TR Forums

Ok recently i upgraded my motherboard, cpu, and monitor.I went from a e4300 overclocked @ 3,2ghz, a MSI P43 Neo3-F motherboard to my current rig listed bellow.

AMD phenom II x3 720 oveclocked @3.4 ghz
MSI k9a2 platinum edition motherboard (local microcenter had it on sell 129 with 20 mir)
4g of ocz ddr2 800 ram
Bfg 9600 gt @ 725/1033
antec 500 watt basiq power supply (also got on sell at microcenter 29.99^^)
antec three hundred case
ViewSonic VX2233wm 1080p monitor (also got at microcenter thank god i'm lucky enough to live less than a mile away from one)

Originally i was useing my sony bravia 32" 720p hdtv as a monitor wich only suported 1366x768 max resolution. Which my 9600gt was more than enough to handle maxed settings on. But now that i have 1920x1080 capabilities it's not quite cutting it anymore. I was thinking of either upgrading to 2x4830 in crossfire or a 4850 or 70 . i've seen some good reviews on the 2x4830 outperforming a 4870 1g and in some cases a gtx 280. But on the other hand a 4850 or 70 should be sufficient and leaves room for second one in the future. Any suggestions on the best option or other options?? i'm looking to spend around $180ish. Looking to probally get one online microcenter doesn't offer very good prices in the gpu department.

If you can grab one of these, it'd be a fantastic deal.

http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=MSI-48901G

BoBzeBuilder wrote:

If you can grab one of these, it'd be a fantastic deal.
http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=MSI-48901G

Don't forget the $20 off code:
viewtopic.php?f=34&t=65685

Bingo. Recommendations for your price range don't come any better than that.

morphine wrote:

Bingo. Recommendations for your price range don't come any better than that.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127409

A highly factory OCd GTX260C216 shouldn't be too for behind the 4890, but the $159.99 shipped price is far below the $214 shipped price of the 4890. (and it's well below his $180 price threshold rather than above it)

The 260 offers PhysX, CUDA apps, and possibility for upgrade to 3d Vision as well.

LOL......omg...just like Pavlov's dog...only lamer.
The 4890 at those prices is bad,bad news Brian.

Right on cue, I suppose.

That price is with a MIR. Without it ($180) one could obtain an 4870 1GB for the same exact money.

In the end, $215 for the 4890 (even without the rebate code) is only $35 over $180, which is a great deal for the extra performance.

Brian_S wrote:

The 260 offers PhysX, CUDA apps, and possibility for upgrade to 3d Vision as well.

Forget about the 3D Vision in games. That is a gimmic that has come and gone and come again. If i were you i would stick with a single card. Crossfired or SLI'ed cards are great but sometimes it is just a headache to get them to work correctly and support for new games can laga bit. If you stick with 1 card you are sure to be good. If you need to stick with your price just hit up a 4870 1G. It should help you out quite a bit. The Nvidia card will work just as well but i would stick with the ATI for the potential case that you might want to XFire in the future.


disclosure...I own AMD stock so I am just a bit biased.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

BoBzeBuilder wrote:

If you can grab one of these, it'd be a fantastic deal.
http://www.ewiz.com/detail.php?name=MSI-48901G

Don't forget the $20 off code:
viewtopic.php?f=34&t=65685

If this deal is in your price range I have to go with this as well.

The linked MSI GTX260 is a great card though as well, and because of the manufacturer's overclock in the box it should perform close to the 4890. This card is good if you want to stay under budget (after MIR)

Either way you're getting a good card for the money.

Brian_S wrote:

morphine wrote:

Bingo. Recommendations for your price range don't come any better than that.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127409

A highly factory OCd GTX260C216 shouldn't be too for behind the 4890, but the $159.99 shipped price is far below the $214 shipped price of the 4890. (and it's well below his $180 price threshold rather than above it)

The 260 offers PhysX, CUDA apps, and possibility for upgrade to 3d Vision as well.

Yeah the 260 is indeed the bang for the buck right now. I own one and highly recommend it.

Thanks for all the input although the 4890 is a great deal i may not be ready to buy before it ends so right now i'm leaning heavily towards one of thees cards.

this 4870. It seems to have really good overall reviews on newegg with alot of them to boot. and sumtin bout the design with the dark metal heat pipes popping out the top and black shroud just kinda screams "bada##ed" to me.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814102801
or this 4850 it's the cheapest one i can find with a decent heating solution. I'm not a fan of the aftermarket coolers that don't put the air out the back my system temps hover between 25-31C even with the cpu overclocked to 3.4. lol and i'd kinda like to keep it that way.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.a ... 6814102833

If you're so worried about temperature, then I'll suggest the GTX260 216 myself, though an overclocked version of that will probably run a bit hotter than stock. A 4870 1GB with a better stock cooling solution is also another good choice.

morphine wrote:

If you're so worried about temperature, then I'll suggest the GTX260 216 myself, though an overclocked version of that will probably run a bit hotter than stock. A 4870 1GB with a better stock cooling solution is also another good choice.

