Looking to replace my old x800gto

[Guest]

Greetings from Turkey!

I am thinking to buy a new graphic card at the moment, and wanted to ask for advices. I have 2 cards in my mind, and lots of questions. The cards are :
- Sapphire HD4850 Vapor-X GDDR3 1GB 256Bit
- Sapphire HD4670 1GB 128BIT GDDR3

I was a gamer freak since 1997, and because of real life stuffs, could not play lots of games since 2006. And now i have some time off to waste. The system i have at the moment is :

- Amd Athlon 64 x2 5200+ 2.71 Ghz at 7.4 performance rate <- Dont quite know what does that mean, but systemrequirementslab.com says it so.
- Sapphire Radeon x800gto
- Feel Hurricane II 550 watt - 24 AMP at +12V
- Asus M2N-X Plus
- Samsung SP2004C SCSI
- Samsung Synmaster 750s - Native 1024x768 @ 85Hz
- 2 GB Kingston DDR2

Interestingly, at least for me, i was able to play Company of Heroes - Tales of Valor and Red Alert 3 at High Settings without any lag. But some days ago, my friend brought Call of Duty 5, Fallout 3 and Empire Total War while he came for lan party. And they did not work. Then i decided to buy a new graphic card. But for a new card i dont want to spend so much either on a soon to be very old PC, i just want to at least play these and other new games for another 1-2 years with satisfactionary details.

I really liked HD4850, but given the tax rates and turkish money currency etc. things, the price between the cards are almost doubled and expensive compared to foreign countries.. While HD4850 is 237 bucks H4670 is 145 bucks. Now the questions are :
- Will HD4850 give enough performance difference for that much price difference. Shortly will it worth it?
- Will my PSU and Mothercard are able to carry HD4850 ?
- Would HD4850 be an overkill for 1024x768 and/or my CPU and/or my motherboard which has 2 PCI x1 and 1 PCI x16 1.0.
- Will i be able to play games at high details ?
- Which one should i buy ?
- Last but not least, do you have any advices on different graphic cards?

It was quite a long post, i hope you made it to here. Any advice and help would be really appreciated. Thanks in advance.

 

[magicbullet]

first i have to say got with 4670
you will notice a bit of difference in performance, but if you r only using this for 1024, it is nothing. plus, if you just want to play the game, not the eye candy stuff, then it will work fine.
PSU should have no problem.
PCI should not affect the performance either
4850 will do some high details, but it's not worth that price.

 

[1haplo]

At 1024x768 the HD4670 will run about everything look here for benchmarks http://hwt.dk/literaturedetails.aspx?TeaserID=9403

If you are planning on a display upgrade in the near future then get the HD4850.

The 550W PSU is fine and it will work in your MB.

 

[Guest]

Thank you for the fast answer. I am type of guy who still plays Starcraft, Red Alert, Age of Empires 2, Battlefield 1942 in lan parties, or Fallout 1&2, Baldurs Gate 1&2, Diablo, Medieval 2 Total War etc. again and again in my free times. Other than those, i just install&finish&uninstall the games. So graphics are not so much of an issue, but the thing is, if i am going to pay for a new card, i would at least like to play games like Fallout 3, Crysis, Bioshock, Far Cry 2 etc. in High Details 1024x768 without any lag. And same for games in forthcoming 1-2 years.

Do you think 4670 would be able to handle my taste ?

 

[Guest]

Last post was to magicbullet.

@ 1haplo

Thank you for the answer. I have been looking to reviews and charts in the past 2 days. 4670 was handling those games quite well. But the thing which bugs my mind is, in the charts, 4670 is always at behind compared to other new cards, and being behind is not so a big deal for a card that is much cheap, but the difference between 4670 and other low par cards are huge, sometimes medium par cards doubles the frame rate of 4670. Thats why i am worried if 4670 cant handle high settings for game that will be released incoming 2 years.

I wont change my display either. What i have in my mind is, i will buy a card for this system that can handle high details for 2 years then i will change my system completely. If 4670 can handle that, its superb cool and it would be stupid thing to buy 4850, since i will change the system in 2 years. But if 4670 would give me itches after 1 year, i better buy 4850.

I hope i could make you understand what bugs me with my non-native bad language.

 

[megamanx00]

The 4850 is certainly worth the extra money. Of course if you're budget is really tight then just go with the 4670 as it should be a pretty good upgrade for you. You may also want to look into overclocking your CPU a bit for some more performance. 3.0GHz is feasible even with the stock cooler.