[Solved] Help choosing a brand and card 4850, gts250, or 9800gtx

I am looking to buy two graphic cards for a build I am doing and wanted to get some suggestions. I am primarily going to be using this set up for business, outlook, excel, etc..., HD video, HD video blogging, stock trading with lots of charts, and I will have three 20" widescreen monitors.

I have been looking at the ATI 4850's, Nvidia GTS250's, and 9800GTX. Which brands of these should I consider? Would one of these cards be better than another? I would like to spend between $100-125 per card.

thx

From what I can tell the GTS250's are basically repackaged 9800+. I could be wrong however.

Here is my system that I am building. The cards are the last piece taht I need.

1. Intel Core i5 750 Lynnfield 2.66GHz LGA 1156 95W Quad-Core Processor
2. GIGABYTE GA-P55-UD4P LGA 1156 Intel P55 ATX Intel Motherboard
3. Sony CD/DVD Burner w Lightscribe
4. Western Digital Caviar Black WD1001FALS 1TB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard x 1
5. Western Digital VelociRaptor WD3000HLFS 300GB 10000 RPM SATA 3.0Gb/s 3.5" Internal Hard Drive x 2
6. LG W2043T-PF Black 20" 5ms(GTG) Widescreen LCD Monitor x 3
7. Geek Squad 1500VA UPS/Battery Back-Up System
8. G.SKILL Trident 4GB (2 x 2GB) 240-Pin DDR3 SDRAM DDR3 2000 (PC3 16000) Desktop Memory Model F3-16000CL9D-4GBTD
9. Antec TruePower New TP-750 750W Power Supply
10. Cooler Master Strom Scout Case
11. Cooler Master Hyper 212 CPU cooler


My biggest question is if ATI or Nvivia will work better with what I have.

The 4870 froma spec stand point appears to be closer to the Nvidia's 2xx family but the 4850's can be as well. Just depends on the brand, and which card. Most of these are all around the same price which is why I am having a hard time choosing.

thx

Do you think that the prices of these 4850 cards will come down over the next week or so due to the shipping of the 5800 series?

Thanks for the suggestions.

Maybe like a $10-20 decrease. Not much though.

The MSI card has a somewhat higher core clock, the XFX, on the other hand, has a higher memory clock AND 1GB or VRAM, instead of 510, so the XFX car is definitely "nicer", if the price is fine by you.
The cooling setups differ as well - generaly, the closed variant used by XFX doesn't cool the cadr itself as well as open heatpipes and fins (a la MSI), but it doesn't dump the heat into the case and heat up other components. If you have a well-ventilated case, I'd go for a open cooler, in a small and closely packed case, closed coolers would be better. But, as I said, in this case, the XFX card has more RAM so I'd take that.

The GTX 250 is essentially a rebranded 9800GTX+ so go for what's cheaper. The 4850 seems to be slightly less powerful than the 250 according to Tom's charts.

But a prior poster is on the money- if you're not gaming, your choices are serious overkill and also quite energy hungry. a couple 4350s that are about $30 each will do you fine and use less power and generate less heat and noise. As someone who uses computers all day for work and all night for gaming, silence is golden.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814127436

$40 for two after rebates (don't know if you can get more than one rebate though)