Best Value Graphics card

[Smokey]

hey all just wondering whats the best card/s for around the $2/300 mark?

needs HDMI out

My PC is coupla yrs old

ASUS mobo PDL*** (cant remember)
2 Corsair Dominator 2048 sticks
Intel Core 2 Duo 3.6ghz
Big arse Zalman fan
400w power supply (im thinking ill need to go bigger)

its going to be a Racing Rig (iRacing, rFactor etc) its going to be hooked up to my Samsung LED HDTV (reason for HDMI)
im going to use the PS3 wireless surround headset (only works in stereo not virtual 7.1 on PC) for sound & talk so hoping
this will run games at good prettyness & framerate but just mainly hoping to upgrade card not much else. also would i be
better using 64bit or 32bit?

any other uprgades or tips welcome

smoke

[frosty]

64 bit windows 7. As for GPU, currently you will get more for your $ if you go with AMD, however that looks to be changing with the newer more expensive cards coming out. One aspect I like about my Radeon HD 6870 (about $165), it has an open 3D standard. Different drivers are available for 3D, so it means better compatibility. You can't just hook an Nvidia card up to any 3DTV and have it work.

One drawback about my card, it's fucking massive (I had to re-arrange my hdd's to fit it in), power hungry, and it's fan can get kinda loud. Other than that, I'm liking it so far. I haven't thrown a game at it that it couldn't give me a respectable frame rate at max settings. Even Metro 2033 in 3D at 1080p was still playable, with only occasional frame-rate stutters while turning quickly.

[Smokey]

thanks frosty.. is going for one with 2gig over 1gig worth it or much of a muchness?

[Viper]

Smokey, you'll want the 2 GB card IF you plan to game above 1920 x 1080 or will utilize lots of AA....or both. 1 GB cards will likely serve you just fine.

An HD 6950 2 GB can be picked up for $270 and most of those can be updated with a special driver to unlock the rest of the card so it becomes an HD 6970 ($350).

The HD 7850 can be bought for $250 battles against the HD 6950 a lot but the HD 7850 handles DX11 games much better.

A 1 GB HD 6870 can be found for as low as $150 after rebates with the 2 GB card going for $190.


I do agree that you'll want a 64 bit OS. Especially since you already have 4 GB or RAM which a 32 bit OS would only be able to address about 3.5 of those 4 GB's.

I know Frosty suggested to watch for nVidia's upcoming mid range cards but we have no idea when those will launch as they are having difficulty with the production process.

[BahnNZ]

Toms hardware do articles on that every month: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...view,3107.html

Surprising what you can run on a 400Watt PSU...

But yeah I swear by Sapphire for AMD, EVGA for nVidia, can't go wrong with those two guys,do excellent stuff.

[Smokey]

thanks Viper & Bahn highest ill go is 1920x1080 as thats what TV does just wanting best i can have in that rez. a guy i 'know' online has offered me his gtx580 (hes upgrading to 680) i looked at prices & theyre still 450+ ill see what he wants for it.

[goku2057]

I run a GTX 460. Paid like 110 for it and it handles everything i throw at it.

[D3adcell]

Your going to want a new power supply. Your going to run into more problem with your processor not being able to handle games though than your video card.

[BahnNZ]

Oh yeah, nice tasty 600-750 Watt PSU. 750 if possible because you can do a little SLI/Crossfire on that sucker, just a little. My 750 is enough to SLI a couple of 680s, not that you should be doing that on your CPU...

I have noticed how nVidia and AMD cards output different quality video. So if you like the video quality on your 360, buy an AMD, if you like it on your PS3, buy nVidia.

So yeah have a target in mind. Mine was better driver stability, lots of software plain didn't run, PhysX, running the new DX11 games, get your target. It may take more than a video card.

[Segitz]

I agree... assuming 80% efficiency, your 400 Watt PSU will only put out 320 Watts under load... and a 6870 is rated at about 150 Watts already. Add to that a CPU, mainboard and whanot at about 100 Watts, it's not far to reach the sustainable maximum your PSU will generate... under full load, which means it'll die pretty soon (happened to me when I upgraded last year, and that with a 500 Watt PSU^^ though a cheap one).

[Viper]

I'll agree to the addition of a better PSU. For a GTX 580, I'd recommend a good quality 500 watt PSU or better. 600 watts would give you plenty of headroom to play with.

And a quad core CPU would with certain games that take advantage of the 4 cores which is becoming more and more common.


BahNZ, what do you mean AMD and nVidia graphics output different quality video? If you are seeing an actual difference in the quality of the video with your new card from your old card, something was wrong with your old card to start with. It's impossible to look at 2 screens and tell which company the GPU came from without there being a serious problem.

[Segitz]

They sure do... their internal rendering works differently, so the result is slightly different... it's nothing major, in fact I'd call it nitpicking to a degree, but in the old days, ATI was one of the companies that put MAJOR effort into good display quality... not sure if that's still true today (don't follow it closely anymore)... Not even sure if it makes a difference in games or not... though the anisotropic flickering in ATI cards is supposedly still present... I don't care either way, as I don't "see" it (I can see it, if I focus, but... in-game I don't).

[Viper]

Of course they use different techniques to actually render an image but the end results look so similar that if shown 2 images but not told which GPU company's card rendered which, you'd never be able to tell. Yes, many years ago (2004 or before) there was a visibly noticeable difference in image quality but that's not been visible for years.

Now you can have settings different that may change gamma, sharpness of textures, AF or whatever but those can all be adjusted and not relevant to the actual picture quality being rendered.

[Segitz]

As I said... I don't know of todays "quality", though it's been said that ATIs video decoder is much superior to Nvidias... again I can't confirm or deny this, but I am content with ATIs, although it's buggy in spots (if you lower the "smoothing" sliders, your whole computer can freeze up when playing video... without any logging information to boot).

[Smokey]

so my core2duo is gonna struggle too... hmmmm any of the quad cores go onto duo mobos? for cheap lol

edit: remember this is just for racing games

[Viper]

It's tough to find Quad Cores for a socket 775 motherboard (your ASUS board) now that they've moved on to newer architectures and sockets.


I've found a few sellers offering Intel Core 2 Quad Q9500's for ~$200.00. You'll have to check local Aussie services but that's one of the most widely available CPU's left of the Core 2 Quad line up.

[Smokey]

cool mate thanks might update mobo if need be

[Viper]

Keep in mind if you update the motherboard, make sure it's compatible with the RAM you currently have.

Then again, RAM is dirt frikkin cheap right now. You can score 8 GB's of good RAM for $40.

[BahnNZ]

Nah, nothing wrong with the cards. With identical games I can tell the difference between nVidia/AMD/PS3/360. They're not broken just different.

[Smokey]

is this a misprint?? (been looking online)

http://www.computeronline.com.au/pro...97&PHPSESSID=&

Leadtek Quadro 6000 6GB, PCIe.... $4598.00 :O