Which Graphics Card

[Gonk]

Morning All,

 

it seems that my XFX GeForce 8800 GTX has given up the ghost!

 

So I need some recomendations on what GFX card to buy next!

 

Any advice???

 

Cheers

 

Ross

[clarky2k3]

Depends on how much you want to spend. I have just bought a ATi Radeon HD5850, all I can say is wow!!! If you dont want to spend that much then I would go for the cheaper HD5770 or wait until the cheaper alternatives come out in the 58xx range.

[Joh619]

Bought myself the Sapphire 5850 a few weeks ago to replace my geforce 7950gt and its brilliant.

[3s-gtech]

If you're a serious gamer and have Windows 7, the ATI 5*** series, preferably 5850 and up, are your best choices, budget permitting. Otherwise look to Radeon 4870/4890 1GB, or Nvidia GTX260 216 core.

[Potato-Peeler]

Just bought a sapphire 5770 and it is class. Only 120 quid, and no faults with it at all yet.

[Mako]

ATI HD5870 user here. Two thumbs up if it's in your budget range.

 

If not, then what they said above ^

[Potato-Peeler]

Damn you, i couldn't justify the price of th 5870 Would like one though

[lew_bob]

its kinda funny, I see so many rave about the 5series from ATI yet at the same time this figure is almost doubled to those that have a nigthmere with driver support *still*

 

Royal pain in the backside that ATI have still yet to produce stable enough drivers across the board, no good if it only runs on half the game engines on the market

[Guest richard_s]

It depends on what you want to use the PC for. I have a NVIDIA GTX 260 and find it as great card for gaming and windows 7 though if you are not a gamer have a look at the NVIDIA GT 220 or the ATI 4670 which you can get for around £70

[Potato-Peeler]

Funnily enough my pc liked the ati driver, though the Nvidia one destroyed it :S And i would personally go ATI as their cards are cheaper, and for the last year or so have appeared to beat the Nvidia ones? Or so i like to think

[Mako]

Funnily enough my pc liked the ati driver, though the Nvidia one destroyed it :S And i would personally go ATI as their cards are cheaper, and for the last year or so have appeared to beat the Nvidia ones? Or so i like to think

 

Agree. My old motherboard was SLI compatible, and I had (which is now collecting dust in my cupboard) an Nvidia 9800 GTX+, however Nvidia would constantly tell me that my driver version was 0.0.0.0 and I needed to update, no matter how many times I installed the latest drivers. It took the drivers, however, and things worked for the most part, but it never updated or registered that it was updated properly.

 

My new ATI card is a beast and operates without fault, although idle temperatures are high ~ 50 degrees but even under load it rarely exceeds 60. I'll take the stock casing and heatsink off and replace it, when I get around to it.

[lew_bob]

I didnt mean in windows chaps I meant drivers being drivers within game engines. Being on the support end of game dev we seem to regulary be contacting ATI noting that another game engine isnt rendering correctly with drivers x.xxx etc etc. Polygons all over the place, or random tearing, alpha tranparency issues etc.

 

But yes even with the problems the ati cards are good and will be my next purchese, just wish they didnt have the driver history

[synaesthesia]

ATI's drivers are way beyond nVidia's in terms of stability - I'm sure they swapped codemonkies in the last year or so. Nvidia's are just shoddy, and not many people would want to trust a company who can no longer innovate. All of their current products are existing kit with a different name.

 

Aria had 5770 for £100 notes inc vat and delivery last week, will be worth checking up on that. Still a damned good card and will still be much quicker than the 8800GTX. Bought one as I'm no longer really a serious gamer, and I'm surprised that I can throw in 24x anti aliasing, full details and suffer no slowdown whatsoever.

 

Here's hoping Femri is something worth a look - and more importantly unlike the 7800/7900/8800 and all the renames of them since don't suffer the shoddy quality problems that's making them drop like flies.

[3s-gtech]

I've had ATI now for three generations of cards - playing a large variety of games, and I have never seen these oft bemoaned driver stability problems, across many generations of drivers. My experience of both competing companies cards is good, so IMO just get the one which suits your budget and has the features you want. My current 4850 1GB was £70, it's been a proper bargain for that.

[Michael]

Between ATI and Nvidia, I would recommend Nvidia cards. I don't think ATI are bad, I just feel Nvidia are better and I've seen/used enough cards. Just remember to get the quantity of memory vs memory speed compromise right

[ICT_GUY]

My 8800GT still plays all my games at 1920 x 1080 at very quick frame rates. Pointless buying anything faster at the moment which makes me very sad.

[Michael]

My 8800GT still plays all my games at 1920 x 1080 at very quick frame rates. Pointless buying anything faster at the moment which makes me very sad.

 

You're not still playing Solitaire are you? A decent processor can make all the difference too, in addition to a decent graphics setup.

[3s-gtech]

All down to the games played and the screen resolution. I'm still using a 2.1GHz Athlon X2, but it keeps up! Ideally, a balanced system would have an i5/i7/Phenom II with 4GB RAM to keep up with the newest cards.