Getting a new video card - Hardware & Software

I'm planning on upgrading my video card soon the most I'm planning on spending is $250 Thinking about getting a Radeon HD 6950 card any suggestions? which Radeon card is best?

See if you can save $20 and get a GTX 570. Otherwise the 6950 would be the next best.

post a screenshot of speccy and what PSU you have

Why are you so set on a Radeon as well? Aren't most games optimized for nvidia cards anyway?

[QUOTE=Jimbojib;32010827]Why are you so set on a Radeon as well? Aren't most games optimized for nvidia cards anyway?[/QUOTE] from what I've seen AMD is cheaper and it's nice to save money

Neither nvidia or AMD are better, all cards in the same price range perform about as well depending on a few factors, Nvidia usually have the "flagship" cards but AMD tend to cater to the normal consumer but both have great cards in all price ranges. 6850<560<6870=560 Ti<6950<6970=570<580 Pick depending on budget and you're good to go. And if you have preference that's fine, just don't limit yourself to one company based on blind arguments.

I would say GTX cards that perform as well as the radeons seem to be cheaper, but that's in the UK, although out I doubt it's much different in the states [editline]29th August 2011[/editline] what he said [editline]29th August 2011[/editline] Also GTX 460 - best budget card

While we're on topic for video cards, how would a 6950 work on a 1440x900 monitor?

quite well

I just don't want to spend more money than I need to in order to max out skyrim. It won't be bottle necked by my monitor? Specs: AMD Phenom II 550 (3.6ghz) 4GB ddr3 M4A79XTD EVO 9600 GT 650 watt corsair power supply 19" monitor

skyrim isn't out, so we can't tell you If this is solely for Skyrim, wait for a bit after the release to see benchmarks with it and see what card you need. By then, a new series of GPU may be out, and prices could drop as well.

[QUOTE=EagleEye;32011915]I just don't want to spend more money than I need to in order to max out skyrim. It won't be bottle necked by my monitor? Specs: AMD Phenom II 550 (3.6ghz) 4GB ddr3 M4A79XTD EVO 9600 GT 650 watt corsair power supply 19" monitor[/QUOTE] I just wanted to point out that a monitor can't really bottleneck a video card. The only thing having a smaller resolution is going to do is make your stuff run better. Unless you were concerned whether that was too big for a 6950, in which case I should inform you that I can max pretty much anything out currently with a 6950 on a 1080p monitor.

The thing that will bottleneck it if anything is the dual core, might be worth getting a worse card and an X4 955 (think 6850/70) But Skyrim isn't going to be very intensive, nowhere near as much as battlefield 3 for example.

I didn't check his motherboard to see if its compatible but the 550BEs tend to unlock extra cores fairly well.

I thought it was only the X3's that could unlock cores? Learn something everyday.

[QUOTE=demonguard;32025043]I didn't check his motherboard to see if its compatible but the 550BEs tend to unlock extra cores fairly well.[/QUOTE] It was a 550 BE and the motherboard did unlock it to 4 cores, for about 3 days before it became too unstable, I had to revert back to 2 cores again. Sounds like I should just get a 6870 and save myself some money. [url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150521[/url] Good choice?

[QUOTE=EagleEye;32029607]It was a 550 BE and the motherboard did unlock it to 4 cores, for about 3 days before it became too unstable, I had to revert back to 2 cores again. Sounds like I should just get a 6870 and save myself some money. [url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150521[/url] Good choice?[/QUOTE] Maybe you should try actually following the correct procedure for unlocking instead of just doing 4 cores on stock settings with no stability testing. [editline]31st August 2011[/editline] The 6870 will be a great card for you, but you wont see enough processor bottleneck to negate the increased performance of a 6950. It just depends how much you want to spend.

[QUOTE=demonguard;32029852]Maybe you should try actually following the correct procedure for unlocking instead of just doing 4 cores on stock settings with no stability testing. [editline]31st August 2011[/editline] The 6870 will be a great card for you, but you wont see enough processor bottleneck to negate the increased performance of a 6950. It just depends how much you want to spend.[/QUOTE] I actually followed this guide: [url]http://www.overclock.net/amd-cpus/535501-amd-k10-5-core-cache-unlocking.html[/url] And it worked for a lot of people, I just wasn't very lucky. With the vcore at 1.4 and underclocked, it was still very unstable, I just got unlucky. But with a $60 processor I can't complain. Thank you for your help, I think I will be picking up that 6870.