Graphics card puchase help

Well atm i'm playing with 3ghz e7200 on crysis warhead with a 4850 on stock and i get like......20-30fps at 1680 with most things maxed. A 4850 doesn't cope with that game too well no matter what. Turning shaders down to mainstream helps a lot.
 
Alan said:
If I game, it is rare and will be C&C/Starcraft and that kind of thing.

All he plays are strategy games if anything at all. Don't think he needs anything near even a 4850 really.

Graphics Card HD4350

This should be more than enough
Click to expand...

forget that... you have two T260's... imagine playing starcraft 2 or Diablo 3 using eyefinity... AWESOME

getta 5850! or getta 9600gt until you get a 5850, on gumtree you can get a 2nd hand one for R750.
 
reedOsama said:
forget that... you have two T260's... imagine playing starcraft 2 or Diablo 3 using eyefinity... AWESOME

getta 5850! or getta 9600gt until you get a 5850, on gumtree you can get a 2nd hand one for R750.
Click to expand...

That's the question. Does Henry want to get Starcraft 2 and secondly is it worth paying mega bucks for a top of the range card just for one or two games
 
It is worthwhile getting a 5850 so that he can run those two screens together in Eyefinity mode. That would be SO AWESOME!!!!!
 
I didn't post anything about this in the FAQ as it's too prone to change, the specifications that are acceptable for playable framerates in 2009 will not be the same as in 2010.

However, I will attempt to explain static concepts (such as bus width) in the FAQ in the near future.
 
The_Techie said:
I didn't post anything about this in the FAQ as it's too prone to change, the specifications that are acceptable for playable framerates in 2009 will not be the same as in 2010.

However, I will attempt to explain static concepts (such as bus width) in the FAQ in the near future.
Click to expand...

Fair enough :)

maybe this thread will be useful to some people in the moment, then. :)
 
Ok.

Well if you don't want to be a hardcore gamer, I rly think you should go for something like a 4870 1GB. You obviously like dual monitors, and the amount of memory is the most important thing when considering high resolution. It's also a decent card for gaming, and has GDDR5 memory as opposed to the 4850's GDDR3 (not to mention a higher clock speed). Also you can pick one up for R1500, while a 4850 1GB is around R1200, think the 300 bucks is worth it.

But, I do think that CPU will be bottlenecking you. I recently got a 4890 and was severely bottlenecked by my Athlon X2 4200+ (so badly so I had to take the card out, the older one actually got me better fps). Since upgraded my CPU and everything is great now.

But I asked on a number of oc forums and they all seemed to think that even a significant OC wouldn't help the bottleneck. Since the only difference in our CPUs is clock speed, I think you'll encounter the same problem. Of course, this problem will most likely be in games, and you may not suffer as much as you'll be playing at a higher resolution. (the higher the res, the more the load is shifted from cpu to gpu.)

So you may get away with it, but just warning you so you don't get a nasty surprise like I did.

Good luck!
 
Alan said:
That's the question. Does Henry want to get Starcraft 2 and secondly is it worth paying mega bucks for a top of the range card just for one or two games
Click to expand...

Id say it is worth it if its for starcraft 2. If he's still playing starcraft he'll probably play starcraft 2 for twice as long and to play it on two 25.5 inch screens at full settings is pretty worth it in the long run. But thats just my opinion:)

cerebus said:
It is worthwhile getting a 5850 so that he can run those two screens together in Eyefinity mode. That would be SO AWESOME!!!!!
Click to expand...

:D
 
As for CPU bottlenecks, it's not nearly as bad as most will have you believe. Have a look at this test conducted with a GTX280.
 
Subversion said:
Ok.

Well if you don't want to be a hardcore gamer, I rly think you should go for something like a 4870 1GB. You obviously like dual monitors, and the amount of memory is the most important thing when considering high resolution. It's also a decent card for gaming, and has GDDR5 memory as opposed to the 4850's GDDR3 (not to mention a higher clock speed). Also you can pick one up for R1500, while a 4850 1GB is around R1200, think the 300 bucks is worth it.

But, I do think that CPU will be bottlenecking you. I recently got a 4890 and was severely bottlenecked by my Athlon X2 4200+ (so badly so I had to take the card out, the older one actually got me better fps). Since upgraded my CPU and everything is great now.

But I asked on a number of oc forums and they all seemed to think that even a significant OC wouldn't help the bottleneck. Since the only difference in our CPUs is clock speed, I think you'll encounter the same problem. Of course, this problem will most likely be in games, and you may not suffer as much as you'll be playing at a higher resolution. (the higher the res, the more the load is shifted from cpu to gpu.)

So you may get away with it, but just warning you so you don't get a nasty surprise like I did.

Good luck!
Click to expand...
Thanks for the detailed feedback.

I am not gonna be gaming for a while, and when I do it won;t be anything hectic I don't think. If I ever start gaming, I'll probably get a wii first and then a PS3 or Xbox rather than use my PC :p
 
Zenbaas said:
As are the 50 weekly upgrade threads :p
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Haha, I was hoping this could function as one central font of knowledge for choosing a GPU but it really does seem to vary a LOT according to a user's individual needs as well as with time...
 
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