I want to upgrade my graphics card soon, I currently have an ATI Radeon HD4850. It's served me well and is still going, but I want to put it with another rig for playing some older games at decent settings and using it for a TV PC. ATI just put their 6xxx series on the market and the 6850 is appealing to me, and I don't really know much about nVidia at the moment, but I heard their Fermi's are pretty good too. What I'm looking for is something quiet, that runs cool without a water-cooling system and obviously will be set for the next 3-5 years as far as graphics go (aren't we all?). I'm willing to spend under $300 for it, I'm only an intermediate gamer so I don't have or want to spend big bucks on one. Therefore the SLi feature on the new mobo I just got seems rather pointless since I won't be spending enough to get two cards worth my while.
Here's my rig as of now, might put in 4 more gigs of RAM, but it doesn't seem I need to as of now, I just upgraded from 2GB DDR2.
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Operating System
MS Windows Vista Ultimate 64-bit SP2
CPU
AMD Phenom II X4 955 51 °C
Deneb 45nm Technology
RAM
4.0GB Dual-Channel DDR3 @ 668MHz (9-9-9-24)
Motherboard
MSI NF750-G55 (MS-7578) (CPU1)
Graphics
L227W @ 1680x1050
ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series (ASUStek Computer Inc) 73 °C
Hard Drives
199GB Maxtor Maxtor 6L200S0 ATA Device (SATA) 38 °C
244GB Maxtor Maxtor 6L250R0 ATA Device (PATA) 38 °C
244GB Maxtor Maxtor 6L250R0 ATA Device (PATA) 35 °C
1465GB Seagate ST31500341AS ATA Device (SATA) 38 °C
Optical Drives
ASUS DRW-24B1ST ATA Device
CJQDCPU UJ01IZ4 SCSI CdRom Device
Audio
Creative X-Fi Audio Processor (WDM)
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Any recommendations? Should I hold out for them to go on sale? My 4850 seems to be holding up pretty well with games I play regularly on high settings such as BF:BC2, Borderlands, FO3, L4D2, TF2 and the like. Upgrading my RAM and CPU seemed to have caused drastic impacts on the performance.
What are your thoughts?
Radeon 6950 would fit the bill, although if you could post your PSU that would be helpful.
[url]http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102914&cm_re=6950-_-14-102-914-_-Product[/url]
However, the current rumors is that the GTX 560 will come out in late January to challenge the 6950. As of right now though the 6950 is awesome for $300.
750 Watt PSU. Probably gonna take out 2 of the HDD's, I only really need the 1.5 TB and one of the other 250GB. That should reduce the PSU usage as well as the noise. This damn IDE drive is loud as hell.
6950. You can even make it a full fledged 6970 :buddy:
[editline]4th January 2011[/editline]
Except I don't recommend SAPPHIRE, they have a tendency to have terrible customer support and bad warranties. Personal experience, though. Others might have had better luck.
My choices (remember, others might have had better experience):
[url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150518&cm_re=6950-_-14-150-518-_-Product]XFX[/url]
[url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121416&cm_re=6950-_-14-121-416-_-Product]ASUS [out of stock, worth waiting for if you want to] [/url]
[url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125356&cm_re=6950-_-14-125-356-_-Product]Gigabyte[/url]
[url=http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127555&cm_re=6950-_-14-127-555-_-Product]MSI[/url]
That ASUS one is sexy as hell! I'm not buying it extremely soon, maybe within the next 3-4 months. So I assume prices might work their way down, especially when nVidia releases theirs. But from what I've been reading, manufacturers are having trouble controlling the heat from the microtransistors in the cards, so they haven't been able to make the technology smaller at a very fast rate, so it might remain close to stagnant for the next few years. I figure now is the time to buy a decent card.
3-4 months is a [i]long[/i] time and in my opinion I think recommending a card now would be useless, post again when you're buying within a couple of days
What is the PSUs brand?
In 3-4 months, the GTX 560 will probably be released, and you will probably want that. Since it will be anywhere from 230-300.
Okay, well I guess I'll just wait until I have enough cash set aside to buy one and ask again. I have an 'Ultimate' brand PSU.
Hmm. Nothing on newegg about that brand, and googling "Ultimate brand PSU" and the likes come up with nothing.
Is it a prebuilt or how much did it cost?
[editline]4th January 2011[/editline]
More importantly, does it have 2 six pin connectors for the 6950 or most newer GPUs?
Yes it has 2 6-pins I got it from CompUSA / TigerDirect
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