Suggestions for upgrading my 8800GT

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rmdl51

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Hello!

I'm finally ready to upgrade my 8800GT, I was recommended to get the HD4870, I was looking into the GTX 260 but a lot of people told me I should get the 1GB version of the HD4870 specially since I'm upgrading to a 24" monitor.

I'm mostly looking for opinions and/or suggestions before making a purchase, I should mention my motherboard is Crossfire and not SLI, not that I'm doing two video cards soon but just want to bring that up.

Which card out there have the best performance without braking the bank, my budget is $180-200 for video card, and as for games, well, as long as it plays Crysis with decent FPS I'm ok.

Thanks for your help
 
Why subjective? Well I think I know I should be more specific but I was just trying to give you an idea of what I was looking for, I've run crysis with my 8800GT under XP (meaning DX9) smoothly, I don't know if the HD4870 does not give "stellar" improvements.. which one would do? I'm just willing to know my options.

Oh, i forgot, I have a 500w Antec Dual 12v with 18A each
 
what are your system specs seems you might have a bottleneck going to that res anyways yeah i recommend a 4870 they are cheap and very powerful and will do that monitor justice and later when they go down even further in price you can get a second one and crossfire them.
 
work that CF board

hey RM,
i would like to present you with a different option. you know what crossfire boards are for right???....crossfiring. I am recommending this from experience, i just built this system for myself and it is fantastic. the best performance per dollar available. Crossfire two HD 4830's. they can be had for $89.00 each and free shipping at newegg. http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102822 this config will blow the doors off a hd 4870, and check out this review,and how close it stays with a HD 4870x2 .heres the link: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/4830-radeon-crossfire,2098-7.html. these cards are really phenomenal. add to this that since this report for example, the revised drivers have added better than 20% performance to what you see on this review. as I said i am currently running two 4830's in crossfire and running Crisis at 43fps at 1900x1200 highest settings DX9. I have added a third card for a 3x4830 CFX and that will be activated when i install Vista this week. just an idea, fits your budget, and it will out perform a HD 4870. and you can most likely power it with your current antec 500w. if you want more details, please let me know. good luck:) oh ,and to show ya that my money is where my rather large mouth is, :) heres a pic of my setup
https://www.techspot.com/gallery/showphoto.php/photo/3414
 
lol 2 4830s suck compared to 1 or even 2 4870s man also 1 highend card is always better than 2 lower end cards . the 4830 is basically atis equiv to the 8800gt lol so you would barely notice a diff 4830s are nice but look more to the future the 4830s dont use ddr5 like the 4870 nor do they have 1gb or ram.
 
lol alot of the sites also show 2 4830s maybe at most 10fps fastter than 1 4870 at the same resolution and like i said a 4830 is basically an 8800gt just atis version trust me i have a 4870 in one of my machines and i had an 8800gt so i know the difference ok.
 
lol i looked at the post you made about the benchmarks in there they also say that the video cards are cpu bottle necked and that was a 4870 x2 which is clocked lower than a reg 4870 and there is also driver updates since those benchmarks were mad. in the other one they also say 2 4830s perform like 1 4870 1gb model so hmmm i wonder which is better especially in the long run.
 
klepto12 said:
lol 2 4830s suck compared to 1 or even 2 4870s man also 1 highend card is always better than 2 lower end cards . the 4830 is basically atis equiv to the 8800gt lol so you would barely notice a diff 4830s are nice but look more to the future the 4830s dont use ddr5 like the 4870 nor do they have 1gb or ram.
Click to expand...
Huh? Two HD 4870s are nowhere near comparable to two HD 4830s, since the price difference is extremely large. As for a single high-end card being better than two mid-range cards, that is true, however the gain from using two HD 4830s is evident on almost every game out there and they produce less heat compared to a single HD 4870, but need more space. So it's more or less a toss-up.

And as for barely noticing a difference, that is pure BS. There will be a very noticeable difference in performance. Lastly, you get 9500GTs with 1GB of RAM, that does not necessarily make it better than an HD 4670 with 512MB of RAM.

Most of the time, I've seen average performance to double when you add a second HD 4830. That is incredible value for money IMO. But if you have case constraints, then an HD 4870 will be better.

