Need advice on a graphics card plz help

[juicemanjm]

I am putting together a new budget pc. I am not quite sure what I should get as a GPU and where I can get the best bang for my buck.

My max amount to spend on one is $200 but hoping to be a little less. I don't really plan on overclocking I just want the best card I can get for the price.

The only real concern is that I want to be able to play Diablo 3 well when it comes out and have no problems with a 23inch 1080p LCD Asus monitor.

Pairing it with:

I3-2100
8GB G Skill Ripjaws X DDR3 1333
ASRock H61M/U3S3(still undecided)
Rosewill Challenger case
Antec BP550 Plus 550W Continuous Power ATX12V

Been looking at GTX 460 1GBs and HD6850s but not sure if I want to spend that much.

Thanks for the advice

 

[shin0bi272]

6850 review on guru3d for reference
http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-6850-6870-review/14

price on newegg 160 with free shipping and an additional 20 bucks back by MiR
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121419&cm_re=amd_6850-_-14-121-419-_-Product

 

[Carmellotruffles]

I believe newegg compared a gtx 560 and the 5870 and the 560 barely came out on top. I would say ur gonna be safe with the 6850.

 

[purple stain]

Their is also the 5850.Which is more powerful than both the GTX460 and 6850.They are dirt cheap now so the the price to perfromance cost is outstanding.

Saphire 5850 $150 + Shipping
http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=199805&CatId=3669

Still a very powerful card for being almost 2 years old.It's got plenty of pwoer to play Diablo 3 at Ultra settins on a 1080p resoultion.

 

[juicemanjm]

It seems like the 5850 might be my best performance to cost ratio.
Besides speed, am I missing out on anything between a 5850 and 6850?

I haven't used ATI since the 90s but I am thinking it is the way to go.

Also, I am pretty sure it is, but my PSU is enough for all of this right? I got it from a previous thread somewhere on here that I was reading.

 

[purple stain]

Yes your PSU should handle it fine.How old is it?

Well the 5850 is a lot faster than the 6850.What makes the 6850 better is only it's crossfire performance.Scaling has been improved a lot with the new 6000 series GPU's.So x2 6850's will actually beat a pair of 5850s.Also the improved tesselation with the 6850.But after all of that the 5850 is still faster as a single card.Also Diablo 3 won't be DX11 so you won't need to worry aobut the 6850 performing better.

 

[juicemanjm]

Cool thanks. I just bought the PSU yesterday, its still in the mail. Wanted to snatch it up before the $15 off coupon expired.

 

[dalauder]

5850's the best choice. Also, if you haven't bought your mobo yet, get one with two PCI-e slots at 16x/4x and you should be able to run crossfire and add a second 5850 for awesome performance down the line. I think the BP550 might handle that, but you'll want to double check that.

 

[juicemanjm]

Best answer selected by JuicemanJM.

 

[purple stain]

Yah the only concern I had is how old your power supply was.Since it's brand new it should last a long time and you shouldn't have any problems with it.I wouldn't advise you to run two 5850's off of it tho,you will be pushing it's maximum capabilites thus reducing it's life span.

Welcome.
Goodluck.

 

[dalauder]

Based off of this, you only need 469W for two 5850's with 15% capacitor aging accounted for, so 550W should be just fine: http://extreme.outervision.com/psucalculatorlite.jsp
I'd get a 600W for that job, but overkill is my preference.

I have an 850W PSU and based off of my Kill-A-Watt, I never exceed 570W. Of course, I plan to replace my PhysX 8800GT with a second GTX 470, then I'll get closer to 700W and can put the PhysX card back in to get closer to 850W. And I overclock it all, which you won't want to do if you crossfire.

 

[purple stain]

If you do decide to crossfire get a board thats x8/x8 not x16/x4.And yes i'm sure you can crossfire 5850's with that PSU but it's not reccomend because you will be running it near it's maximum and that will degraade it's life span.If this GPU upgrade is based on a crossfire setup then going with the 6850 would be a better choice.

 

[dalauder]

I'm not sure about how much the PSU lifespan gets degraded, but it makes sense that it would impact it (although this PSU's max load is over 600W).

But the 6850 does scale enough better in crossfire to match the 5850: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/303?vs=302

I thought the superior 6000 series scaling was supposed to trickle down?