Dagnabit!
I decided to buy a couple games recently only to find my video card is not quite up to par. So, I hunkered down and went through a bazillion reviews/specs/models and came up with an XFX Radeon HD4870. I have always had good experiences with ATi stuff….any hardcore nVidia people out there? The new 250-260 looks pretty too. I’m also borderline on my PSU, but I’ll see what happens…these cards are pulling over 200W under loads. Any McCrappiacs out there done hardware upgrades recently with any input?
UPDATE:
New Video Card
As you can see, I’ve upgraded…a bit.
Categories: DaCunha
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Last time I thought about upgrading my PC to play games I bought an Xbox 360. I’ve been pretty happy so far.
I have a Sapphire Radeon HD4870 and the thing is a monster. I can play Crysis, Burnout:Paradise and Fallout 3 at the highest settings and it is silky-smooth with absolutely no stutter. I highly recommend it!
Sweet, since I just ordered my Radeon HD4870….lol. Thanks for the confidence in my decision. I went with the XFX, 512mb version. I was reading the XFX runs a little cooler than the Sapphire and has a lifetime warranty, instead of 60 days, but otherwise the same card. You get the 1gb, or 512? And how is your PSU, did you have to upgrade?
So I’m split. Like Steve I’ve drastically shifted my gaming away from the PC. MMO’s and some RTS/FPS games here and there, but I’d say 90% of my gaming is console based.
That being said, the last round of new cards converted me from ATI to nVidia. I was a diehard ATI person up until the x800 round. that was the last card I bought. Still a great card, but after that a lot of the game companies started going into special DX10 development deals with nVidia where if they used the specific hooks into the physics engine and graphics card they got free dev stuff. ATI is still solid from what I understand, but I’ve been very happy with the 9800 GTS cards in my current gaming rig. Its been about a year though, so I’m not up on the most current round of tech.
Last note. last I heard XFire only supported a max of 2 cards, but the nVidia SLI was up to 3, 4 or even more cards.
I forgot about a reason recently that kinda made me wish I had gotten an NVIDIA card bcak in December… 3D gaming!
http://www.nvidia.com/object/GeForce_3D_Vision_Main.html
Cheeks – You can run 4 in Xfire.
Dizzle – Yeah, the 120hz monitor is the bottleneck for me atm. Although definitely worth the wait until the next upgrade. That is an impressive 3D games list too.
I eagerly await the release of 3d movies for home. I will definitely buy a 120hz TV for that. However right now, there are only a couple titles in HD/BlueRay from what I read online, and they are kids movies (SpyKids and the like).
Gimme Star Wars, LotR, Beowulf, etc and I’m in.
I’m a sucker for 3D movies. I just saw ‘Up’ a few weeks ago and I never get over how cool the 3D effect is. Every 20 minutes or so I would close one eye, think ‘yeah this is pretty cool’, then open it to see how amazing the effect is compared to 2D.
@Dacunha
Ah ok that’s new then. It was definitely a difference at the time I bought my newest gaming system last spring. Like I said I stopped paying attention when I got my system, I have another year or two until I need a couple of new graphics cards.
hey, JD, that was my first 3D movie as well, i wasn’t disappointed at all. I thought the effect could be annoying, or even worse give me a headache, but NOPE it was awesome.
great movie, plus or minus the 3D.
Yeah, ‘Up’ was awesome.
I like ATI because they are owned by AMD, and I like supporting the underdog when there are just two x86 processor manufacturers. Obviously that aspect has nothing to do with graphics and such.
In terms of the 15+ video cards I have owned, ATI cards have always produced more vivid colors in my opinion.
Also, for GNU/Linux users:
AMD releases a new Linux driver once a month. While it isn’t open source, at least they have a rigid update schedule. Nvidia’s binary driver has had tons of bugs for the last 2.5 years while I have seen at least three fixed in the last two ATI updates.