Well,my 7800GTX has died and I’m trying to decide on a new card to buy.Problem is that I’ve been out of the loop for a while(haven’t upgraded since December 2005).I’m on an $150 budget and I’ve narrowed my options down to two cards.
And
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130469
Which card is better or do you recommend a different card all together?
2nd one. You have at least a 500w power supply right? Its energy hungry.
Yeah.I have a 750w.
of the two choices given i would recommend the GTX 260, if you are not a bit weary of the “Recertified” tag; personally i would prefer a 4870 over both.
I would recomend a Gigabyte GTX-26OC PCI-e card.
get the 260 if your psu has 2 6-pin pci-e connectors and enough amps on the 12v rail to power it. using the molex to pci-e adaptors can prove troublesome if there isn’t enough amps to power the thing in the first place (hangups, artifacts, crashes, bsod, blah blah).
also, stick with evga or bfg, please. lifetime warranty = why the hell not?
EDIT: didn’t notice you had a “recertified” gtx 260 up there. not eligible for their lifetime warranty. your rig is a bit old, putting in question your psu’s ability to feed enough power to a gtx260. just get the gts250, it’s still a gigantic step up from your old pos card (i mean that in a good way).
I’d go with the 260 myself. The 4870 as Moose mentioned is also a strong contender but from my experience and the benchmarks I’ve seen, the 4870 is a tad slower than the 260.
If it matters to you, the 260 also runs cooler than the 4870. I dug up one review between the two and in their tests, (Techgage is the site) the Nvidia chip ran under load at 68.5C while the 4870 was rocking a blistering 83C.
I would add that I would not buy the 250 period. All it is is a rebadged 9800 gtx+. Not a bad graphics card by any means but it won’t be as powerful as the 260.
Btw, what brand is your psu? If it’s a good brand/80+ rated you should be fine with the 260. Plus, between the 250 and 260, the power consumption difference is almost negligible (237 vs 260 at load and 167 vs 176 at idle). If your psu has problems with one, well, the other will be dangerously close to causing problems as well.
Hope the helps out!
260 core 216 superclocked is 189.99 GOGOGOGOGOGOGo
his rig is back from '05, unless the psu has been replaced since then, i say it’s not worth even bothering trying to run a 260 or 4870.
What’s your cpu like?
What generation, clockspeed…
Um, just to double check.
You’re looking at a gtx 260 (800 something ram) and a gtx 250 with 1gb ram?
The 260 is cheaper?
The 260 is a better card than the 250, without a doubt.
While the 250 in question has (slightly) more ram, it wouldn’t be of any use.
If you’re playing at a high enough resolution to actually utilize the extra ram on the 250, the game you’re playing will be graphically intensive enough to yield better results with the faster gtx 260.
The 260 simply has a faster core with more stream procs. The memory is faster too, if I’m not mistaken.
Now, depending on the age of your cpu, it might bottleneck the performance of the 260, so I can’t yet fully recommend a card.
I would certainly recommend the 260 over the 250, especially if it’s cheaper.
Hope that helps,
-JD
That’s something I was worried about.
I’m running a 2.2GHz Athlon 64 3500+ and my motherboard only supports socket 939.In order to upgrade,I’d have to buy a new motherboard.
They have both versions of socket 939 - AGP or PCIe. However if you must upgrade, then I suggest buying a new computer from a vendor with coupon and upgrading the video card. This will enable you to get a bargain price computer while allowing you to have a new windows 7 licence (free upgrade from vista).
If you purchase Windows 7 separate from hardware, then you have lot to pay for. You may like windows XP, but you know its going out of support… And windows 7 beta was much more stable than vista to boot… Windows 7 came out already for technet subscribers, and for non-subscribers it would be next month for release.
Consider this purchase and upgrading the video card.
I just wanted to add - please register your BFG as soon as you get it for lifetime warranty else if you don’t, you probably have more like 30 day or 90 warranty. Only through registration you will receive lifetime support (lifetime of the product while it is produced - if you read the fine print).
For eVGA I’m not sure what the deal is.\
:tup: