, I'd like to hear a few more options from you guys before I settle completely on a newer card. What are some good cards you have been running that fit within my price range? Chipset and manufacturer do not matter. It must be within $200-$300.

Also, I'm not sure if I'm going to need a new PSU. I'm currently running a 550W with no problems, but I'm worried that maybe a new video card might not be enough. I know there are calculators out there, but I'm missing some information about my internal specs since I'm dumb and don't keep my boxes and manuals lying around when I need them.

My current specs:
Gigabyte EP45-UD3P motherboard
EVGA GeForce 8800 GTX
2x 2GB DDR2 SDRAM
4x 120mm fan (two side ones controlled via fan controller)
2x SATA DVD-RW drives
Intel Core Duo E8400 (3.0 GHz)
2x HDD (unsure of RPM, one is SATA [1 TB] and other is IDE [80 GB])
550W PSU (unsure of make)

This is all running under Windows 7.

Your recommendations are much appreciated.

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That's a good pick. However, depending on what resolution your monitor is at, what games you play, and what you consider "acceptable" performance, I would go with a Radeon HD 5770 instead, and put money you save towards another 2 gigabytes of RAM. Get the cheapest 2x1gb kit you can that matches or exceeds the speed of your existing RAM (the number after "PC2").

Trust me, another 2 gigs of ram makes a huge difference. I'm running a Core 2 Duo E8400 myself, plus a Radeon HD 5770 and 4 gigs of RAM and I don't see myself needing another upgrade for at least another two years.

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AlexMax is right about getting extra RAM, 2 GB is simply not enough for 2010.

Three possible suggestions:

1) Get a 5770, and 2 GB of RAM. A little less than $200, or over it, depending on your 5770 model. Pocket the rest of the money.

2) Get the Radeon 5850, and 2 GB of RAM. $300.

3) Get a pair of 5770's, Crossfire it, and then get 2 GB of RAM later when you find an extra $20. About $280 for a pair of 5770's. This will let you exceed even the GPU performance of the 5870.

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Everything that AlexMax said is excellent advice. Especially with the card you were talking about, RAM would be the bottleneck on your system, and as cheap as RAM is that's just silly. Also, if you don't mind having a previous generation (thusly, not directx 11) then you might consider going for the Radeon HD 4870. It's got a bit more bang for your buck than the Radeon HD 5770, for around the same price. Once again, the detraction is that it's a last gen card and doesn't support all the current gen features.

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Doom Marine said:

AlexMax is right about getting extra RAM, 2 GB is simply not enough for 2010.


I think he meant that he has two sticks of 2GB RAM.

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Yeah my bad. And I have serious questions as to whether both his motherboard and power supply are Crossfire ready. He'd probably benefit most from just getting one really big card, like the 5850.

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Yeah, I was about to say, it's two sticks of 2 GB. :P

I guess the 5850 is the best option here. While the 5770 looks alright, I think I'd prefer a little more power. I don't play new games often, but if I ever wanted to, I'd like to get a good FPS (in my case, 30-60 fps) without having to sacrifice too much detail.

I guess my only other real concern now is the PSU. Do you think 550W will cut it, given my specs?

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John Smith said:

Everything that AlexMax said is excellent advice. Especially with the card you were talking about, RAM would be the bottleneck on your system, and as cheap as RAM is that's just silly. Also, if you don't mind having a previous generation (thusly, not directx 11) then you might consider going for the Radeon HD 4870. It's got a bit more bang for your buck than the Radeon HD 5770, for around the same price. Once again, the detraction is that it's a last gen card and doesn't support all the current gen features.


From what I've read, the 5770 handles modern games at 1920x1080 a lot better than any 4000-series card. Maybe he can get away with a 4870 if he doesn't have that big of a monitor and is absolutely sure that he doesn't want to be able to play games using DX11 in the next two years.

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Bashe said:

I guess my only other real concern now is the PSU. Do you think 550W will cut it, given my specs?


550W is plenty. You can be pushing everything as hard as possible and based on what I've read and calculators I've used, you'll never draw more than 500W of power. PSUs over 500W are generally only needed when you have a lot of different cards (or possibly high RPM hard drives/SSDs) running inside your box, not when you have one really big video card and pretty much average everything else.