X2, i would go with GTX260 216.,.. but if you think you need more power, go grab a HD4890 and call it a day. You won't go wrong either way.

Just buy the Radeon HD4890 and enjoy it.

I have the Sapphire Radeon HD4870 1GB card that you linked. It's great, but the HD4890 OC is better, and well worth the small incremental cost.

Brian_S wrote:

PhysX, CUDA apps, 3d Vision

None of that is any more useful than ATI's DirectX 10.1 support, which NVidia lacks.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

None of that is any more useful than ATI's DirectX 10.1 support, which NVidia lacks.

"Now you done it". Cue in 3, 2, 1...

JustAnEngineer wrote:

Just buy the Radeon HD4890 and enjoy it.

I have the Sapphire Radeon HD4870 1GB card that you linked. It's great, but the HD4890 OC is better, and well worth the small incremental cost.

Brian_S wrote:

PhysX, CUDA apps, 3d Vision

None of that is any more useful than ATI's DirectX 10.1 support, which NVidia lacks.

I disagree. Up until 3D Vision I thought my Dell 3007WFP-HC offered the ultimate PC gaming experience. Now I haven't used it since 12/24/08. For perspective:

http://www.villagephotos.com/pubbrowse.asp?folder_id=2083445

I just finished replaying the entire game of Unreal 2, just to see it real 3d. That's a lot more useful than DX10.1 ever was to me when I had a 4850.

Remember when thinking about cooling (and silence) with mid-range GPU's, you need to get a GPU that exhausts it's heat out of the case, or have a case with naturally good airflow; currently you'll pay considerably more for an AMD card that does this (with the stock cooler!), but even the cheapest GTX260 has a quiet exhausting cooler.

The cheapest Radeon HD4870 1GB available (the Sapphire model linked above) does this.

There's nothing wrong with the GeForce GTX260, except that it's too long for my case, but please let the performance of the card stand on its own rather than making up false claims about the competing products.

JustAnEngineer wrote:

The cheapest Radeon HD4870 1GB available (the Sapphire model linked above) does this.

Sorry, but not quite. Notice that the fan is in the middle of the card, and that two of the three heatpipes from underneath are behind the fan- looking at things simply this means that 2/3 of the heat is getting dumped into the case while 1/3 is getting exhausted. It's certainly better than exhausting nothing, but it's also not accomplishing the goal, and doing more harm than good .

And please, if you're going to accuse me of making false claims, send a PM first, that's just silly. If the stock cooled 4870 1GB and GTX260 216 core cards were close to the same price, then they'd be almost equivalent products- there's still more reason to recommend the Nvidia product in my opinion, but even those reasons don't mean that the AMD parts aren't also excellent products. The thing is, proper cooling setup and attention to limiting the amount of noise the parts make are both important to me, and outside of the stock AMD cooler Nvidia has won this round, and this has been noted on TR.

Airmantharp wrote:

Sorry, but not quite. Notice that the fan is in the middle of the card, and that two of the three heatpipes from underneath are behind the fan- looking at things simply this means that 2/3 of the heat is getting dumped into the case while 1/3 is getting exhausted. It's certainly better than exhausting nothing, but it's also not accomplishing the goal, and doing more harm than good .

And please, if you're going to accuse me of making false claims, send a PM first, blah blah blah

The guy OWNS the card he is recommending. If he says the card vents out the case, there's a good chance it vents out the case, or at least does so to the extent that it's good enough to keep the inside of the computer cool.

IMHO JAE is among the most consistently helpful posters these forums have, so you'd do all the new guys looking for advice a favor if you'd just let him do his thing

if you're worried about the slot cooler not doing its job, just grab an exhaust cooling fan for the pci/pcie slot area, they do a good job spitting hot air out the back of the case.
and the 4870 or 260 should be more than adequate for gaming at the moment really, push the speeds up a bit if you grab one and dont feel it pushes what you want. and push up the fan speed also by a reasonable amount

Airmantharp probably wanted to say "that specific flavor of the 4870..."

In truth, when the fan on my Sapphire HD4870 1GB card spins up above 55%, it becomes audible above the other (fairly quiet) components in my system. It's not an annoying high-pitched whine, but it's definitely noticeable. I still haven't messed around with custom fan settings to adjust the cooling versus noise. The simplest thing might be to set the fan at a constant 55% in Catalyst Control Center and just monitor temperatures to see how hot it might get.

morphine wrote:

Airmantharp probably wanted to say "that specific flavor of the 4870..."

