Graphics Card - Suggestions?

[Makushr1]

Looking to build a pc, mostly for gaming. Right now, the only thing I've decided on was the processor, i7 950. As for the mobo, right now I am leaning towards the Asus P6T, but that can change with any recommendations.

Any thoughts on a vid card? I wouldn’t mind getting the Radeon 5870, but I’d like to keep the vid card under $250.

Suggestions?

[Makushr1]

Maybe Radeon HD 5770?

[UltimateBMW]

Keeping the price to $250, your only option is ATI right now.

NVIDIA is releasing the new GTX480/GTX470 cards on March 26th. However, they will probably be over $400. And also difficult to get due to low quantities.

[ragingclue]

Originally Posted by UltimateBMW

Keeping the price to $250, your only option is ATI right now.

NVIDIA is releasing the new GTX480/GTX470 cards on March 26th. However, they will probably be over $400. And also difficult to get due to low quantities.

The last card I bought from NVIDIA which really impressed me was my 8800 GTX. The 8800 series was definitely legendary, but since ATI has actually been making progress with their drivers, they make it a lot harder for me to justify an NVIDIA purchase.

Are you going to be doing any benching/folding/OC? Those are usually pretty important factors here too.

My current personal favorite for bang-for-your-buck in one card has to be the 4890. But that's based on personal preference.

[eclipsisNA]

I recently picked up one of these for $400 shipped and it had been phenomenal:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1120/1/

[Makushr1]

Originally Posted by Eclipsis

I recently picked up one of these for $400 shipped and it had been phenomenal:

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1120/1/

Thanks. The one I was looking at was the 5770, yours is the 5870. From legit reviews:

The AMD Radeon HD 5700 series architecture is really the same as what is on the 5800 series as you can see from the block diagram above. AMD basically just took the die used in the Radeon HD 5800 series and cut it in half. To be more specific, the Radeon HD 5700 series offers up to 10 SIMD engines, with up to 800 total Stream Processing Units. This is exactly half of the Radeon HD 5800 series offers as those cards have up to 20 SIMD engines and a total of up to 1600 Stream Processing Units. Since the Radeon HD 5700 series is literally half of a Radeon HD 5800 series core, all the other specifications are also reduced by half. That means you now have up to 40 Texture Units, 64 Z/Stencil ROP units, and 16 Color ROP units with a 128-bit GDDR5 memory interface. Why do we keep saying up to? Well, the Radeon HD 5770 has 10 SIMD Engines and Radeon HD 5750 has 9 SIMD engines. Since each SIMD engine contains 80 stream processors that means the texture units and performance will obviously be different.

Is the 5800 series worth the extra $200? It's for gaming, but I'm not a hard core gamer.


And to answer the other question, no, I don't plan on oc the comp. I did that with my last one, and it was a PITA. Kept overheating, no matter how much cooling I had on it. Plus, when I got it up and running overclocked, I really couldnt tell too much of a difference. Given, this was back in early 2003, but still I'd rather not deal with it.

[Mega Man]

Good choice on board, (anything 1366 at this time) remember with DDR3 RAM you'll want multiples of 3 RAM modules (not 2 for best performance), which your board supports.

As for video cards, everyone has their preferences, but I like nVidia (anything SLI) so that instead of buying a new, top of the line card when my current one isn't able to cut it, I can buy the same one I'm running and SLI bridge it to about double its performance.

Remember that i7 can run a bit hot, so make sure to get a good heatsink and fan (liquid if you're going to OC). What case are you going to get? I had a mid-size tower, but have ordered a full size and some new goodies...my live-in GF is going to inherit this PC when my new stuff arrives.

[ragingclue]

Originally Posted by Mega Man

As for video cards, everyone has their preferences, but I like nVidia (anything SLI) so that instead of buying a new, top of the line card when my current one isn't able to cut it, I can buy the same one I'm running and SLI bridge it to about double its performance.

I was under the impression that the scaling of SLI was nowhere near 2x, even in the best-scaling models. That being said, some models scale much better than others. I've always found it much more efficient performance-wise and cooling-wise to just always have a single card solution, although some did scale well enough (such as 8800 and 9800 I believe) to justify SLI back in the day.

[Mega Man]

That's why I said "about" double. It is no where near actually doubling. Still, it's cheaper than having to go buy a new $300+ card when the new games demand it. For the most part, you'll be able to run new stuff on its ULTRA settings with good FPS. If it doesn't, then you'll just have to settle with less than ultra, and maybe buy a new high-end card.

But yes, ragingclue, it is no where near 2x.

[ragingclue]

Originally Posted by Mega Man

That's why I said "about" double. It is no where near actually doubling. Still, it's cheaper than having to go buy a new $300+ card when the new games demand it. For the most part, you'll be able to run new stuff on its ULTRA settings with good FPS. If it doesn't, then you'll just have to settle with less than ultra, and maybe buy a new high-end card.

But yes, ragingclue, it is no where near 2x.

I wasn't trying to come off as sheisty. I just read a lot of posts on the geeky forums about people who were led to believe SLI was going to allow them to buy a 2nd card down the road and double their performance. Needless to say, they were pretty disappointed and underwhelmed.

The multi-card solutions are good stopgap measures IMO in certain situations, and XFire and SLI have both made themselves much more viable to a broader spectrum of useability recently, but there are still games that come out once in a while that will stupify certain multi-GPU-and/or-slot setups to the point where you were better off with just one card.

Then again, it all depends on what your needs are. If you end up only playing 1 game, and you love it, but you'd like to just get that extra 25% (conservative) performance boost, then yeah SLI and XFire would be perfect. You'd spend half or less than half of what the decent single card solutions would be at that point in time later down the road, and the good single card solution would actually be more than you needed at that point. So, yeah, the multiple card setups do benefit you in that respect and do have situations where they do work much better.

