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Thread: After a video card to make me go WOW!!

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    After a video card to make me go WOW!!

    Guys after your expert advice please as I don't want to buy the wrong component for my new system!

    I'm being a bit precious and anxious about this upgrade as this will be the first total system upgrade for me in nearly 10 years and I've been runing an old P4 3.4Ghz AGP system for that time so to me this upgrade is long overdue.

    The new system I'm building is based around the new Sandy Bridge i5 2500k CPU and 8GB of RAM and it's really important to me to get that 'WOW' factor when comparing my new system build with my old one when it comes to desktop performance and firing up games like Need For Speed or Black Op's etc - neither of which were at all playable on my P4 3.4 with an AGP ATI Radeon 3850

    What I'm struggling with is being able to chose a video card for around/under £200 that will let me play games on my 24" monitor at a good resolution (the native res is 1920x1200) but appreciate that this res may have to be lowered to achieve better fps etc.

    After researching some ATI cards I'm confused by how the latest 6800/6900 series can be slower than some cards in the older 5800 series and at the same time don't want to buy an older ( even though it may be faster) card as I want my new sytem to have new components with newer technology as I hope that it will be still usable in a couple of years for the occassional game playing. Then there's the new NVIDIA GTX 560ti on the horizon although I have no idea if this is going to be £200+

    Can anyone offer some advice on what the best single card would be as I have no interest in crossfire/SLI or overclocking - I just want a system that can handle the latestst games at a fairly good resolution and would prefer spending more on the GPU if it means getting longer gaming capability out of it and not having to replace it in the next few years etc.

    Huge thanks for taking the time to read my enquiry and look forward to hearing your views.

    Cheers

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    Pre-Cambrian nibbler's Avatar
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    Re: After a video card to make me go WOW!!

    Wait a couple of days for the GTX560 first of all - Either that or the 6950 will suit your needs perfectly I reckon. As for desktop performance look no further than an SSD. 60gb will do for windows + apps, or 120gb should be good for a handful of games, windows and apps. I've got a 120gb drive (111 gb formatted) and I store 8 or so games that I play frequently on it, along with windows + apps and I have 30gb free at the moment
    The trick is to set up main program files on another drive, and to not waste space on it with stuff like music...
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    Re: After a video card to make me go WOW!!

    Thanks for the reply Nibbler

    I'm interested in these SSD drives, especially using one as your boot drive and keeping your apps on etc.

    I've always used 3 internal HDD's in my systems, one for the OS, one for Games and one for the many thousand of MP3's I hhave so want to replicate that in my new build too.

    I'm just disappointed at the high cost of the SSD's and don't think that say a 64GB will be sufficient for Windows 7 and my Apps. The other thing of concern is I've always used my C:\ drive as being my default download location and have read something to advises this is not a good idea due to how SSD's work?

    I'm going to go for the 6950 unless the GTX560 betters it in terms of price and performance - there should be some reviews coming out this week surely??

    Any other advice on offer please guys?

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    Re: After a video card to make me go WOW!!

    Well as nibbler has said, even if the gts560 doesn't end up as the card for you there should be some price drops/old stock sales on other cards

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    Re: After a video card to make me go WOW!!

    I just changed the download directory to my F:/ drive, not hard to do. You'd be surprised how much mileage you get from a 64gb drive, but a kingston 128gb is £150 and that's a good value drive for the perfromance you get ie identical to us mere mortals until you start transferring millions of files 24/7.
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    Re: After a video card to make me go WOW!!

    Not sure about WOW but the older fermi chips get hot enough to make you go OW!

    I think everythin sensible has been said.

  8. #7
    sp3n
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    Re: After a video card to make me go WOW!!

    oops sorry, wrong thread!
    Last edited by sp3n; 24-01-2011 at 10:58 AM.

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    ALT0153™ Rob_B's Avatar
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    Re: After a video card to make me go WOW!!

    To be fair almost anything will make you go 'WOW' coming from your old system

    Are you set on your other components then?

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    Re: After a video card to make me go WOW!!

    Also if you buy the right 6950 you can hack it to a 6970

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    Re: After a video card to make me go WOW!!

    Nibbler - what brand SSD drive can you recommend please?

    I've only read a little about them and seem to recall that there's a difference between the ones made by Corsair and others like OCZ - different technology called 'sand force' or something?

    Which is best and why?

    Also what's the problem with constantly moving or uncompressing data on to these drives, I can't seem to find an explantion for this!

    Cheers
    Last edited by ]EGG[; 24-01-2011 at 11:14 AM.

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    Re: After a video card to make me go WOW!!

    Quote Originally Posted by Rob_B View Post
    To be fair almost anything will make you go 'WOW' coming from your old system

    Are you set on your other components then?
    Hi Rob - I'm going for this setup, what do you think?

    Intel Sandy Bridge i5 2500K CPU with an Akasa Venom CPU cooler
    ASUS P8P67 Deluxe Motherboard
    Corsair HX 650W PSU
    Corsair XMS3 Memory
    1 x SSD (Yet to determine brand and size...recommendations please?)
    2 x Western Digital 1TB Black Caviar HDD's
    LG Blu-Ray Writer
    Cooler Master HAF X Case


    And yeah I'm really hopng to be able to go 'WOW' after coming from an old Pentium 4 AGP based system after 10 years

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    Re: After a video card to make me go WOW!!

    Quote Originally Posted by jimborae View Post
    Also if you buy the right 6950 you can hack it to a 6970
    Hi Jim - do you know what is the 'right' 6950 card to let you flash it to a 6970? Is there one brand and model that's proven to let you do this successfully?

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    Re: After a video card to make me go WOW!!

    Some people seem to have luck with this 6950
    http://www.ebuyer.com/product/250399#reviews

    But I doubt anyone can garentee it really. Its generally the first batches that has more success, but the good news here is that these cards have dual BIOS so you will wont brick your card.

    OCZ Vertex 2 seem to be one of the SSD to get at the moment I think, good read and write using pretty much all the SATA II bandwidth. But OCZ Vertex 3 and Intel's new SSD should be out some time this year and will be SATA III.

    Eitherway you will be wow'd I am sure, come back and post a picture of you expression

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    Re: After a video card to make me go WOW!!

    Thanks eyezpy - I will post a picture of my expression if the new system makes me a happy man

    Not sure now on whether I'd be better off getting one of the much cheaper Western Digital Caviar Blacks or a Samsung SpinPoint F3 HDD's to use as a boot drive to tide me over for a few months and then bag a SATA III SSD to make use of the SATA III port on my new Asus P8P67 motherboard when they finally come out.

    Why is upgrading never an straightforward choice eh!

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    Re: After a video card to make me go WOW!!

    Quote Originally Posted by ]EGG[ View Post
    Hi Jim - do you know what is the 'right' 6950 card to let you flash it to a 6970? Is there one brand and model that's proven to let you do this successfully?
    Hi Egg, as eyezspy said no one proven card but the Powercolor one he linked to has a good success rate but the XFX brand has a better one. If you go to the end of this article that tells you how to do it they have a chart of success/failure rates which should help if you want to go down this route.

    http://www.techpowerup.com/articles/...ng/vidcard/159

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    Re: After a video card to make me go WOW!!

    Cheers for that Jim - going to go have a looksie now

    Be nice to find a card that's as quiet as possible too - now that would be a bonus.

    Update: Well after reading that this is now on my shortlist especially after reading elsewhere on here about not getting your hopes up too much on the Nvidia GTX 560ti:

    http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-x...vi-hdmi-2x-mdp
    Last edited by ]EGG[; 24-01-2011 at 02:41 PM.

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