Advice on a graphics card?

[BGA]

Hi. I recently bought a AMD Athlon X2 7750 Kuma with a gigabyte motherboard that has a ATI HD 3200 chipset on board. I figured that I could still play my old games because this chart by Tom's says that my old Radeon 9800 Pro was approximately the same performance as the HD 3200. Well that certainly isn't true. My old games (Modern Warfare, for example) run choppy as hell and I can't really game.

So I'm asking advice for a graphics card. Specifically, I want one that is good enough to play current games but not one that is so powerful that my 7750 Kuma won't push it to its full potential. I'd like to keep it between $50 and $100, but could go a bit more if it makes sense to do so. I have no preference between nVidia and ATI.




Spec:
AMD Athlon X2 7750 Kuma
Gigabyte 780g mobo
OCZ Stealth 600W PSU
17" Dell monitor

Also, can anyone tell me why there is such a big difference in number of stream processors? Some in the same price range will have 64 stream processors and others will have 320 or 640.


Thanks for any input.

[Hicks12]

Perhaps the 4770 is the best option, http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814131155

[llololloy]

re: stream processors, it's just that nvidia and ati/amd cards work differently, don't compare to each other.
within each company though, more generally equals better, especially with current generation cards.
So if you see for example an nvidia card with 112 and another with 216, get the 216.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The ATI graphics cards have 5 way superscalar stream processors. Hence a 320 stream processor ATI card is comparable to a 64 sream processor Nvidia card.

Some more details:

http://nostasolutions.com/2008/11/03...dia-vs-amdati/

TBH,just look at the performance reviews for the card as this is a better indication of how good a card is!

[pharm]

AMD HD4670 or 4770 depending on budget.

The former is lower power, the latter is a seriously nice card looking at the reviews. HD4670 about equal to a 3870 in performance IIRC.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I would say that the HD4670 is in between the HD3850 and HD3870 GDDR4 without AA as the latter pulls ahead at higher resolution settings as it has more memory bandwdith. In most games the HD3870 GDDR4 is ahead of the 9600GT without AA.With AA though the HD3870 and the HD4670 are probably around the same as the HD3*** series had a huge performance drop with AA enabled like the previous HD2*** series.

You can get the HD4850 for under $100 after rebate which is faster than the HD4770 although it runs hotter and consumes more power at peak:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ue&Order=PRICE

The HD4770 needs to be overclocked to reach the stock performance of the HD4850 as the latter has more stream processors.

Also the HD4830(which is around 10% slower than the HD4770 and consumes more power at peak) can be had for under $80 after rebate:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...ue&Order=PRICE

Like the HD4770 this is a good overclocker generally.

[CooperXS]

Another vote for HD4770
Nothing comes close to it for the price.

[Main]

Just go for the 4770, it's the newest (which will mean longest period of driver support in the future) part in the price range and defeats everything else in that range, new or old.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I wish people realised that the HD4850 is a 800 stream processor design whereas the HD4830 and HD4770 have 640 stream processors. The HD4850 simply has more shader power than either the HD4830 and HD4770. The HD4770 is an excellent card but TBH either it needs to be priced at least 10% under the HD4850 in price or have a superclocked card for the same price. In shader heavy games like Crysis the HD4850 pulls ahead of the HD4770.

The HD4770 is meant to be the faster replacement for the HD4830 and is meant to compete with the 9800GT.

The HD4850 is the competitor to the more expensive GTS250 512mb!

Here are some reviews comparing the cards:

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/gra...d-4770-512mb/5

http://www.guru3d.com/article/ati-ra...-4770-review/9


About driver support - the HD4850 has the same 800 stream processor RV770 core in the HD4870 card. The HD4890 is based on a tweaked RV770 core called the RV790 which is basically an RV770 core that can be clocked higher but is functionally identical.
The HD4830 is based on the cut down RV770LE core with 640 shaders whereas the HD4770 is based on the native 640 stream processor RV740 core.

They are all based on the same RV7** series architechure so all the cards will be supported for the same length of time as they are the same generation of card.

From prior experience ATI tends to discontinue driver support a generation at a time.

[Runningkid]

+1 for the 4770, although i think the prices atm are still a little too high (at least compared to what we were promised). If you dig around you might be able to find a 4830 significantly cheaper than thee 4770.