Buying Video Card

[anthonyfleck]

Hello,

I am currently looking to buy a video card for a PC I am building. Right now I have a Core i5 750 on a Gigabyte P55A-UD4P with 8gb of (4x2gb) on it's way. I am hoping to have to only spend about 200 - 250 on it and have found one in particular that I like. The XFX Radeon HD 5750 XXX Edition. And I am also leaning towards a couple of other HD 57xx series as well.

However I came across a bit of disturbing information on these cards with problems with 2D acceleration, "grey striping", crashes, and various other problems. I started looking into the Nvidia cards and have always been a fan of GeForce but any of their DirectX 11 cards are very expensive (the GTX 400 series).

I am not sure if DirectX 11 is absolutely needed in my case, I will be doing pleanty of heavy gaming and want to be future ready, I am also going to be running Windows 7 on it.

I am hoping I can get some insights as to what I should purchase. Once again, I am hoping to stay under 250 dollars but am willing to spend a bit extra for the extra kick. Thanks in advance!

 

[Maziar]

Hello and welcome to the forums
There are many users experiencing 2D problems with HD 5xxx cards but some of them are fixed by raising the clocks 2D speeds and also Catalyst 10.4 is supposed to solve this issue

 

[JackNaylorPE]

On the nVidia side, there's not really a good choice between the 250 and the 470 as prices there have skyrocketed. The 250 can be had for < $60 if you discount the free Resident Evil that comes with it.

Yes, ATI's 5xxx series are abysmal in 2D but ATI promises a fix for the 2D problem in the 10.4 driver.

In essence, your $250 budget presents a problem if your resolution is HD because the 57xx series, in my opinion, just isn't up to the task of 1920 x 1200 gaming. A 5850 can be had for $280 this weekend only so I'd jump on that if ya can stretch the extra $30...on Monday, it's back up yo $305.

The 470 has the lowest price / performance ratio on a "Dollars per Frame" criteria among the 1920 x 1200 cards and has a lot of overcloking range, does PhysX, CUDA and GPGPU if any of those are important to you....On the other hand, it requires more power and produces more heat which could be a problem w/ small cases and PSU's......at $350 it's well priced....if vendors raise it substantially above MSRP, it will lose the attraction.

 

[anthonyfleck]

Thanks for the replies!

I think I am probably going to go with the 5850. Or perhaps I will wait a little longer and watch to see if some prices come down in the next month. Thanks for the help guys!