But, all I was trying to say (maybe I came off as crass and vague) was to not expect SLI or XFire to miraculously make your graphics processing capabilities jump through the ceiling. If you're looking for that extra "nudge", they will do that, and may even be more than you expected. But if you're planning on making a "jump" in terms of graphics, better off just buying a one card solution.

In any case, if you have a 1 year rotation on your graphics cards, whether you're cycling mobos or not, you still can fetch a half-decent amount for your old card to credit towards your new one. You won't really get a whole lot for it, but it's still a noticeable help.

[Mega Man]

Originally Posted by ragingclue

I wasn't trying to come off as sheisty.

No offense at all, my good man. I was just trying to clarify "about" double and agreeing with your previous post.

I think in the past, I had a 128-bit card that could just barely run Doom 3 (this is when SLI was fairly new). I bought the same card and bridged it and it ran Doom 3 on it's highest perfectly. Later I had to upgrade and bought 1 256-bit card to run (I don't remember the game). Then Oblivion was out, and I could run it on highest, but not with draw distance. So I bought another of the same, and it could run it with draw distance and highest perfectly.

SLI is a good way to not have to buy the most expensive card every single time a new high graphics game comes out.

[Makushr1]

http://www.gpureview.com/show_cards....=613&card2=614

That's a comparison of the 5870 and 5850. I know what 1/2 of the specs are, but anyone else that know more than I, is the 5870 worth 33% more (400 compared to 300)?

[ragingclue]

Originally Posted by Makushr1

is the 5870 worth 33% more (400 compared to 300)?

That is going to totally depend on what you use it for. A lot of people here would never notice the difference between the two. The 5870 is a beast. I'm sitting at home with a single 4870 1GB and it plays all my games maxed out 1920x1080 (AoC probably being the most stressful; it's not quite Crysis but it's damned gpu intensive)....

Truth is there aren't really a whole lot of games out there that will bring out a noticeable difference between a 5850 and a 5870. I'm sure there will be in the coming months/years, but there aren't that many atm.

A few years ago, we were at a point where software was stretching hardware development to its max, and now we're somewhat flipped on that. We've got mainstream processors hyperthreading to 8 cores when your average Joe still probably couldn't tell much of a difference day-to-day with 2 cores vs 4, our mobos allow for some 24GB of RAM which I'm sure we'll need at some point in time, but that time doesn't seem to be fast approaching, etc... We're soon going to see computers fail due to age instead of being obsoleted by new gen games, but that's an assessment based on my own opinions.

The best I can suggest is overclock.net; these kinds of questions are answered there over and over, and plenty of people seem to have opinions and experiences they're more than willing to share if you can see through the nvidia/ATI and Intel/AMD fanboyism.

[Makushr1]

Originally Posted by ragingclue

That is going to totally depend on what you use it for. A lot of people here would never notice the difference between the two. The 5870 is a beast. I'm sitting at home with a single 4870 1GB and it plays all my games maxed out 1920x1080 (AoC probably being the most stressful; it's not quite Crysis but it's damned gpu intensive)....

Truth is there aren't really a whole lot of games out there that will bring out a noticeable difference between a 5850 and a 5870. I'm sure there will be in the coming months/years, but there aren't that many atm.

A few years ago, we were at a point where software was stretching hardware development to its max, and now we're somewhat flipped on that. We've got mainstream processors hyperthreading to 8 cores when your average Joe still probably couldn't tell much of a difference day-to-day with 2 cores vs 4, our mobos allow for some 24GB of RAM which I'm sure we'll need at some point in time, but that time doesn't seem to be fast approaching, etc... We're soon going to see computers fail due to age instead of being obsoleted by new gen games, but that's an assessment based on my own opinions.

The best I can suggest is overclock.net; these kinds of questions are answered there over and over, and plenty of people seem to have opinions and experiences they're more than willing to share if you can see through the nvidia/ATI and Intel/AMD fanboyism.

Thanks, Ragingclue. You shot clue glue all over the place.

[ragingclue]

Originally Posted by Makushr1

Thanks, Ragingclue. You shot clue glue all over the place.

Yeah cleaning the damn keyboard can be a bitch. I have way too many sticky keys now

[Makushr1]

Anyone have a suggestion on where to get computer parts? I've been using newegg and they seem to have some of the better prices.

The local micro center has good prices as well.

[ragingclue]

Newegg or TigerDirect new, overclock.net or xtremesystems if you're ok with previosuly gently fondled hardware.

I haven't found a business yet that will accept and process RMAs with the speed and willingness that NewEgg does. An overwhelming majority of the time, they'll have the best price for your item anyway, and if they don't, it will be competitive. In that case, any small extra I'd pay for a computer part would be worth the comfort in their RMA process.

Once in a while MicroCenter will have some screaming deals as well.

[eclipsisNA]

Newegg is a no-brainer. I wouldn't go anywhere else and never have in the past 10 years.

[Mega Man]

Personally, I like tigerdirect.com. They have super fast shipping, and their prices are comparable to newegg.com's. Both are great, I just have a preference for tiger.

[bluespeed117]

mwave.com ftw

[Makushr1]

Originally Posted by bluespeed117

mwave.com ftw

mwave seems to be a little more expensive than the rest. My dad uses them.

for my products, newegg seems to have the best price.

[UltimateBMW]

Originally Posted by Mega Man

Personally, I like tigerdirect.com. They have super fast shipping, and their prices are comparable to newegg.com's. Both are great, I just have a preference for tiger.

Tigerdirect isn't bad now. But a few years ago, they use to be quite shady. Like most of their parts fell off trucks shady.

Newegg is the mot popular though because it is the cheapest most of the time, and they have great customer service. ie. Returns and replacements for DOA/defective items.