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Whoo said:

I think he meant that he has two sticks of 2GB RAM.


Damn, you're right.

I'd still seriously consider the 5770. Save the rest for beer money. :)

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LOL yeah

Well anyways, thanks a lot guys. When that money comes in, I'll know what to do.

<333 Bashe :3~~

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John Smith said:

550W is plenty. You can be pushing everything as hard as possible and based on what I've read and calculators I've used, you'll never draw more than 500W of power. PSUs over 500W are generally only needed when you have a lot of different cards (or possibly high RPM hard drives/SSDs) running inside your box, not when you have one really big video card and pretty much average everything else.


Wattage has nothing to do with how powerful a power supply is, only how efficient it is. What is actually important is how many amperes the 12V rails can support. I've got a similar setup to the OP (Same CPU I think, Same amount of ram except in DDR3, 5770 graphics card), and I'm pretty sure my power supply is in the 400-450W range, it's the one that came with my Antec Sonata III.

In general, you want a lot of 12V amps on as little wattage as you can get away with, to save on your power bill. However, at the same time you want to give yourself some headroom and there are a lot of bad power supply companies out there, so to be safe it's generally a good idea to stick with (to steal a list from another forum) Corsair, PC Power and Cooling, Seasonic, and any Antec Earthwatt series PSU. If your card has no PCIe power plug on it, you can get away with 300W from one of these companies. If it has one, 400W is fine from one of these companies. If it has two, 500W from one of these companies would be the best. I say "from one of these companies" because if you go with some no name brand cheap 600W PSU you'll probably get dicked on the 12V output ...that is if your computer doesn't catch fire from the PSU's shoddy construction.

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AlexMax said:

Wattage has nothing to do with how powerful a power supply is, only how efficient it is.

I disagree. Wattage (volts * amps) is about power and nothing else, while efficiency (output power expressed as a percentage of input power for a nominated load level) is independent of a power supply's wattage rating.

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AlexMax said:

Wattage has nothing to do with how powerful a power supply is, only how efficient it is.

This sounds like some serious bullshit.

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AlexMax said:

Wattage has nothing to do with how powerful a power supply is, only how efficient it is.

...

In general, you want a lot of 12V amps on as little wattage as you can get away with, to save on your power bill.


Dear Sir,

we regret having to inform you that the totality of the world population's Physicists, Electrical Engineers and Electricians have an understandable desire of choking you to death with a high-voltage wire, after your unfortunate statements.

Signed,

All of the world's Physicists, Electrical Engineers and Electricians.

GreyGhost said:

efficiency (output power expressed as a percentage of input power for a nominated load level) is independent of a power supply's wattage rating.


This is true on paper, at a theoretical level. In practice, larger (aka more powerful) PSUs are typically more efficient at higher loads (because their rated continuous power output is also higher, components are appropriately sized etc.)

For example, a 500W and a 400W PSU asked to deliver 380W of power will both pull it off, but the 400W will be near its full capacity and force its components to run hotter/under greater stress, which in general reduces efficiency. At the same time, the 500W one will run cooler and near its maximum efficiency peak, delivering the 380 W effortlessly and with power headroom to spare.

PSUs have their efficiency peak near 80% of their maximum rated power at room temperature, while anything above or below that is typically less efficient, going kinda like a skewed bell curve.

That is, assuming properly designed PSUs. It's not unusual to notice how e.g. noname 400W PSUs usually barely meet their stated power levels (if at all, and then only under specific conditions), while a big name 400W PSU would actualy be overengineered for higher loads and able to function at full power all the time without sweating (thus explaining the higher price/longer life/higher efficiency).

Also yeah, most of the power needs to be delivered at the 12V rails, which are then stepped down on the motherboard or video card as needed to whatever the chip cores use (low voltage but high currents). This way high-current resistive losses in long wires are minimized as much as possible.

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Maes said:

This is true on paper, at a theoretical level. In practice, larger (aka more powerful) PSUs are typically more efficient at higher loads (because their rated continuous power output is also higher, components are appropriately sized etc.)

For example, a 500W and a 400W PSU asked to deliver 380W of power will both pull it off, but the 400W will be near its full capacity and force its components to run hotter/under greater stress, which in general reduces efficiency. At the same time, the 500W one will run cooler and near its maximum efficiency peak, delivering the 380 W effortlessly and with power headroom to spare.

