Help choosing a new Graphics card

[fredthebest2003]

Ok, heres my situation, i've built a Core i5/P55 system mostly for video and photo editing but maybe some gaming. I want to spend about £160 on a new gfx card, however, i am torn between waiting for the new nvidia fermi cards or buying a decent ATI DX11 card (5770, 5670, maybe crossfire?), or even buying an nvidia GTX260 or something.

If i bought an nvidia card ive got a gt220 to use as a dedicated Physx card

I read somewhere that Nvidias new cards will only be for the high end (£300+) market, so they might be out of the question


Help??

 

[shadow187]

Yes, GTX470 and GTX480 are very expensive, we know that much. Over an HD5850.


It seems 160 is equal to $240 USD. Get an HD5830. It's better than a GTX260/HD5770, and it can be crossfired.

 

[fredthebest2003]

Yeah i did look at those actually, but cheapest i could find them was £220 (about $330)

 

[shadow187]

Ah, alright. An HD5770 would do you well then.

 

[Lutfij]

Theres no point in getting a 5830 - the price/value is silly...in that respect if your even looking into a 5800series then your best bet will be to settle with a 5870. If your looking any lower than that, go no less than a 5770

 

[fredthebest2003]

i did like the look of the 5770s actually, the only thing stopping me from wanting it was thinking Nvidia might bring out some mid-range Fermi based cards at some point in the near future.

 

[shadow187]

Not unless you want to wait about 5 months until the end of quarter-2

 

[fredthebest2003]

exactly. too long of a wait. looks like ATI is the sensible choice then.

 

[fredthebest2003]

if i crossfired two 5770's, is the performance gain worth it? i dont know much about crossfire support in applications that aren't games.... also i think my two PCIe slots are x16 and x4 so probably not worth it?

 

[shadow187]

Alrighty. Enjoy your card ^_^.

 

[Lutfij]

What sort of games are you looking to play on?
You didnt mention your mobo specs. I wouldn't worry about the crossfiring problem now. Only look into crossfiring if your going to go all out in benchmarking, getting your friends to drool at your system or future proofing yourself.

 

[fredthebest2003]

i want to be able to play the games that look loads better on a PC than on a console, Fallout 3, crysis, etc. all quite graphics hungry. My Motherboard is an Asus P7P55D with 4gb DDR3 Ram. the two slots are x16 and x4 in crossfire it says .

 

[shadow187]

Assuming those are 2.0, you should be fine. You might experience a little bottlenecking by the x4 slot.

 

[fredthebest2003]

yeah theyre 2.0. but im sure a single 5770 is going to be enough for what i want, mostly HD video editing and photoshop work.

thanks for the advice

 

[Lutfij]

You wont run into a bottleneck issue as both are PCI-e 2.0 certified so even if your going to run a crossfire setup - you can pull it off with 2 x 5770's. Or maybe pick up 2 x 5970's but your still good with the 5770

i use photoshop SC4 and they now have a feature that use hardware acceleration from graphics cards.
Have a nice day!