Wanna help me pick a new video card?

[SupraMario]

Nvidia here as well. I've run both and I'm not a "fanboy" as people try to classify me (though I am partial to EVGA)

Used to like AMD as well, but currently Intel is dominating them for the price point, hence I run a C2D. I run an EVGA nForce 750i SLI board and EVGA GTS250 as the nForce chipsets are very mature and stable, and there are certain features in nvidia and EVGA's products that i really like (Digital Vibrance and EBGA Precision to name a few).

Ditto, EvGA has been good to me, and I'm an AMD fanboi, C2D in the laptop, but AMD in all my desktops.
9700GTS in the Laptop.

 

[Poodles]

Full on CPU stress test and the CPU fan never got above idle. AMD would have been a screaming banshee...Intel really has a winner.

 

[QWIKSTRIKE]

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...TabStoreType=1&ActiveSearchResult=True&Page=2


Sapphire 5770 or that open 4890 get that New egg is great with open box items like that. can't mess up if it works. If not 5770 would be fine for 179.00

 

[Poodles]

EVGA stuff is generally lifetime warranty AND you can trade in your old stuff towards newer stuff... Another side note is they produce the nvidia referance boards. You know if you buy an actual "nvidia" motherboard or graphics card, it's EVGA. Get the EVGA version, it will look almost identicle, except for the badging and usually the price.

 

[ogre]

Im running a geforce 9500gt pci-e 1024mb ddr2 paid 50$ for it new from tiger direct 6 months ago , brand does not really mater , but i highly recommend the nvidia chipset . my card will handle 40 man raids at full resolution 1680x1050 and all graphic objects turned to max , and can wonder around in any major city of warcraft without any lag video lag what so ever. The machine backing it up is a intel extreme motherboard, intel e6300, 4gb of ddr3 1066 , western digital hard drive, running ubuntu 64 bit edition...
On a side note the latest patch of world of warcraft no longer functions under linux...

 

[mkiii222]

<- BFG GTX260 '216 core' and loving it. (C2D E6300, ASUS P5KPL-CM, 4 GB GSkill DDR2) And this is at the PCIe 16x not the newer PCIe 2.0 16x. I figure my next upgrade will be an i7 when the prices fall a bit (would prefer ~$400 for mb/cpu/ddr3).

It sounds like you're in the same boat I was this past spring. I knew my proc/mb were limiting me but I wanted to play some games that my older 7600GT couldn't handle. The difference was night and day with just the graphics upgrade.

Watch the pricing though. RAM prices have driven video cards way up. ie back in June/July I got my GTX260 for $150 and now they run $180+ again.

 

[Kai]

I don't see the point in being a foaming at the mouth 'fanboi' - i just go for what produces the most for my money. AMD's K8's used to be it, then the C2D came out, and i've been with Intel since then, but i'd change to AMD if the performance was there.

The reason i say AMD/ATi for Graphics cards right now, is this - nVidia haven't made anything new for over a year now. Since the GTX260 and GTX280 - all we've seen, is them renaming their G92 GPU's again...and again...and again...and reconfigured GTX260 and 280 GPU's with a minor process shrink. The 5xx0 series from AMD/ATi is currently fantastic - i want one.

The whole 'ATi has crap drivers' thing is very....wrong. They USED to have pants drivers, but in the last year, the driver team has pulled things together considerably - i'd say they were within 5% of nVidia drivers.

They do improve over time as well, same as any card/driver set.

 

[IJ.]

no.

 

[Justin]

no.

Good, Didn't want your help anyway

 

[Poodles]

I don't see the point in being a foaming at the mouth 'fanboi' - i just go for what produces the most for my money. AMD's K8's used to be it, then the C2D came out, and i've been with Intel since then, but i'd change to AMD if the performance was there.

The reason i say AMD/ATi for Graphics cards right now, is this - nVidia haven't made anything new for over a year now. Since the GTX260 and GTX280 - all we've seen, is them renaming their G92 GPU's again...and again...and again...and reconfigured GTX260 and 280 GPU's with a minor process shrink. The 5xx0 series from AMD/ATi is currently fantastic - i want one.

The whole 'ATi has crap drivers' thing is very....wrong. They USED to have pants drivers, but in the last year, the driver team has pulled things together considerably - i'd say they were within 5% of nVidia drivers.

They do improve over time as well, same as any card/driver set.

What's wrong with a mature chipset that won't cause hassles? Brand new is not always better. Also, ATI's drivers are parade float crap and I used other drivers instead of their's many times because of the bloat...

 

[SupraMario]

What's wrong with a mature chipset that won't cause hassles? Brand new is not always better. Also, ATI's drivers are parade float crap and I used other drivers instead of their's many times because of the bloat...

Also, to add onto the bloat issue, we have 8...yes 8 PCs here at work that were BSOD from the ATI Drivers, and 8 PCs mind you we could get out to the clients to upgrade their old machines with. Finally got tired of the run around with the tech support at ATI, said the hell with it, dug up custom drivers, all works like a charm.

 

[QWIKSTRIKE]

I have been using ATI the last few months, and trsut me their cards work....not to mention Toms Hardware, and Anandtech give ATI the big thumbs up. One of them gave ATI the fastest video card on the planet period. The 5770 is a cheap way of getting good perfornce at a good price. Go to Toms Hardware o Anandtech and see the new ATI comparisons to Invidia.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/

 

[QWIKSTRIKE]

Also, to add onto the bloat issue, we have 8...yes 8 PCs here at work that were BSOD from the ATI Drivers, and 8 PCs mind you we could get out to the clients to upgrade their old machines with. Finally got tired of the run around with the tech support at ATI, said the hell with it, dug up custom drivers, all works like a charm.

Which OS are you using.....just wondering.

 

[Kai]

What's wrong with a mature chipset that won't cause hassles? Brand new is not always better. Also, ATI's drivers are parade float crap and I used other drivers instead of their's many times because of the bloat...

I'm sorry, but the 5800 series isn't causing any 'hassle' to their owners, who are running circles around the nVidia crowd - read the benchmarks from any decent independant review site.

Parade Float Crap? They're 60mb. Hardly 'huge'.

When was the last time you actually USED an ATi card?

 

[Poodles]

Look at what it has running all the time, driver's aren't just the install download...

 

[Kai]

Catalyst Control Centre and the monitoring program...uses a whole 19mb of available memory, according to task manager. Without CCC - Crossfire doesn't work. And for the sake of 19mb? No thanks, i'll keep it installed and running.