Which ATI Radeon 4850/GTS 250?

[marshalex]

I've managed to narrow down the graphics card for the i5 system i'm building using the MSI GD65 and have seen the Gainward 4850 "Golden Sample edition at novatech for £82.79, the XFX 4850 XXX edition at ebuyer for £79.90. As for the GTS 250 there is the Gainward Green on scan @ £75.04 or the Asus 250 @ £82.20.
From what i've read there isn't much performance difference between the gts 250 and the 4850 and those i've listed fall into my price bracket. The XFX XXX 4850 seems to be a good overclocking card to improve the performance and thats swaying me towards that.

[Pob255]

If you can push it slightly to £90 per card then the Sapphire 4850 Vapor-X is also worth looking at as it has a very good cooler.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/161309

[TooNice]

No there isn't much of a difference performance wise, but maybe you want to check benchmarks of the games you frequently play. I have both a Sapphire 4850 and the Gainward Green GTS250 (keep it mind that it's slightly underclocked so it will be slower overall, not all the time but probably more often than not). Push come to shove, I think that I have a preference for the 4850, if only because it seems more compatible with older games (not an issue unless you want to run, say Final Fantasy 7).

[Domestic_Ginger]

gainward golden sample sounds awful but at 51C and factory overclocked it looks really good. If I had the £83 it would be my choice in a toss up with the 1GB but lower clocked XFX at about £86. (from ebuyer)

Overclock or ram? Would be intersting to look at a review on performance. I suppose the ram is better long term as the 10% overclock will be be proportionally smaller in the future (if that makes sense).

[DeludedGuy]

If you can push it slightly to £90 per card then the Sapphire 4850 Vapor-X is also worth looking at as it has a very good cooler.
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/161309

I agree with this.

[DanceswithUnix]

gainward golden sample sounds awful but at 51C and factory overclocked it looks really good. If I had the £83 it would be my choice in a toss up with the 1GB but lower clocked XFX at about £86. (from ebuyer)

Overclock or ram? Would be intersting to look at a review on performance. I suppose the ram is better long term as the 10% overclock will be be proportionally smaller in the future (if that makes sense).

1GB?? Is everyone now running 64bit operating systems when playing games then?

Perhaps it is time I upgraded...

[fiish]

I thought the amount of frame buffer memory needed was just determined by the number and size of frames to buffer, i.e. resolutions used in games, antialiasing, number of monitors driven. And I am sure there are plenty of people running 64-bit OSes and games with video cards on less than 1GB VRAM.

Take my vote with a pinch of salt, I'm voting for the XFX 4850 XXX 512MB because I chose that for my system as well. (the build, is like yours, going to be an i5 with the MSI GD65 )

The reasons were that like the Sapphire Vapor-X it has more effective aftermarket cooling, and power consumption is lower than the 4870 and GTX260 cards I was considering, certainly not the same motivations as yours. Besides, I use a 20" monitor. If you have a bigger screen or more than one monitor then yes, getting more VRAM is more useful than an overclocked card. And finally, Hexus's review gives it a pretty good rating (I recalculated the bang4buck scores based on current prices and it's ~2.8, way better than at the time of review and beating down the cards it was compared with, if you're wondering, I calculated current bang4buck scores for those cards too).

[ArCElM]

Mate its such a shame to cripple your i5 with that card, can you not stretch to a 4870 ?

You can get them for about £100 if you shop around.

[marshalex]

Mate its such a shame to cripple your i5 with that card, can you not stretch to a 4870 ?

You can get them for about £100 if you shop around.

personally i would but unfortunately i'm doing it for my brother and he's on a tight budget. doesn't need it for a while anyway and with the new cards being release hopefully the prices will drop further, or the memory/cpu etc prices will drop in the next few weeks

[Pob255]

I thought the amount of frame buffer memory needed was just determined by the number and size of frames to buffer, i.e. resolutions used in games, antialiasing, number of monitors driven. And I am sure there are plenty of people running 64-bit OSes and games with video cards on less than 1GB VRAM.

Take my vote with a pinch of salt, I'm voting for the XFX 4850 XXX 512MB because I chose that for my system as well. (the build, is like yours, going to be an i5 with the MSI GD65 )

The reasons were that like the Sapphire Vapor-X it has more effective aftermarket cooling, and power consumption is lower than the 4870 and GTX260 cards I was considering, certainly not the same motivations as yours. Besides, I use a 20" monitor. If you have a bigger screen or more than one monitor then yes, getting more VRAM is more useful than an overclocked card. And finally, Hexus's review gives it a pretty good rating (I recalculated the bang4buck scores based on current prices and it's ~2.8, way better than at the time of review and beating down the cards it was compared with, if you're wondering, I calculated current bang4buck scores for those cards too).

While it's ture that currently you really don't need more than 512mb of memory on a video card for 22" resolutions or less and some 1gb cards are only a little more cost there is a down side.
A 32bit OS is restricted by the amount of memory it can address to a max of 4gb, that's all memory not just main system memory, so if you put in 2x 1gb graphics cards the os is going to be restricted to only 2gb left for all other system devices and system memory, so you'd only be able to use about 1.5gb of system memory.
You really do need a 64bit OS if you plan on useing 2x 1gb cards.

While the xfx 4850 is a custom cooler and better than the original stock cooler, it's nowhere near as good as the Vapor-X heatsink.
If you remove the fan shroud on the 4850 xfx all that is under it is a large aluminium heatsink that the blower pushes air through, no copper base, not even a single heat pipe.

The Vapor-X cooler is based on a large flat copper vapor chamber feeding a large aluminium heat sink on top cooled by an 80mm fan.
The one thing I don't like about this card is it's heatsink, basically the same as the short stock intel cpu cooler as found on the pentium dual cores.
The issue I have with them is the way they clog with a mat of dust ontop ot them that blocks off the air flow.
The shroud around the heatsink & fan should help to reduce this thoe.

[fiish]

While the xfx 4850 is a custom cooler and better than the original stock cooler, it's nowhere near as good as the Vapor-X heatsink.
If you remove the fan shroud on the 4850 xfx all that is under it is a large aluminium heatsink that the blower pushes air through, no copper base, not even a single heat pipe.

The Vapor-X cooler is based on a large flat copper vapor chamber feeding a large aluminium heat sink on top cooled by an 80mm fan.
The one thing I don't like about this card is it's heatsink, basically the same as the short stock intel cpu cooler as found on the pentium dual cores.
The issue I have with them is the way they clog with a mat of dust ontop ot them that blocks off the air flow.
The shroud around the heatsink & fan should help to reduce this thoe.

I agree with you that the XFX's simpler cooler doesn't look like it would do as well as the Vapor-X. I also thought initially that the Vapor-X would be a better choice.

However, Hexus.net's review of the Vapor-X card made comparisons between it and the XFX, and the thermal numbers for both cards are very similar (the XFX is hotter when idle and cooler under load). Add in the fact that the XFX is slightly quicker due to its higher clock frequencies, and it being £10 cheaper, and the numbers appear to favour the XFX. (link to review)

If the Sapphire Vapor-X were priced the same as the XFX, then I'd toss a coin between the two really.

[Domestic_Ginger]

the vapox-x was £80 a fortnight ago.

Annoying eh?

[marshalex]

yeah very annoying as i do like the look of the sapphire, but it appears not to be as good as the xfx in the reviews. personally i'd probably get a gtx 260 but there might be issues getting it in the case i've been looking at getting.