New Video Card Advice

Hi All,

I'm not the most hardware savvy when it comes to computers, so when it's time for me to change out some components I start to fret a little. Tonight the video card on my gaming PC up and died so I'm suddenly in the market for a replacement card.

The card I had was an Nvidia GeForce 8800GT. It's been running on a 2+ year old Dell computer just fine with no issues until now. I've been able to play CoH in near max Ultra Mode settings with only slight performance hits every now and then. Since the card died and there's no on-board video, I can't boot in to run a Cohhelper or anything of the sort (posting from wife's laptop at the moment). For the Dell system, the best info I can provide at the moment is that it's running 4GB RAM with a "Q6600, 2.4, 8MB, Core Duo Kentsfield, G0" processor, at least that is what my original shipping info has from Dell about it. Additionally, I'm not 100% certain I know the wattage of the power supply. It doesn't list it on my order sheet, and when looking at the PSU inside the case I can make out only one line that says "Max Output Wattage: 750W".

So, with that in mind, I don't care about keeping with Nvidia or switching to ATI. I don't have much of a price/money limiting factor but I don't want to be spending $400+ either. Another limiting factor is that I'm impatient and want to purchase the card tomorrow from a local retailer (Best Buy or Microcenter are the closest).

I had a recommendation from a friend to go with an ATI Radeon HD 5850, but I can't find any of those available locally. Best Buy has a 5770 available in a few brands, as does Microcenter ranging from $130-$190. Microcenter also has the ATI 6850 and 6870 line. Would anyone recommend the ATI 6850 line? What recommendations would you make for Nvidia cards?

I thank you in advance for any help you can provide. If there's more info you need to make a recommendation, I would be happy to provide it to the best of my abilities.

Well it seems you have enough power available for pretty much anything, assuming you are reading that sticker right. I assume it was one the the Dell XMS gaming PCs.

The HD 5850 may be disappearing off of the shelves because the HD 6870 essentially replaces it. A little faster than the HD 5850. The HD 6850 is a little slower than the HD 5850 but much faster than the HD 5830 it's replacing in the lineup.

On the nVidia side of things we have the GTX 460. It comes in two varieties, a slower one with 768MB of memory and a faster one with 1GB of memory. The difference besides the amount of memory is the width of the memory bus (192bit Vs 256bit) and the number of raster backends, 24 Vs 32.

Performance wise it's all over the charts depending on the game and settings and how overclocked the card is, the GPU on a GTX 460 is very overclockable, I've seen factory OC as high as 20% above stock. Performance at stock clocks for the 768MB version is about 180% of an 8800GT, the 1GB version about 195%.

Compare that to 145% for an HD 5770, 200% for an HD 6850, 210% for an HD 5850 and 235% for an HD 6870. These are all averages of benchmarks across a number of games at 1920x1200 with 4xAA when available, according to the charts at TechPowerUp (I'm using the similar 9800GT as the baseline). No idea how well those numbers would match performance gains in this game.

There is also the slower GTS 450 which is slower than the HD 5770 and the GTX 470 which is about the same performance as the HD 6870, again at original stock clocks.

Father pretty well covered the cards; as a suggestion I wouldn't even consider buying a video card from Best Buy, you'll get screwed on the pricetag.

Check out www.newegg.com and look for the cards Father Xmas suggested for you; they'll have about the best prices around and they're totally reputable. Typically when I order something I have it in my hands in 2 days.

On brand names I've had good luck with Evga and Asus; don't buy Diamond Multimedia, it's one of the few brands that trip the "Danger Will Robinson" flag due to poor quality.

Heh, I just realized that I'm dating myself a bit there.

Thanks Father Xmas.

I had originally ruled out the ATI 6870 for price concerns, but looking back now it would only be $50 more for the 6870 over the 6850. Is this ATI's current top of the line model and/or one that was just recently released?

XFX has a good reputation with it's warranty, as I recall.

http://xfxforce.com/en-us/Features/D...eWarranty.aspx

The HD 5870 is faster than the HD 6870 and AMD should be releasing the HD 69xx series mid December, at least that's what the various sites say the NDA about them expires. But there are likely to be competing with and priced similar to the GTX 580 at around $500.

And there can be something that resembles a bargain at BestBuy. This GTX 460 768MB for $175 is a steal if you consider the fact that they are selling HD 5770s in the $180-200 range. NewEgg has that card for $170, $140 after rebate (and with HAWX 2).

Well, marketing.

For a while the rumors had what we have today as the HD 6850 and 6870 possibly being called the HD 6750 and 6770. But performance and price wise AMD were targeting nVidia's GTX 460 1GB and GTX 470 and at those price and performance points they thought they should have the HD 68xx designation.

Now to compete with the GTX 580 and a possible future GTX 570, AMD is going to have the HD 6970 and HD 6950 and they will replace the HD 5870.

After re-reading the info up-thread (admittedly I missed the percentage performance increase you included above Father Xmas the first time through), I think I've settled on the ATI 5770 series. It would give me around a 50% boost in performance over what I had, and what I had I was extremely happy with. At my local Microcenter, I've found a Sapphire brand 5770 model for $155. That's a couple bucks cheaper than Newegg and I should be able to get it today.

My next concern is heat. I'm using the stock cooling unit from Dell (it is an XPS model machine) and had no problems in the past with cooling. But, jumping up a few levels in cards I'm a little concerned now. Thoughts on this?

Thanks again for all of your help!

Well NewEgg is actually a little cheaper before rebate but I can understand the attraction of being able to touch it, pick it off the shelf and bring it right home to install it.