Which Video/Graphics Card | $130-$200 |

kyleamos12

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Dec 4, 2011
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Hey there, I was wanting some opinions on what Video Card I should buy, I like Radeon along with nVidia so either is fine. I would prefer some suggestions in the middle of that price but higher or lower is fine. I am a hardcore gamer on a budget ;) I don't overclock if that helps any.

My Current PC Specs:

MotherBoard: MB GIGABYTE|GA-970A-UD3 AM3+ 970 R :love:

CPU: CPU AMD|PH II X4 955 3.2G AM3 RT :love:

RAM: DDR3 8GB Vengeance

HDD: 500GB/ 5700 RPM | 120GB 5700RPM (Both Sata)

PSU: VisionTek 900349 ATX Modular Power Supply - 800W, 80 Plus Bronze 120mm Fan, Dual +12V Rails :love:



My Case information:

Case: NZXT Hades
Front 200mm Fan: Stock (red LED) '80-110 CFM'
Side 200mm Fan: After Market Cooler Master 200mm '120CFM' (red LED)
First Top 140mm: After Market Yates '140CFM 55DB' (<--- Loud) (Lime Green LED)
Second Top 140mm: After Market Bgears Blue Ice Chrome: '90CFM 28DB' (Blue LED)
Rear 120mm Exhaust: Stock 'CFM = idk' (White no LED)
Two rear PCI Exhaust fans: '30 CFM each' (Black)
One front PCI Exhaust Fan: (ghetto rigged) '25 CFM' (Black)

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kyleamos12

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Dec 4, 2011
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I was going through some things and found my old, nVidia MS-8837 that was the stuff in the 90's LOL. I think I am going to go with a 6870 in the $200-$150 range now. Best ones in that range by IYO please :D
 
Sure you can overclock an HD6870 but it doesn't have as much headroom as the HD5850. A good overclock for either card would be around 1ghz. The HD5850 starts at 725mhz however while the HD6870 starts at 850mhz. This means a 1ghz OC on the 5850 is an increase of 38% while on the 6870 it would only be 18%.
I'm not sure what you mean by the HD58xx series being so expensive. The card I linked is both faster and cheaper than the HD6850.
 

Kohlhagen

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You need to invest in a power supply that can give the correct amount of AMPs on the 12v rail. Without the stable power throughput you're GPU may prematurely fail along with the 430w PSU.

With that being said, i wouldn't recommend anything higher than 6770.. The midrange GPU's use at least 40-50 less watts in overall power consumption during full load.
 

Yes, it is what I would get if I were you. Hard to beat at that price. To put it in perspective if want a card that is notably faster than the HD5850 you would need to go up to an HD6950 or GTX 560 Ti and those cards are twice the price while still only being about 20% faster.
As for heat with the OC modern cards are designed to withstand rather high temperatures, some even get up to 90C at stock speeds. It shouldn't be much of an issue unless your case has poor airflow(possible.) For overclocking I would recommend MSI Afterburner. It's well made and easy to use with a lot of nice features.
http://downloads.guru3d.com/Afterburner-2.0.0-Final-download-2562.html
You can use it to control the fan speed as well to make sure temperatures stay reasonable and it can be used to monitor gpu/memory usage, temps, frames per second, etc in a handy onscreen display while gaming.
The ATI/AMD cards are rather power efficient though bumping up the voltage for a high OC does require more power so Kohlhagen brings up a good point. What exactly is the brand/model of your PSU? A quality 430w from someone like Corsair or Antec can probably handle the card at reference voltage but raising it would be pushing things IMO. Perhaps use the money you save by getting the HD5850 to invest in a more appropriate power supply.
 
Alright. Your PSU has 336w on the +12v rail which is what matters. The old 400w CX that that PSU replaced in their line-up actually had more, 360w, so the downgrade was rather disappointing especially considering they bumped up the marketed rating by 30w as well. Anyway, the HD5850 uses about 110w during normal gaming. Your CPU has a TDP of 125w which leaves 100w for the rest of the system which should be fine.
As for overclocking this article shows how much power you can expect to be added by doing so;
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/graphics/display/radeon-hd5850_11.html#sect0
They list stock, OCed to 850mhz at default voltage and 1010mhz at 1.21v. At default voltage the OC only added 10w but bumping up the voltage added 40w which is more than I would personally attempt on your power supply.
So basically what I said earlier is the case. If you get the HD5850 it should run fine and you can overclock but I wouldn't raise the voltage without upgrading the PSU. The good news is that they say they got it up over 900mhz without touching the voltage which is a high OC anyway. You may want to read the whole article linked above to learn more about the card. The HD5850 pictured in the sale link has the reference cooler just like the card in the article.