Upgrade advice

[sidsrvnn]

I live in chennai, india and i'll be popping by the states in late december/early jan this year. seems irrelevant but itll make sense in a second.

my faithful galaxy 8800 gts 640 mb (the g80 chip) gave out a couple months back. it was still under warranty so i sent it to be replaced. those... cretins.. took over a month, to ship it to thailand, and scrounge up a g92 8800 GT 512 mb as a replacement and send it back to me.

i now suspect that they just sent me a refurbished card as it promptly started overheating within 2 minutes of starting a game last week. so i sent that back again. then they had the eternal gall to send me a 320 MB g80 8800 gts as a replacement. at this point i got quite fed up and told them to go boil their pompous arses and send me a proper replacement.

so now theyre sending me the 9800 GT. but i get the sinking feeling its the retarded low power version. the one thats clocked 50 mhz lower, just cos it doenst have a 6 pin connector. i have a 700 watt fsp epsilon psu.... i HAVE power ffs.

but anyway. this whole thing has left me quite thoroughly annoyed, now while my initial plan was to wait for nvidia to announce their new line of cards, and upgrade to that, the new ati HD 5000 series looks quite promising, and im debating whether i should just stick with whatever shitty card they send me for now until nvidia announces something new, or pick up a 5850 when im in the states.

simply because the 5850 costs 300 $ on newegg : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102857&cm_re=5850-_-14-102-857-_-Product

which is roughly how much id have to pay for a gtx 275 from nvidia over here in india, and when the new cards release, they cost about 25% more to buy over here.

so this is my situation. should i pick up a 5850 while im there? or wait and see what nvidia has to offer, but run the risk of paying more? any opinions/suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thank you

 

[sidsrvnn]

bump

 

[jaguarskx]

The HD 58xx are in short supply right now due to TSMC's low production yields. Therefore, as soon as these things become available, they are quickly sold out.

Newegg does not ship to hotels or to a PO Box, so hopefully you have have friends / family here in the states. Have them periodically check starting now and have them purchase it for you.

Prices might drop by the time you get to the states, but TSMC has been having production issues on 40nm GPUs ever since the HD 4770. It took me 8 days to find a HD 5850, others have been trying to buy one since they were first released.

 

[hellraiser06]

I think the 9800gt will hold you for the time till the gt300 gets released. Also, in light of what Jaguarsx said, I think that the shortage in supply should not be the case after Christmas. So, see if the price drops in Jan and buy watever ati card you can or wait till nvidia releases the new cards.

But, you might try visiting www.techenclave.com and www.lynx-india.com. 5850 is for around 18K, so if you dont want to wait till Jan, you can buy it from there. IMO, paying only 3k more than the US price is a fair deal for a 5850.

Or, you can go for a 5770 for now, which goes for 11K on teh above mentioned sites. This offers performance comparable to a 4870 1GB but with DX11 support and eyefinity. You can crossfire one later. Keep in mind that even a 5770 is *ALMOST* 40% more powerful than 9800GT (sometimes 20% more and sometimes 40%).
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-5770-review-test/18
http://www.techspot.com/review/209-ati-radeon-hd-5770/page8.html

So you now have 3 options:
1) Go for 5770 now and crossfire later (or, if you dont have an option of xFire upgrade to a 5870 in next year mid when there are more dx11 games and you need more performance)

2) Wait for nv300 till Q1 2010 and lose on the performance for now

3) Get a 5850 right away (for ~18K)

 

[sidsrvnn]

hmm thanks for the advice guys, guess ill wait for nvidias offering and see whats what. at the very least itll push the price down. much appreciated