Radeon 4770 vs GTS 250 vs 9800 GTX+

[Guest]

Long story short, rebuilding my rig from the ground up. I had planned to keep my existing video card (an 8600 GTS) for a few more months and then upgrade later. I had a lower end 8xxx card for my boys' rebuilt machine, but it is one of the small form factor cases and there simply wasn't room for that card in there as it had an oversized cooler. So now I am scrambling to try and find a new card for my machine. I stretched my budget a bit and was able to get a nicer mb/cpu, etc than I had originally planned but that doesn't leave a lot for the video card now. The system is an i5 proc on a MSI GD65 board, four GB of RAM, etc. Probably will overclock a bit (as much on principle as anything) but I'm not planning on being overly aggressive, I just don't feel the need right now. Anyways, I figure I can afford to spend about $100-120 on a graphics card and will add a second one in later if I feel I have the need. My current monitor only supports 1440x960 so I won't exactly be gaming in real high resolutions. I do like to enable all of the eye candy I can, though.

Anyways, looking through the prices at Newegg, it looks like all three of these card models can be had within my price range. For that matter, I think I saw a 4850 in there too. I'm just unsure which would give me the best performance. I've generally preferred Nvidia's drivers overall, but that would be a tie breaker at best, not a major consideration and I can't honestly say I've had any experience with ATI's current crop of drivers anyways.

Thoughts?

 

[Bluescreendeath]

9800GTX/GTX+/GTS250 ~ 4850 > 4770

The 4770 is outperformed by those cards...you'll need to overclock the 4770 to reach the same level of performance. The only real advantage is the 4770 uses less power.

Get whatever is cheaper.

 

[ill b ben]

I'd go for the newer tech, its true all the other outperform it .
but i believe its 10ish % at most if not less. Altho obviously only if the price is
richt. No logic in paying more for a 4770 then a 4850, even if it consumes less

and on drivers, tbh ive never had any issues with them , altho ive only been using a ati card since the 9xxx series of ati, altho i did have some problem with nivida drivers when i had my 8600gts.

Well what im trying to say here, pretty sure 9/10 time drivers r human related, since ive had my laptop running with a nvidia 8600gs for over 1 and a half year withouth any driver issues (besides a not so functional gpu, after a year) nivida was fine. and same for ati

 

[rockyjohn]

GTS 250 > 4850 > 4770

And the best GTS 250 card with 512MB of memory - which includes a lifetime warranty - is on sale at Frys for only $80 AR. How can you beat that?

http://www.frys.com/product/5866243?site=sr:SEARCH:MAIN_RSLT_PG

 

[shadow187]

The GTS250 and the 4850 are around the same level, with the GTS250 pulling ahead slightly in some areas.
Go for the one RJ posted. The cheapest 4850 is 85$ that I could find, so you're getting a good deal.

 

[Bluescreendeath]

The GTS250 is a rebranded 9800GTX/GTX+ and performs essentially the same as an ATI 4850.

4850s have been under $100 for months now. If you want to play Crysis then get the GTS250 since Nvidia cards perform slightly better.


I personally hate MIR since I don't get them half the time.