PSUs have their efficiency peak near 80% of their maximum rated power at room temperature, while anything above or below that is typically less efficient, going kinda like a skewed bell curve.

That's true enough and pretty obvious, if you need more power - get a beefier supply. OTOH, testing with a 300W load is bound to make the 400W PSU look the better choice - given the difference in power ratings it's a bit like comparing apples with oranges. Testing both supplies at set percentages of their rated output would provide a good measure of their relative efficiency that's consistent with my previous statement.

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Technician said:

I'm a Mac fag so I'm too ignorant to know what my video card is.


No upgrading on a Mac unless you can find a non-Mac specific card with 64kb bootrom and EFI (HINT THERE'S NONE)

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Mr. T said:

No upgrading on a Mac unless you can find a non-Mac specific card with 64kb bootrom and EFI (HINT THERE'S NONE)


On newer iMacs you get a Radeon 4650-class integrated videocard. Not too ugly, but surely nothing too hot for the 1337 UB3R FUX0R 0V3RCL0XX0RZ d00dz like us.

It would also bother many musician types to know that the audio is an Intel High Definition audio...and not some exotic audio interface. Sure, it works and it has a good OS to keep everything together but it's more like having a glorified laptop on a table stand.

On older G3/G4 Powermacs you could actually install standard PCI and AGP videocards, and I think you can upgrade current Powermacs as well (as they have a normal case and mobo), dunno if there are any special restrictions on what you can use though.

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Maes said:

It would also bother many musician types to know that the audio is an Intel High Definition audio...and not some exotic audio interface. Sure, it works and it has a good OS to keep everything together but it's more like having a glorified laptop on a table stand.


This. You have no idea how often I hear the mantra chanted that "Artists don't use PCs, macs are the only OS equipped for music/video/picture editing." I especially have to laugh at the image editing part. This horribly mistaken belief, in terms of image editing, stems back to the 90s when there was an actual difference between Photoshop on Windows and Mac. Flash forward to today and I'm hard pressed to think of any reason why a mac is more "artistic"ly capable other than the fact that it's in a rounded off white plastic case.

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printz said:

GZDoom?

LOL yeah, but I play with the software renderer 90% of the time anyway so oh well I guess.

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Maes said:

On older G3/G4 Powermacs you could actually install standard PCI and AGP videocards, and I think you can upgrade current Powermacs as well (as they have a normal case and mobo), dunno if there are any special restrictions on what you can use though.


You are forced to use the old crappy motorola processors (=No Windoze :-()

My boss' iMac has a 1gb radeon. Which is OK I guess... my Mac pro has an unupgradable Geforce 7300 NOOOOOOOOOO

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I've always been a Nvidia fan since day one. ATI has some great stuff as well, just compare and get the card that best suits your particular needs. My base system at home is as follows...

Intel Core i7 Processor 920 @ 2.67

12 gigs DDR3 Memory on the motherboard

1 Terabyte HD

Two Nvidia GTX 480 cards with 1536 megs of GDDR5 on each card running in SLI mode.

Windows Vista 64 bit Home Premium.

Years ago under the old OS's my biggest bottleneck was always motherboard ram...I made a promise to myself to not allow that to happen again. I like playing all my games with all the bells & whistles running! Hence the video card setup.

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Mr. T said:

You are forced to use the old crappy motorola processors (=No Windoze :-()


Well, then spend some more and go straight to a Mac Pro: those have PCIex 2.0 slots and are fully upgradeable (although they are by no means mainstream even among hardcore Apple fans, and a server-grade PC may actually come in cheaper). But I read here that even those will not work with any and all video cards :-(

But anyway, these are moot points for anyone choosing to go Apple: they use a pretty oldschool closed/fixed hardware options model in the name of stability (and it seems to work). If you want a fixed-hardware computer with at most some room for small, "clean" upgrades, look no further.

If instead you want to connect 4 videocards in SLI and CrossFire, throw in 48 SSD drives and overclock everything to 8 GHz, you'll be better served with a good old IBM PC compatible (heh...as if that compatibility mattered in the least anymore).

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Cadman said:

12 megs DDR3 Memory on the motherboard


That must run slower than slow..I assume you meant 12 gigabytes?

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