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new gpu (again!)
Well my 4870 from ebay actually arrived but i managed to kill it giving it the silent treatment with WCing (the fan was louder than a jet engine terrible!)
So now looking for a new card again, not getting a 4890 or 4870 as i thinking now i may aswell get the best i can afford now. Im using a 9600GT from a mate in the mean time.
I was looking at the hexus reviews/benchmarks and now im thinking about getting a gtx 460, they are priced quite well and in my budget (below £200). The main bonus with this is that my current motherboard is an SLI one (is a x16/x16 io believe but before it was released some said 8/8) so i could add another one down the line for a very good performance boost.
Now the tough decision is what card do i get? the 1gb or the 768mb one? I know the 1gb performs better but is it worth it for the price? Planning on getting a 24" monitor (1900x1200) end of this year so i assume the extra bandwidth would be very useful right?.
Any suggestions as to what make/model i should get? Silence and value for money is what im after (kinda hard to get both i know). If there are ones prefitted with WC blocks on them lemme know as its a route i will take if needed (i jsuit dont trust myself with installing a block again haha).
Any help is appreciated!.
edit: Been looking at sli comparisons and it seems a gtx 460 768mb evga pair can hold its own agains a pair of 1gb 460's, im pretty sure its because the evga are the SC versions so are overclocked a fair amount so would perform better but it makes me wonder if its worth paying the extra for the 1gb version.
So far ive been thinking abnout these ones: http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/768MB...DVI-D-Sub-HDMI
and http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1GB-P...I-I-HDMI-D-Sub
The latter is overclocked like mad and palit offer 2 years warranty so that should be fine, along with it being only £10 more than the cheapest 1gb card
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Re: new gpu (again!)
Gigabyte do a 3 year warranty AFAIK
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Re: new gpu (again!)
Scan list the majority as a 2year warranty, gigabyte is also 2year it would seem. Looking at reviews it seems the palit overclocked one performs very well and the cooling is pretty quiet.
This is so tempting, wish i bought it earlier so could have had tomorrow but oh well. Any reason i should get the £180 card? It seems like a good buy :P.
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Re: new gpu (again!)
I would go for the 1GB if your budget allows anyway as there is more than just an extra 256MB of RAM difference between them.
IIRC the 1GB has more ROP's as well.
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Re: new gpu (again!)
yes your right, i forgot about that... its a 256bit bus instead of a 192bit aswell as 32ROPs vs 24 (iirc). The extra spec should keep it a bit more future proofed.
Will order it tomorrow after noon to see if it happens to go on today only haha!.
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Re: new gpu (again!)
The 1GB 460 is a solid choice for a single card. However, if there is a definite intention to go for SLI it may be worth considering the 768MB version as the price difference will be multiplied, and if there is a 5 to 10% difference in performance, that is only the difference between 40 and 44fps or 50 and 55fps, at which point I would question the value for money of the pair of 1GBs.
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Re: new gpu (again!)
Definitely the 1gb if you're going 24" monitor. You'll regret it if you don't when you have to start dropping back the resolution because you're out of vram.
Gigabyte's are getting very good reviews atm: well made, overclock very well and twin fan cooling is effective and quiet. Can be had quite cheap if you look around.
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Re: new gpu (again!)
Even though you would be limited to a single card due to your motherboard you can get an HD5850 1GB for around £182 excluding delivery from Aria:
http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials/...roductId=40733
You also get Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and Alien vs Predator with the card too.
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Re: new gpu (again!)
if you can push your budget by £20 then you can get a GTX 470 from Scan
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/1280M...ores-mini-HDMI
thats amazing cheap for a card which can trade blows with a 5870 in some games :)
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Re: new gpu (again!)
Thanks for the replies guys.
Cat, i would normally jump at the chance for a 5850 but all the reviews ive seen have shown that the overclocked 460 palit card beats the 5850 at most games upto the res of 1900x1200 and having the ability to double up that performance (almost) later down the line is a good option for me i think. Also have both of them games, dont like cod and AVP was a bit of a dissapointment to a very hardcore AVP fan :(. Damn delivery with aria too!.
