good gpu card

[burrellhead]

i have been looking around for a good graphics card and i was wondering if anyone could help me

i am looking to spend around £35~£50 if thats possible

thanks burrellhead

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This card for £52 delivered is decent for the price:

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/151454

This card does not need an additional power connector too!!

Review of another HD4650 GDDR3 card to give you an idea of its performance:

http://www.elitebastards.com/cms/ind...1&limitstart=3

[tonpal]

The Nvidia Geforce 9500 GT is priced slightly below the HD4650 however that does reflect the relative performance. If you are willing to push the top end of your budget by another £30 or so the HD4770 is worth a look.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The HD4650 GDDR3 absolutely destroys the 9500GT DDR3 in performance. The GDDR2 version of the HD4650 is much slower than the GDDR3 version.

[drisie]

Push your budget to £75 pounds and buy the ati 4770,you will not be disapointed

[Mnia786]

Push your budget to £75 pounds and buy the ati 4770,you will not be disapointed

I agree. It can handle most games at top settings and high res' comfortably.
Apart from the 4850, it beats most other top medium ended cards:
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=18202&page=8

This in XF is a very powerful solution too:
http://www.hexus.net/content/item.ph...key=1242221609

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Scan have the HD4850 for around £80 on Today Only:

http://www.scan.co.uk/

[watforddude]

Looking at those reviews and benchmarks of the HD4650 i might upgrade that from my 9500GT.

but if you are looking for a cheepo card i will recommend the 9500GT

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512MB...I-I-D-Sub-HDTV

I have the 1Gb version and its played most games i have thrown at it, even crysis at high settings, obviously its not smooth but its playable in my views.

CoD2 - Max everything (DX7) its capped at 125FPS.
World In Conflict - Extra High. but AA is off, very smooth and no lag.
Cod4 - Low Settins, i dont drop below 50FPS.
Bioshock - Everything i was high i think, and it was very playable. sometimes lagged when in major battles.
Battlefield 2 - everything max everything smooth, no problems.
Battlefield 2142 - same as BF2
Counter Strike + HL2 when i ran the benchmarks between 40-70 fps on everything high.

this is the games ive played the experience i got from them on my system. hope it helps.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Looking at those reviews and benchmarks of the HD4650 i might upgrade that from my 9500GT.

but if you are looking for a cheepo card i will recommend the 9500GT

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/512MB...I-I-D-Sub-HDTV

I have the 1Gb version and its played most games i have thrown at it, even crysis at high settings, obviously its not smooth but its playable in my views.

CoD2 - Max everything (DX7) its capped at 125FPS.
World In Conflict - Extra High. but AA is off, very smooth and no lag.
Cod4 - Low Settins, i dont drop below 50FPS.
Bioshock - Everything i was high i think, and it was very playable. sometimes lagged when in major battles.
Battlefield 2 - everything max everything smooth, no problems.
Battlefield 2142 - same as BF2
Counter Strike + HL2 when i ran the benchmarks between 40-70 fps on everything high.

this is the games ive played the experience i got from them on my system. hope it helps.

I would look at a cheap HD4670 for around £60 as it has a good performance increase over the HD4650 GDDR3.

The HD4770 also has impressive performance considering its peak power consumption too! However it does cost around £20 more than an HD4670 and needs an additional power connector.

[Jonnster]

4670 is definitely the best choice in that budget. The 4770 is worth the little extra in my opinion though.

If you are planning on using Linux at all though I would stick with nVidia for now. The ATI drivers in Linux are still not mature enough in my opinion.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The HD4*** does have much better support under Linux though.

This is what Phoronix says:

"For those concerned about open-source support, AMD has released R700 3D register documentation and R700 3D code to begin supporting the Radeon HD 4000 family with open-source OpenGL acceleration on Linux. Coming as part of this work is also 2D EXA acceleration and X-Video support. The xf86-video-ati and xf86-video-radeonhd drivers have already had mode-setting support for the RV730 GPUs for quite a while already. The R700 3D support should evolve throughout this year and get really interesting once Gallium3D starts hitting Linux desktop distributions.

One unfortunate area about the R700 series support on Linux with the Catalyst driver is there still is no reliable video API that it supports for offloading decoding to the GPU. AMD has been working vigorously on XvBA, or X-Video Bitstream Acceleration, but it has yet to be released to the public. We hope, however, that the R700 XvBA support that uses the Unified Video Decoder 2 (UVD2) will be released in the Catalyst Linux driver in the near future."

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?pag...70_gddr4&num=7

[watforddude]

My friend is selling me a 8800GT for £75 is that worth it from a decent step up from a 9500GT.

[Gibbo]

My friend is selling me a 8800GT for £75 is that worth it from a decent step up from a 9500GT.

Is that not a step down?
???

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

My friend is selling me a 8800GT for £75 is that worth it from a decent step up from a 9500GT.

You can get a new 8800GT for around £70 delivered:

http://www.novatech.co.uk/novatech/s...html?XFX-88GTA

The HD4770 can be had for around £80 and is faster than the 8800GT/9800GT in almost all games and consumes less power too. The HD4830 can be had for around £70 too and is around the same speed as the 8800GT/9800GT.

There are also the HD4850 and GTS250 512mb which can be had for between £80 to £90 and both are faster than the HD4770 but consume much more power.

With your 300w PSU I would at most get an HD4670 or perhaps an HD4770.

[jim]

My friend is selling me a 8800GT for £75 is that worth it from a decent step up from a 9500GT.

It's a step up, and a rip off. You could get a 9800GT for that kind of price brand new from Scan.

Even better, you could get a 4770, which is a great card.

EDIT: I think all posts in the hardware forum need to be followed by a note saying "Probably beaten to it by Cat"

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Is that not a step down?
???

The 9500GT is basically a 65nm/55nm version of the 8600GT/8600GTS with lower power consumption.