Upgrade for 4670

[Random_guy]

I'm looking to upgrade my system to a point where I can game on it for another couple of years before I do a complete rebuild. I'm going to be upgrading to a 22" monitor, and want a card that will do it justice until I rebuild. I'm also going to be upgrading my PSU to something suitable for whatever card I get, but I'm not intending to upgrade my CPU.

My budget for the card is about £150-175, and I'm leaning towards a GTX275, as I've been playing Mirrors edge + Batman AA and would love to play them w/ Physx. But I'm worried that my CPU might bottleneck the card (E6750 @ 3.2GHz).

All suggestions welcome

[Pob255]

4870 & 4890 can be bought very cheap atm

[Random_guy]

Thanks for the reply. I looked into the 4890, but I'm willing to pay the extra to get the Physx effects in Batman AA and Mirrors edge.

I suppose my two biggest questions are 1) Will my CPU cause a significant bottleneck @ 1680x1050, and
2) Is a gtx 275 overkill at this res, should I save the money and be looking at something like the gtx 260 instead?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

TBH, I would get an HD5850 if you can get one for around £200. It should have decent gaming performance and relatively low power consumption.

[Zhaoman]

If you're intent on PhysX then I'd say get the 260 instead.

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/896MB...-DL-DVI-I-HDTV

Just over £100 and should handle your games no problem. No point forking out £150+ on a 275 imo. But the 4870/4890 and 5850 should be considered nonetheless as they offer better value for money...

And your CPU at 3.2Ghz is definitely not a bottleneck. Just make sure you set the FSB to the highest overclock to give it all the bandwidth it craves

[Biscuit]

Im with Cat, its a bad time to be buying graphics cards right now i would wait a month or two and get a 5850 when the prices settle down a bit.

As said your CPU will not be a bottleneck at those kind of clock speeds.

[Random_guy]

Ok, I may wait for some reviews of the 5850 to surface to make a decision, although I would quite like to be able to use physx (otherwise I'd definately be looking at another ATI, my 4670 has been great).

There were a couple of reasons why I had thought that the 275 might be worth the extra cash, the first being that I thought it might buy me a little more time before upgrading.

The second was that I know physx causes a slow-down anyway, so thought it might give me more head room, but if you don't think the 275 will make much of a difference at 1680x1050 then I will save the money and go with the 260 (if I go nvidia).

Thanks for the help

[Biscuit]

I think making a decision based on barely supported technology is a bit unwise. It might make a slight difference in one or two games but its not worth making a decision over.

[Random_guy]

Hmmm, you make a good point. Time to go back and have another look at the benchmarks...

[Duel]

GTX 260 or 5850, depending on your budget.

[Zhaoman]

the 275 costs 50% more than the 260 but doesn't provide anywhere near 50% more performance so since the 260 will play your games at 1680x1050 i'd go with the 260. likewise, the 4870 is cheaper still and yet will provide more or less the same performance. The 5850 will make ur decision more interesting too.

both the 4870 and 260 should be sufficient for your needs. there are some 4890 bargains to be had too. old 4850s/4870s should be easy to snap up for Crossfire and they're an absolute steal at current prices. Just a few thoughts for u to consider

[Random_guy]

Thanks for all the replies, they've certainly given me some things to think about. The acid test for me I think is going to be getting something that will last me 18 months - 2 years before there is a noticible performance hit in new games.

At the moment I'm playing catch-up in terms of games, having only recently started gaming on my PC again (So far have gotten through most of the MYST series, Portal, Mirrors Edge, and most of the way through Bioshock, with a list of games I want to play as long as your arm and growing all the time ).

I think I will wait to see some concrete numbers for the 5850 in terms of performance, and then decide whether it looks worth it over the GTX 260 for the increase in price. Budget isn't really an issue, but equally there is no point in throwing it away, so I agree that the 275 isn't good value atm.

I've had a good look around at benchmarks again, and the 4870 seems to offer similar performance to the 260 at a similar price. Likewise the 4890 seems to offer approximately the same as the 275 at a not too much lower price point, so I think it will be between the 260 (as an extra £5-£10 over the 4870 for physx, all else being equal, seems fair to me) or the 5850 if I feel the performance jump justifies the price difference.

Now if only a review site could get their hands on a 5850....

[Biscuit]

Well over at techpowerup they simulated the 5850 by...

... taking our HD 5870, reducing the clock speeds and disabling two SIMDs, which results in exactly the same performance as HD 5850.

Full review is here

Performance on the whole is better than the 285 and is £20-30 less

[marshalex]

novatech have a powercolour OC 4870 512mb for 91.99 delivered atm. received mine today for a build i'm doing and seems pretty good value for money, obviously you dont get the toys that nvidia give such as physx and cuda but for the price I dont think u can go wrong (probably get 2 and crossfire for the price of a 5850/GTX 285)

[Random_guy]

Well, with the first proper reviews of the 5850 now appearing, it looks a damn hard card to beat for the price, but is it overkill @ 1680x1050?

Either way, I've been offered a great deal on a 3 month old gtx 275 (a mate is doing a full upgrade: i7, SSD, 5870, blu-ray, the works) and has sold it to me for £100, so at that price I really couldn't turn it down (hasn't even been overclocked).

Thanks for all the help and advice!

[ajones]

Are you considering running (for example) an ATi primary gfx card and keep the nVidia card in the x4 slot with PhysX enabled? It would seem to me that then you'd get the best of both worlds.