Best card for an AMD Athlon II x4 640?

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2nddimension

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Hey there forums! :hello:

I was just wondering what, in your opinion, is the most powerful card that can run on a good 500w PSU with an AMD Athlon II x4 640 WITHOUT bottlenecking too hard? I'm not looking for price to performance ratio, my budget is pretty generous for this one. I was planning to go with a Radeon 7950 3GB, but I had mixed responses on how hard it would bottleneck. I suppose it would be nice for future-proofing anyways. I (sort of...) would prefer an nVidia card, just for the driver support, but I'm open to whatever card has the most juice for my CPU/PSU!
 
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Youre CPU is not exactly powerful enough to allow a 7950 to stretch its legs, especially depending on your monitor resolution. Honestly get whatever is the best that will run on your PSU right now, depending on how soon you want to upgrade CPU. And the whole nvidia vs amd is only a personal preference. They both have had driver issues, but the new 12.8 from AMD work wonderfully, as do the newer nvidia drivers. Buy based on price/performance...
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2nddimension

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Pretty much. In my experience, they take twice as long to release drivers optimized WELL for current games, and radeon cards just don't seem to work with certain games as often as nVidia cards.
 
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Splendid
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I've used every single AMD driver since I first bought a HD4850 about 5yrs ago. Only had a problem with one version that changed the 2d clocks too low, was easily fixed. On the other hand in that same timeframe I've seen at least 3 Nvidia drivers that caused problems including making the cards fail by overheating.

I've since used every driver with HD5850 and now HD7850. No issues.

AMD cards don't work with certain games as often as Nvidia cards?? LOOOL Name one of those games......I'll be waiting.

It's amazing how Tom's Hardware and Anandtech and a million other sites review every AMD card that comes out.....and would you believe none of them ever mention driver problems or games that won't play on AMD cards. Hmmmm


 
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Mousemonkey

Mousemonkey

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:lol: I notice there is no mention of the infamous GSOD/vertical line issue that dogged AMD's 5xxx series for months or the fact that AMD have changed their driver release schedule because the monthly release thing just wasn't working, what with the constant ongoing bugs never getting sorted and sometimes the same driver being released several months in a row with no changes other than the version number!
 
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Mousemonkey

Mousemonkey

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The 660Ti uses 10w less than your current card so you wouldn't have to change your PSU if you were to go with one of those.
 
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2nddimension

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Well that sounds pretty appealing. I've had trouble finding direct comparison benchmarks between the 660ti and the 460, but I'm assuming it's quite the upgrade. I know the radeon 7950 can run on a 500w PSU, would that be a better (read: more powerful) option, or would it bottleneck too hard?
 
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Mousemonkey

Mousemonkey

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Personally I would never use nor recommend an AMD/ATi card as I would not spend my own money on one, but that's just me.
 
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Youre CPU is not exactly powerful enough to allow a 7950 to stretch its legs, especially depending on your monitor resolution. Honestly get whatever is the best that will run on your PSU right now, depending on how soon you want to upgrade CPU. And the whole nvidia vs amd is only a personal preference. They both have had driver issues, but the new 12.8 from AMD work wonderfully, as do the newer nvidia drivers. Buy based on price/performance. Read reviews of any cards you are thinking about on this website and others. Researching it will help you with the decision, dont take personal opinions into account.
 
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Splendid
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No. Never saw it mentioned at Tom's, nor Anandtech, nor experienced it myself on my HD5850 for the 3yrs I had it. Nope.

As far as ongoing bugs with driver releases....well I've updated to every single release and not had any of those bugs, nor seen Tom's or Anandtech mention them in their card reviews.
 
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That's your opinion. But Tom's happens to recommend a lot of them in the "Best video cards for the Money" article which is posted every month.

You should check it out sometime
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-graphics-card-review,3107-2.html

There's only 5 recommended Nvidia cards in the entire article and 11 AMD cards. Surely Tom's wouldn't recommend crappy cards with buggy drivers right?
 
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Mousemonkey

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Maybe because you never looked but it was definitely mentioned.
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/ATI-Radeon-Gray-Screen-Crash,9529.html
 
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