@ jjgreen, its £20 more than my max budget but the most important thing is that its £40 more expensive than the card im almost set on getting and provides only a few fps more (the overclocked 460 seems to close the gap a lot). I think we all know with graphics cards you can say... spend x amount more and you get better stuff and more and more and more haha, my limit is £200 and ideally cheap as possible and also power draw is a slight concern, the 470/80 use a lot more power than the 460 and the 460 is almost on par (~15w difference) with the 5850 power efficiency so id like to stick to that level.
@skull, i was also thinking about that as the expense can mount up but after thinking about it i do feel the 1gb is the better choice because i dont plan to get a second card for sli until a fair few months later down the line i.e 2011 q1 or 2, will grab it second hand or if the card did drop by alot (old generation etc etc) then id snap up a new one which shouldnt be to much more than buying a 768mb card. So for the time im using a single card i would rather have the stronger card to cope until i add in a second, if i was doing it immediatly or like within the month i would have but its a longer term :D.
@marktime, will have a look at that msi card shortly, if its cheaper then i might do but depends how much cheaper since the OC on the palit is mad haha!.
edit: Oh damn it cat why did you have to mention the 5850 :P, now i cant decide because i just realised i can sell those two games... cex buy both for a total of £18. The total cost at aria is £192 so if i sold those games it comes to £174 i think i may have to go over those benchmarks again to see.... damn haha.
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Re: new gpu (again!)
GTX 460 seems to be the best budget gfx card to buy right now,so i would reconmend getting that or if you can afford a 5850 go with that,either way its a win situation.
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Re: new gpu (again!)
Overclocked 460 vs an overclocked 5850?
keep oooing and arrring and the 6k series will be here! (I thought it was only a couple of months?)
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Re: new gpu (again!)
yeah it will be here in a couple of months and i was planning on waiting till then but since my card broke and the card im borrowing now is only for a week really as my mate needs it back soon. So i thought i might as well bite the bullet and grab a new card and then pick another up when it starts struggling.
I was looking at the overclockers review of the palit 1gb and they compared that with their overclocks (i.e past the "stock" 800/1600/4000) with an overclocked 5850/70 etc. In most cases it beats the 5850, at a very high resolution " 2500x1600 the 5850 normally wins but with every other resolution under that the 460 won (majority).
Must admit there isnt much in it, swings and roundabouts IMO but im thinking since the 460's scale a bit better than the 5850's then its probably worth going with that because my motherboard supports it. Decisions decisions haha!.
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Re: new gpu (again!)
ok guys i just got a gtx 460 and well... it was going well until i hit windows boot screen, as soon as it logs in then the display goes, i know windows is still running as you can hear the login sound and skype loading and also pushing the power button made it log off and turn off the pc.
I can get a display in safe mode, i recall a problem i had with my 9800GTX before hand where my display (22" LG) was being detected as a HD TV where its actually a monitor. To fix it i had to add a specific bit key or something to the driver.ini for it to see my monitor properly but they removed the ability to do this after a newer release of drivers awhile ago (way before fermi) so any ideas how i will solve this because well... i cant use the old drivers and i havent found anything remotely helpful on the web :(.
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Re: new gpu (again!)
How are you connected to the monitor, cable wise - HDMI/DVI etc ?
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Re: new gpu (again!)
Sorry forgot to say that :P, im using a HDMI--> DVI cable (hdmi on the monitor and the dvi port from gpu).
Ive managed to get into windows by booting in a low resolution, ive then gone to the nvidia control panel and tried many different resolutions. There are 2 sets of resolutions, HDTV and PC settings.... none of the pc ones work (except the utra low one, rest leave monitor with no signal) and the HDTV settings work but oh my days it looks so bad, the text is burning my eyes and just overall not the correct resolution :(.
Its not the monitor or the gpu its just nvidias stupid programming which is interfering with the HDMI/DVI cable (i think).... maybe its time i just bought a new 24" monitor :D.... only needed my pc for today aswell >.<.