Suggestions for a new graphic card.

[ChodeManglerGTX285]

Hi guys,

I'm wondering what type of graphic card that I should get, yeah one can read benchmarks all day long and see gaming benchmarks as well and even watch you tube videos, but I would like to know from you what graphic card you have and throughout your experiences if its an over all an excellent card.

My specs: Processor: Phenom II X4 940 BE @ 3711,
Ram: 4.56 gigabytes of Mushkin Ram at 1066 DDR-2
Graphic Card: HD 3870, pci express 2.0,MSI 800 core clock 1128 X2 mem clock, 400 ramdack 320 stream processors.
PowerSupply: 750 watts Corsair
Hard Drives: 80 gigabyte WesternDigital Sata 3.0gb/s for the os only, 320 gigabyte WesternDigital Sata 3.0gb/s for all my other crap, and 1 Sea Gate Barricuda 250 Gigabyte Drive 3.0gb/s for extra space incase i run out, plus it was laying around.
The motherboard is an asus m3a32-mvp deluxe motherboard with four pci epxress 2.0 slots, front side busspeed is 2600 or ht 5200.

I've been looking at a lot of graphic cards both ati and nvidia, but i can't choose, maybe some of you can help me out by giving your testimonies. BTW I'm sort of a rush, I got swine, so If i'm missing information let me know and I'll write out more data given on my pc.

As far as i Know the HD 5000 series look good for direct x 11, and i've read the reviews about 128 bit v. 256 bit, and how the 5770 is slightly less performant than 4870s, but if you could just name the card you have and tell me your experience with whatever games you play, not just the frames per second, but if theres stuttering, white box pixels or software issues. Ati pissed me off a few times due to drivers when trying to play with gears of war, kotor II, just lil nitpicky things that would make a person angry after awhile, I haven't used an Nvidia card in a while, the last one i owned was a 16mb nvidia graphic card, years ago with 1300mghz duron, and it played the absolute *** out of Urban Assault, ever since I've been with Ati mostly due to price: such as the 7200 radeon, 9500 pro, 9600 xt, 9800 pro, the x850, and now a big jump to the hd 3870, well i'm ready to make another big jump and probably try an nvidia card when they release the gtx300 series with direct x 11.

Thanks.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been moved from the section Games General to section Graphic & Displays by Mousemonkey

 

[sirkillalot]

you can also listern to people here all day long and get different opinions [:bohleyk:7]
but the 5870 for now is a good 1 as far as games
if money is tight then a 5850 or the 57xx cards
and if the pc is not for games then it really doesnt matter what u get, within reason!
ps dont listern to the guy below me hes full of it [:jaydeejohn] [:jaydeejohn]

 

[rescawen]

you can also listern to people here all day long and get different opinions [:bohleyk:7]
but the 5870 for now is a good 1 as far as games
if money is tight then a 5850 or the 57xx cards
and if the pc is not for games then it really doesnt matter what u get, within reason!
ps dont listern to the guy below me hes full of it [:jaydeejohn] [:jaydeejohn]

+1 ur full of crap haha!!!

 

[brockh]

What's your budget? What games do you play? What resolution do you play them at?

 

[ChodeManglerGTX285]

Right now I play my games at 1020 X 768 or sometimes 800x600 for right now, on a 17" cathode ray tube, my budget is about up to 250$. I don't care to spend too much knowing that the latest and greatest will come down within another 6 months or less.

 

[brockh]

Your monitor is a shame to gaming, spend the extra money on getting a better monitor.

POWERCOLOR AX5750 1GBD5-PDH Radeon HD 5750 1GB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Retail $129.99
Hanns·G HW-191APB Black 19" 5ms Widescreen LCD Monitor 300 cd/m2 700:1 Built in Speakers - Retail $114.99

Total: $244.99

 

[ChodeManglerGTX285]

A new monitor is not a necessity to me right now, I will get one eventually; I appreciate the suggestion, but have you tried the 5750 yourself or do you own another graphic card?

Again I really want to know what you guys are running in terms of graphic cards, not just the frames per second, but are the drivers good? Do you experience errors? How bad are the heat issues originally? Have you ever taken the fan and heat sync off of the gpu and applied artic silver 5, and did that help the heat issues?

