Graphic Card Upgrade

somanynames90

I have a GTS 250 OC 512MB edition and im looking to upgrade it

I was thinking to moving to ATI

Im looking to spend €200 on a card


Would it be worth my while ? If so what card would you guys recommend



Cheers

Jon

Connavar

You can pick up an ATI Radeon HD 5830 for around €225 in komplett.

Judging by the charts on toms hardware this would be a good upgrade from your card

Blazer

Sell your existing card and put it towards a 5850 or 5870...

do not buy a 5830...no good for gaming..they're the lower end of the 5800 series.
Or go for a GTX295..should be able to pick one up cheaply here on boards..they go for about 230-240...

Connavar

Sc@recrow wrote: »

Sell your existing card and put it towards a 5850 or 5870...

do not buy a 5830...no good for gaming..they're the lower end of the 5800 series.
Or go for a GTX295..should be able to pick one up cheaply here on boards..they go for about 230-240...

I agree, was just saying the 5830 due to the budget.

Though it depends on the monitor and resolution really.(the 5830 will get playable frames in Battlefield bad company 2 with 1680x1050, 4AA, 8AF, High Quality, DX10)

OP what resolution is your monitor?

VenomIreland

Sc@recrow wrote: »

Sell your existing card and put it towards a 5850 or 5870...

do not buy a 5830...no good for gaming..they're the lower end of the 5800 series.
Or go for a GTX295..should be able to pick one up cheaply here on boards..they go for about 230-240...

The 5830's are fine for gaming, I have one in this rig here and it runs everything I can throw at it in 1920X1080 max everything (not max AA in Crysis case)

somanynames90

Connavar wrote: »

I agree, was just saying the 5830 due to the budget.

Though it depends on the monitor and resolution really.(the 5830 will get playable frames in Battlefield bad company 2 with 1680x1050, 4AA, 8AF, High Quality, DX10)

OP what resolution is your monitor?

its a 32" Tv Full HD ready LG

Connavar

Ok look, as Venom said you will be able to play games on high settings with the HD 5830 but it won't last anywhere near as well as a 5850/5870, so its down to what you are willing to pay for really.

Also bear in mind that the revamp of the current ati's is supposed to be out shortly which could make the pricing a bit better

Blazer

somanynames90 wrote: »

its a 32" Tv Full HD ready LG

so 1920x1080..

I'd really go for the 5850 at least..will last longer than a 5830 which overpriced at that...

somanynames90

Sweet - so would i be right in saying ATI have the upper hand at the moment ?

Connavar

For price/preformance in games now they do at the moment but nvidea is boasting that their cards win in tesselation which is a feature of Directx 11(making things look more detailed/3d in laymans terms)

Its hard to say which is the better buy really as it completly depends on if and how quickly developers embrace the tesselation feature(possible giving the Nvideas the upper hand).

somanynames90

Would i benifit by putting another GTS 250 card in my machine and setting up the sli ?

Connavar

somanynames90 wrote: »

Would i benifit by putting another GTS 250 card in my machine and setting up the sli ?

SLI will give a preformance increase but I don't know how much(or weather its worth it). I can't find any benchmarks for it on the usual sites I use and trust so i will have to leave that question to someone else

marco_polo

Connavar wrote: »

For price/preformance in games now they do at the moment but nvidea is boasting that their cards win in tesselation which is a feature of Directx 11(making things look more detailed/3d in laymans terms)

Its hard to say which is the better buy really as it completly depends on if and how quickly developers embrace the tesselation feature(possible giving the Nvideas the upper hand).

Which is nice for NVidia but the time tesselation becomes widespread ATI will be at least another generation down the line, and who knows what they may have in development in this regard. All this stage the must be at least 6 months + ahead of NVidea in terms of their development cycles and look well placed to continue to hold the upper hand for the forseable future.

Connavar

marco_polo wrote: »

Which is nice for NVidea but the time tesselation becomes widespread ATI will be at least another generation down the line, and who knows what they may have in development in this regard. All this stage the must be at least 6 months + ahead of NVidea in terms of their development cycles and look well placed to continue to hold the upper hand for the forseable future.

I agree with this alright. Ati's 5970 is still hanging up there even in tesselation and it is a 6 month old card.

