what to choose?

[Boon72]

santa brought me some gifts and also some pennys so ive bought a new bluray/hd dvd drive and COD5 is in the post, far cry2 is on the verge of being ordered i think.

my dylema is my ATI HD3870 needs to be updated .
ive been looking at the following cards.

ATI HD4850
ATI HD4870
Nvidia 9800GTX+
Nvidia GTX 260

obivuosly there is a massive difference in both performance and price, as usual my head says it would be ok to spend £120 and silly to spend £220 on something i dont really use much these days (ive got a Mac now for email n internet)

looking at the reviews the 4850 & 9800 seem close with neither out classing the other completely (both camps winning in different areas) and a simular thing for the 4870 & 260.
if i buy a card i'd like to play the games mentioned plus future releases (older ones too crysis, woc etc)on my 1680*1050 lcd, but what i dont want to buy is anything else to make them work.

i currently run my PC on a Tagan 480w silent PSU, according to psu calcs my current system draws 378w (15% diode aging) if i add each card it changes to the following.

4850 = 408w
4870 = 429w
9800 = 407w
260 = 435w

as you can see its all under the 480w but is it enough?, ive seen people in forums running these cards on 500w - 520w but will mine?

so there you have it, which card & will it work?

thanks in advance

[Pob255]

Before you take a calcs word for it, get yourself one of thoes plug power meters to get an accurate power draw. (I think your power darw is probably lower that 378w, probably closer to 300w)

If you're currently running a 3870 then you should be ok with a new card.

the 4580 vx 9800gtx+ is pritty much too close to call performance wise, the main differences are cost, size and cooling.
The 9800gtx+ tends to be a bit more expensive and is longer, however it have very good stock cooling.

Simular situation with the 260 vs 4870 (although there are two different 260's, 192cores and 216cores, 216 is newer&better)
However the cooler on the 4870 is better than the 4850 stock cooler, so it's a far closer call.
the £215 for a 260 vs £175 for a 4870 512mb make the 4870 a very good looking offer.
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512MB...VI-I-HDTV-HDCP

[Webby]

Just a fyi my system see specs to the side which matches yours reasonably well with my CPU being pushed a bit further draws <250W at full load from the wall. Your PSU will be fine for any of the cards you are thinking about.

Personally I would be looking for a decent 4870 if you can get one for <&#163;180 it is probably the best bang for buck in that price range (with the exception of crossfired 4830s/4850s but that requires a new motherboard so is not economic for you) the 4850 and 9800GTX+ while good cards are probably not enough of a boost from the 3870 to make it a worthwhile investment.

[Boon72]

my motherboard is a crossfire board, but ive never really bothered about doin that.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Have you tried running your new games on the HD3870 before you buy a new graphics card first??

[Boon72]

nope as they aint arrived yet

[Webby]

Boon your motherboard maybe a crossfire one but only in marketing terms, you would lose so much potential performance from using the second physical 16x PCIe slot which actually runs at 2x (unless you turn of the 1x slot in which case you can have it at 4x) that it would not be worth spending the money on two cards you would get more performance from a single better card.

So were back to suggesting that either you spend &#163;175 on a 4870, &#163;210 on a GTX260 216 or wait and see if the games run acceptably on you 3870.

Personally I would wait and see you may be surprised also if you wait a bit the next generation of ATI and nVidea cards will be along and you will get more for your money. The R740 ATI's new midrange GPU should from its specs beat the 4830 in performance and maybe the 4850 as well but will likely cost ~&#163;80 available sometime in the next couple of months. The higher performing and priced cards will not be far behind I'm sure.

[Boon72]

any ideas what the impact would be of a CPU upgrade to an E8400 over my E6600?

i could do this if it will have an impact and add the lower HD4850 over the HD4870 alone

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

any ideas what the impact would be of a CPU upgrade to an E8400 over my E6600?

i could do this if it will have an impact and add the lower HD4850 over the HD4870 alone

Since your E6600 is at 3.2ghz it would be a minimal upgrade!! Perhaps an upgrade to quad core may help for some games but it would be better to put the money towards your next system overhaul.

Your HD3870 should be fine with Far Cry 2 and COD5:

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...part-ii-6.html

http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/forum...-review-7.html

http://www.guru3d.com/article/call-o...ormance-test/7

[Infinite]

no point in upgrading cpu since your is OC to 3.2 already, I have the same cpu and i have only ever had to oc once to 3.0 to play crysis =P

the best thing to do like others have said is to wait and test with your current graphics card. tbh i would think that it would be capable to play any of thoses games at atleast medium (and some setting to high). you have to consider is &#163;120 - &#163;200 worth it for extra eye candy?

[colmo]

A wait-and-see approach would be no bad thing atm - most graphics cards have actually gone up in price with the fall of Sterling. It's tough finding a card for under &#163;85 atm.

Also, ATI have their next generation of 40nm cards due for release soon, they will likely be worth the wait (and will hopefully drive prices on existing cards down again).