Geforce GTS 250 vs Ati 4850

What resolution do you play?


The higher the resolution and the more use of AA will determine which card to get. As you can guess, if you want a high resolution and/or use of AA, get the 1 GB card.

From the reviews I've read here the Geforce is slightly faster except in the left4dead games but how much cooler and power consumption is between the cards? It'll be the XFX version of each card I'll get getting so power and temp does factor in for me.

go for the 4850 since it's cheaper

The quantity of RAM that the GPU employs doesn't have a direct impact on software performance, but it can have an indirect impact. GPU RAM will only negatively affect performance if there isn't enough to handle what a specific software requires. The point is that all other factors being exactly equal, a GPU with 1GB RAM should perform exactly the same as a GPU with 512MB as long as the software's graphics memory requirements are below 512MB. If the software's settings and resolution require more than 512MB of GPU RAM, the 512MB card will demonstrate a performance penalty compared to the 1GB card. I thought I should clearfy this first since it is an imperative concept. Both of the cards that you are looking at should run just fine with your maximum res. of 1152×864. The 4850 does run hotter. ATI always did. I personaly recommend the 250, it is the faster card in this selection. However, I would HIGHLY recommend spending a few dollars more and getting the 1G version of the 250. The 1G will give you more head room in RAM capacity, should you need it someday. Last thing you want is noy having enough RAM to process information at hand, hence bottleneck. As for your PSU, look at the min. power requirments for the GPU you are purchasing. The recommended min. wattage for these cards is the min. power required for the card plus your other components to run without causing any problems. Starve your PSU and you be seeing a lot of "suprise" shutdowns performed by your PC due to not sufficient amount of power. However, I thing that 480W, should be enough power for these cards (have seen a 360W PSU handle 4850 512MB before). Hope that I helped a bit here, let me know if you have any comments towrds my 2 cents...
deadcell

4850 and GTS250 performs about the same. Get whatever is cheaper.

Neither card has enough power to use 1GB of memory even at high resolutions...unless you put two of them in SLi or Xfire.

http://www.ebuyer.com/product/177117. it's an absolutelytiny card as well and it only consumes 86 watts.

So for the likes of CS4 and having AA and AF at 2x or maybe 4x would the extra 1GB on the GTS 250 be worth the extra £20?

And I take it the gigabyte version will be the same and the 1GB asus version?

I must've had a POS 4850 (512mb) because it was very disappointing for me. I couldn't even run wow at max settings. Mind you, It was from Diamond, not from Sapphire.

Now that I got the BFG OC GTS 250 1GB, its fantastic. I can even run Crysys at high settings @ 1680 X 1050 and run wow at full effects and resolution.

If you do buy the 4850, do not buy a diamond one. If I got one from Sapphire, I probably be still using it today.

For the 4850, I always used the latest drivers from the AMD site.

yep. Was even suprised I can run crysys on high settings now.

I think Diamond messed up on the 4850, especially when they put a stupid plate on the back.

My 6800GT died after 5 years too. Weird I'm also looking at GTS250 right now but almost everyone here says buy an ATI and I think they are right, so I'll probably gonna wait for the nvidia equivalent of a HD5750 with dx11