GPU replacement - recommendations

hi all,

I built a new system in Dec 2008 and had loads of problems, the latest being a faulty Sapphire HD4850 (artifacts + BSOD), never OC'ed. I decided to return it to retailer (pixmania, wish me luck - will never buy from them again). I believe it will take a while for the replacement to arrive, if it does. I want to buy another GPU as I need to use my VM lab for studies.

WHat do you guys recommend? I've always used ATI, but loads of issues with their catalyst drivers recently.

GTS250 - another HD4850 (I am scared of catalyst drivers) - 9800GT

I know that ati is about to release 58XX series but I don't want to wait to long to buy another card. Ideally I don't want to spend much, even tough I will sell my replacement HD4850 if I receive it.

System:
DFI DK P45-T2RS Plus
8Gb RAM
3HDD
PSU Corsair 520W Modular

Comments are much appreciated.

Cheers, pardal51

anyone????

260GTX rocks for the price...

Well you could get another 4850 as they are very cheap atm (£70-80) then when you get a replacement 4850 from pixmania you can crossfire them ;)

gts250 again simular price and performance

Although i got an ATI my self recently i will most likely be going with Nvidia in future as the catalyst drivers are also being a pain for me.....

Although I'm having endless issues with the nvidia drivers and fallout3 (although only fallout3 is effected)

Changed from nVidia to ATI as my last 3 green cards failed, i bought a 4850 over 6 months ago and its worked flawlessly.

If you want good vfm, i would go for 4850/70 or 260.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Pob255

Well you could get another 4850 as they are very cheap atm (£70-80) then when you get a replacement 4850 from pixmania you can crossfire them ;)

gts250 again simular price and performance

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I was thinking about this but still don't know whether it has been bad luck or in fact catalyst drivers are dodgy. If I get another HD4850 does it need to be same vendor (sapphire)? Can it be 1Gb??? Mine is Sapphire 512Mb

I am also consideiring getting a cheap £20 odd temp. replacement till I get my card back.

Does anyone know any bargain atm????

Doesn't need to be same vendor or same memory or same clocks (or even same card! A 4850 will crossfire with a 4830 or 4870, although your results may be unpredicatble ;) ). But if you get a 1GB then crossfire it you'll only use 512MB on each card, and if you get an OCed one then crossfire it they'll both run at the lowest clocks, so it's probably best just to get another 512MB 4850. Vendor doesn't matter though.

I had a 4870 a while ago and it was a pain in the neck, kept crashing on non demanding things such as google earth, and i tried everything you could think off, driver cleaners, OS reinstalls everything

Then in the end i sent it back to the shop and it killed there test bed, so i decided i wasn't gonna go with ati any more, im sure there not all so dodgy but one bad experience was enough to turn me to the green side :D

So in my opinion i would get a 260 or something along those lines, i have the BFG 260 Maxcore OC and its a dream, everything i throw at it just runs smooth as hell, with two exceptions, cant play Crysis or GTA IV on full everything, but who can without multi GPU set-ups :P

scaryjim: thanks for your post. I have been browsing some sites to understand about CF and indeed info you provided is spot on.

{S.G}Monkey: my last 3 cards were ATI and always loved it. But the latest catalyst drivers do not seem be reliable. I think I may go to NVidia and flog my HD4850 when(if) comes back from Pixmania. I am however not willing to spend loads on a GTX260. I may get a GTS250 instead.

I mainly use my PC for VM lab. Games: Tiger Woods, CoD, Medal of Honour and will install Flight Simulator. Do you guys think that a GTS250 is enough????

cheers, pardal51

I use Toms hardware guide.

If your 4850 was okay then get something at the same level or higher dependent on your funds (the GTS250 is on par). The GTS250 is not a proper 200 series Nvidia card so its a bit of a con in some ways as it is only a rebadged 9800gtx+.

The 4850 crossfire is probably the way to go though if you can face it! If it was my choice I would hold on and try to pickup one up second hand for about £50. I do not think the retail price will drop only because there is nothing else to fill that bracket at the moment.

I thin kin crossfire your PCIe ports will only run at x8 speed; They are not going to get saturated? (someone help me out).

As Domestic Ginger said, although I take Tom's stuff with a BIG pinch of salt, esp as they have the bad habbit of just droping the resaults into the data base reguardless to the rest of the hardware they used in the test.

the gts250 is based on the 9800gtx+ (seem to remember there's a couple of minor tweeks, like finally running hd audio through the card)
In general the 9800gtx/9800gtx+/gts250 are all roughtly the same and perform around the 4850
For under £100 It's a decent choise if you want to go nvidia

As to pci-e saturation, not a problem, you have to look at paired dual gpu cards before saturation starts showing up.
However you may get slight performance hits, it depends a lot on the motherboard & chipset.

you can get a 2nd 4850 for under £80 atm, I doubt the prices will get any lower and may start to go up again

GTX 260 or 5850, depending on your budget.

With 2 4950s running on PCI-E 2.0 with an 8x (electrical) configuration, as is the case with a P45 board, the PCI-E will start to be a bottleneck at 1920 x 1200.

I will try to dig out some links to tests that have been done on crossfire configurations later today.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by tonpal

With 2 4950s running on PCI-E 2.0 with an 8x (electrical) configuration, as is the case with a P45 board, the PCI-E will start to be a bottleneck at 1920 x 1200.

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No it won't.