I mean to say every specific flavor that does not fully exhaust out, meaning that it doesn't throw any air used for cooling back into the case by design. A quick check through Newegg or anywhere else will reveal a total of two flavors that satisfy those requirements, those being cards equipped with the stock AMD cooler and those equipped with the ICEQ4 HSF. I disqualify the ICEQ4 flavor based on complaints of it being loud, which you do not see on ones using the stock cooler. Thus, to satisfy the requirement that the cooler on the card be both quiet and exhaust the excessive amount of heat it produces out of the case, I can only recommend AMD 4870 based products that have the stock cooler; that's the only thing that I would put in my case. I will also point out, as I mentioned above, that the venting doesn't matter if you have a case that does the venting for you, and if so you probably don't care about noise, but maybe you do. My post is simply to inform the OP of the options available, and the consequences of various decisions.

Personally, when it came down for me to make a similar purchase, I wound up going with the GTX260. And even without considering all of the reasons to pick Nvidia, not that they all apply, the fact remains that getting equivalent total performance from an AMD product right now costs $60 more. I can't see how that would be overlooked, that's the price of good RAM.

This is really interesting. The last mini round AMD choose lower fan speeds at the expense of heat and they got blasted for the high temps. So this time around AMD bumped the speeds and now they are blasted for noisy cards. OTOH Nvidia is now slowing down their fans and they are praised for quieter operation.

Rose-coloured glasses? RDF? This is one of those questions that we will never really know the answer. Any attempts to find an answer will probably ignite the Next Great Fanboy Wars^TM so please don't.

I couldn't figure out a logical reason for people to complain about how hot the 48x0 series got, except that if they start hot then they won't overclock well. Crybabies. Left alone they are excellent cards, and I credit AMD's excellent job with the performance of these cards to myself being able to purchase my current GTX260 1.5 years after I purchased my 8800GTS 640MB, for 2/3rd the price and over twice the performance. Competition is good. And while I do find the performance of that series appealing, what I did not find appealing was that AMD's partners went out of their way to yank the excellent stock coolers off of the 4870's I was looking at and replace them with coolers that vent into the case! These cards are hot, and I'm using a well insulated Antec P180, for the sake of noise reduction. I didn't want a loud card, I'd never heard my 8800GTS, and I didn't want something that would heat up the case either; and I didn't want to pay extra to get the stock cooler on the AMD card! I guess AMD's partners are buying these things cheaper sans cooler and pricing them competitively with the GTX260's; I just wish they'd do it with coolers that surpassed the stock one they are foregoing.

GeForce GTX260 is comparable in performance with Radeon HD4870 1GB, not Radeon HD4890. GTX275 is comparable to Radeon HD4890.
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15651
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/16681

JustAnEngineer wrote:

GeForce GTX260 is comparable in performance with Radeon HD4870 1GB, not Radeon HD4890. GTX275 is comparable to Radeon HD4890.
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/15651
http://www.techreport.com/articles.x/16681

I agree there are some games where the 4890 offers noticeably better performance. However, it costs more (especially now that the Ewiz 3 way rebate deal is dead) and it doesn't offer some features that the GTX260 offers.

I've already mentioned some of those, I could have went on with ambient occlusion, better transparency AA quality, better functioning CSAA (last I checked ATi's version had pretty uneven performance, correct me if I'm wrong now), and more angles filtered for AF.

"Now, with triple the fanaticism!" EDIT: Nevermind, someone cleaned up the triple post.


For the OP: Look at the TR reviews ( http://www.techreport.com/gpu/ ) to compare performance, then compare prices. Do note that several of the TR reviewed cards are factory-overclocked models, which may or may not be the best-priced cards that you find at your favorite e-tailer. You should not be disappointed with a Radeon HD4850, Radeon HD4870, GeForce GTX260, Radeon HD4890 or GeForce GTX275, in the $100-$275 range.

Brian_S wrote:

I agree there are some games where the 4890 offers noticeably better performance. However, it costs more (especially now that the Ewiz 3 way rebate deal is dead) and it doesn't offer some features that the GTX260 offers.

... which 0.0001% of people care about. Like, you know, DX 10.1. Or Brook. Or hardware-accelerated Havok, just around the corner.

Brian_S wrote:

I could have went on with ambient occlusion

Only useable if the game runs stupidly fast already, as the performance hit vs. image quality improvement ratio isn't pleasant at all.

Brian_S wrote:

better transparency AA quality, better functioning CSAA (last I checked ATi's version had pretty uneven performance, correct me if I'm wrong now), and more angles filtered for AF.

Proof. As usual, I'm smelling a lot of FUD from your part.