My advice is towards ATI at the moment as really the have the upper hand for today's games and probably for those to come in the next couple of years at least

Deano12345

Connavar wrote: »

SLI will give a preformance increase but I don't know how much(or weather its worth it). I can't find any benchmarks for it on the usual sites I use and trust so i will have to leave that question to someone else

SLI GTS250's will usually beat a GTX285 by a small bit. A 5850 will beat a GTX285 by a small bit.

So roughly speaking. SLI GTS250's = Single 5850

Connavar

Deano12345 wrote: »

SLI GTS250's will usually beat a GTX285 by a small bit. A 5850 will beat a GTX285 by a small bit.

So roughly speaking. SLI GTS250's = Single 5850

If this is the case then the second 250 is well worth it as it would cost you half of what the 5830 would

Solitaire

They also use twice as much electricity, pump out twice as much heat, block each other's coolers on many mobos and don't even play ball on many games. And that's not to forget that SLI is a way to bump up performance at a set resolution; lots of other factors (such as framebuffer size and bandwidth, which is replicated, not shared) conspire to reduce scaling/performance effectiveness when you start to use SLI to justify bumping up resolution instead of FPS.

somanynames90

Cheers guys - where the best place to buy a card and who is good company to buy from ?

e.g Point of View
Asus
Sapphire
etc...

Thank You

J

VenomIreland

somanynames90 wrote: »

Cheers guys - where the best place to buy a card and who is good company to buy from ?

e.g Point of View
Asus
Sapphire
etc...

Thank You

J

I've only had one graphics card, it's a Sapphire, it is beautifully quite and cool.

marco_polo

somanynames90 wrote: »

Cheers guys - where the best place to buy a card and who is good company to buy from ?

e.g Point of View
Asus
Sapphire
etc...

Thank You

J

I woul say ASUS offer the best warranty of them all.

deceit

VenomIreland wrote: »

I've only had one graphics card, it's a Sapphire, it is beautifully quite and cool.

The one that you cant get running stable? Yea but i've a few sapphire cards and all running perfect but would just get which has the best warranty and price as most of the cards are usually exactly the same, just standard reference cards, minus the likes of saphire vapour x series and other such ones from other manufacturers but they come at a price premium.

VenomIreland

deceit wrote: »

The one that you cant get running stable? Yea but i've a few sapphire cards and all running perfect but would just get which has the best warranty and price as most of the cards are usually exactly the same, just standard reference cards, minus the likes of saphire vapour x series and other such ones from other manufacturers but they come at a price premium.

Funnily enough, I can get it stable by turning off transparency in Aero.

deceit

VenomIreland wrote: »

Funnily enough, I can get it stable by turning off transparency in Aero.

A proper card should but running no matter what feature is on.

VenomIreland

deceit wrote: »

A proper card should but running no matter what feature is on.

It is a proper card, it passes stability tests with and without transparency, but for some reason, some games crash with transparency on.

cherryghost

VenomIreland wrote: »

It is a proper card, it passes stability tests with and without transparency, but for some reason, some games crash with transparency on.

That's an OS/software problem, not hardware XD

Solitaire

Oh, and Morrowind :rolleyes::D

somanynames90

How about this ?
http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/5018831/art/gigabyte/radeon-hd-5850-oc-1-gb-gd.html

Cheers

Jon

Connavar

somanynames90 wrote: »

How about this ?
http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/5018831/art/gigabyte/radeon-hd-5850-oc-1-gb-gd.html

Cheers

Jon

They are nice cards alright.
If you have a good enough psu, running two 5770s in cross fire could be a good alternative(at least thats the advice that I am getting from people atm)

somanynames90

Ok Well i got another Sli GTS 250 and it did not work

it would not load into windows for me

I Have Win 7 32bit

I kept getting a error saying not enough resouses

any ideas ?

its a GTS 250 512MB OC'ed and a GTS 250 1GB


Jon

Deano12345

somanynames90 wrote: »

Ok Well i got another Sli GTS 250 and it did not work

it would not load into windows for me

I Have Win 7 32bit

I kept getting a error saying not enough resouses

any ideas ?

its a GTS 250 512MB OC'ed and a GTS 250 1GB


Jon

Did you try booting in safe mode ?

Connavar

somanynames90 wrote: »

Ok Well i got another Sli GTS 250 and it did not work

it would not load into windows for me

I Have Win 7 32bit

I kept getting a error saying not enough resouses

any ideas ?

its a GTS 250 512MB OC'ed and a GTS 250 1GB


Jon

I haven't used sli myself but could the different amounts of memory on the cards be the issue here?