Power will not be a problem.
 
Well he wasnt asking for crossfire anyways he said whats the best upgrade i think 1 4870 is a better investment than 2 4830s especially since not every game uses crossfire to the fullest. Also 2 4870s are far superior to two 4830s i know you said price wise but i would go the 4870 route which is alot more future proof.
 
uhhh yeah i own a 4870 as well klepto, first off, thats not what the benchmarks say, they sayt that 2-4830's outperform a 4870, secondly, whats your point about the 4870x2? of course it outperforms 2x4830's i did not claim it didnt, its also twice the money. thirdly, and again 2x4830's do out perform a 4870, and RM said he has 200 to spend...and i assume he would like to game while waiting for 4870 prices to drop. the toms hardware review is comparing the dual 4830's to a 4870x2....not a 4870, and secondly, this is what MVtech said when they did bench 2x4830's against a 4870 1gb

MVtech quote:

"If you want to have a setup that surpasses in most cases the 4870 1GB, have less noise than the standard 4870 cooling setup and have a lot of room for overclocking, I highly recommend this 4830 Crossfire solution."

so i have no idea what you are talking about. i dont have a problem with your differing opinion, just your delivery when someone is asking for help,you said " lol 2 4830s suck"....... great analysis. this is about RM and getting the most performance for the $200 he wants to spend. if he said he wanted to spend $500, then I would say get the 4870x2,but he does not....he has $200 to spend. and i have no idea why you think 1gb,or ddr5 is more "future like' than crossfire technology.
so back to RM. a 2x 4830 setup fits his budget,it fits his motherboard, out performs a hd 4870 , has less heat, more OC headroom, he can keep his current PSU,and it is the best cost/performance out there. so I dont think a 4870 "sucks", just that a 2x 4830 CF is a higher performing option.
 
Thank you everybody for all your input,

Well my specs are in my signature, I have a Q6600 on an ASUS P5K-E, I'll be upgrading my memory from 2GB DDR2-800 to 4GB DDR2-1066, my monitor and my video card, everything else I've made up my mind but for video card I'm still looking, that's why I asked you...

I think even the 2x 4830 outperforms the 4870 I would like to think on the future if I ever want to use crossfire with 2x 4870, If I choose 2x 4830 my motherboard would be full and I would need to buy another two cards to make an upgrade, if I go with one 4870 it would be easier to just add another 4870 in the future.

However I'm not discarding the option of 2x 4830 if in the coming days there's a sale on any of the mentioned cards I'll grab the best deal.

One more thing to consider is my current case would have fitting problems for a second video card, my hard drives are on the way for a second card, so if going with crossfire I would need a new case.
 
Then I believe an HD 4870 is your best bet, although you should make sure it will fit comfortably in your case since it is pretty long.

Either that or grab a new case as well. :)
 
Yes if im right the 8800gt is 9in long and the 4870 is 10.5 in. Also the only reason i was saying 2 4830s suck is im not a fan of duel video card setups there always seems to be something that goes wrong or some stupid driver problem im sorry i came off as such a ***** i wasnt meaning anything by it. In building all the computers ive built i have come to the conclusion that 1 high end card is better than two mid or low end cards in most cases. Also alot of 4870s are under $200 now so no reason to not grab 1.
 
thats true Klepto if ya want to keep the second slot open to. if you build alot of systems with 3-4 pcie slots, you might revisit CF if you havent of late, and it fits the need, the drivers have really come a long way.
 
Why subjective? Well I think I know I should be more specific but I was just trying to give you an idea of what I was looking for, I've run crysis with my 8800GT under XP (meaning DX9) smoothly, I don't know if the HD4870 does not give "stellar" improvements.. which one would do? I'm just willing to know my options.

Oh, i forgot, I have a 500w Antec Dual 12v with 18A each
Click to expand...
What i meant was what range of framerates and the settings, and what i meant under that is the 8800gt is a pretty good card so you would not see quite as much difference between integrated graphics and an actual card.

I still think you should go with the Saphire 4870 1gb I mentioned above, your power supply should be good enough, by a small margin.
 
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