 

[brockh]

I own an HD 4890. As long as the card isn't a dual GPU on a single chip then it really isn't going to experience driver issues with either NVidia or ATi. That's not a concern to be taken into account anymore, really. None of the cards will have heat issues unless they are defective, and then you would return them instead of spending money on repairing the heat sync.

When was the last time you bought a graphics card and they had that many problems? The only people who experience these problems never update their drivers. It's as simple as visiting either of the companies websites, clicking on Support & Drivers and making sure the newest driver is the one you have.

 

[ChodeManglerGTX285]

I'm not having these problems as of right now; I bought the MSI HD3870 512mb 800 core clock, 320 stream proc, 400mhz ramdack, with dual dvi ports June 26,2007, which is about a year and a half. I update my drivers all of the time which is about once a month or when ati releases the next driver. When I had first gotten the card the Catalyst drivers were in the mid 8's, I experienced issues with drivers on certain "OLDER" games, when the catalyst drivers hit in the mid 9's exampled 9-4' I saw that this problem was corrected but another issue had come up, for example when i played any of the kotor series in the mid 8's (withanother card it was in the early 7's as well, and that old card was the x850 256mb 12 pipeline card) I noticed(back to the hd 3870 card) when I used buffer effects, the card would go beserk and display abnormal projections such as random blocks that the user would know that was not supposed to be there. When I noticed that problem was fixed in the 9-4 edition of the ati driver i was relieved, so i went down memory lane and played age of empires II with no errors from the graphic card perspective or driver; that follow month 9-5 drivers came and i installed them as usual, so i loaded up age of empires II and (during the game both multiplayer and single player) when i clicked on the diplomacy button the game crashed, when i clicked on any button except for the options button the game crashed, so i reverted back to the drivers that worked flawlessly for me which was 9-4, this was around the summer time, now i'm at drivers 9-9 and i don't notice issues, and about to get 9-10., its the little things that either get removed or added in that concerns me, and I'm still one of those types that likes to play those ancient games along with games like Dawn of war II and Call of Duty 4 etc.

So from your perspective, having a 4890, do you think it is worth getting a 5000 series card? Or will you stay with the 4890 until you see good direct x 11 games fly from the sky?

 

[brockh]

I'm not having these problems as of right now; I bought the MSI HD3870 512mb 800 core clock, 320 stream proc, 400mhz ramdack, with dual dvi ports June 26,2007, which is about a year and a half. I update my drivers all of the time which is about once a month or when ati releases the next driver. When I had first gotten the card the Catalyst drivers were in the mid 8's, I experienced issues with drivers on certain "OLDER" games, when the catalyst drivers hit in the mid 9's exampled 9-4' I saw that this problem was corrected but another issue had come up, for example when i played any of the kotor series in the mid 8's (withanother card it was in the early 7's as well, and that old card was the x850 256mb 12 pipeline card) I noticed(back to the hd 3870 card) when I used buffer effects, the card would go beserk and display abnormal projections such as random blocks that the user would know that was not supposed to be there. When I noticed that problem was fixed in the 9-4 edition of the ati driver i was relieved, so i went down memory lane and played age of empires II with no errors from the graphic card perspective or driver; that follow month 9-5 drivers came and i installed them as usual, so i loaded up age of empires II and (during the game both multiplayer and single player) when i clicked on the diplomacy button the game crashed, when i clicked on any button except for the options button the game crashed, so i reverted back to the drivers that worked flawlessly for me which was 9-4, this was around the summer time, now i'm at drivers 9-9 and i don't notice issues, and about to get 9-10., its the little things that either get removed or added in that concerns me, and I'm still one of those types that likes to play those ancient games along with games like Dawn of war II and Call of Duty 4 etc.

So from your perspective, having a 4890, do you think it is worth getting a 5000 series card? Or will you stay with the 4890 until you see good direct x 11 games fly from the sky?

The 3870 is a really, really, really old card. A year and a half is a long time with the rate technology progresses, it's not like a car or even a TV. Having a 4890 I can tell you I wouldn't upgrade unless it was an HD 5850 or HD 5870. I want to, but I got my 4890 a little before the 5 series was released so I can't justify upgrading after only a few months.