recommend me a vidja card please.

fadingathedges

I looked through the first 3 pages and didn't see a dedicated video card thread, sorry if I missed it.

I'm way out of the loop on this - I don't even know what's what. My current card is bioshock1 era, an EVGA 8800GTS. I want a good, reasonably priced card to run Starcraft2, Mount and Blade with lots of mans, and have a reasonable length of time before I need a new upgrade.

I'm hoping to spend under $150 this time around but if there is a good value in spending more than that I'm open to it.

ATi cards have annoyed me in the past so I'd like to stick with nVidia. I'm probably buying from newegg.

Thanks in advance


e~ Two possibly related additional questions:
Is there a use for my old card once I have a new one? Pretty sure I've got two slots.

What is PhysX?

lowlylowlycook

Well if you want a reasonably up to date NVidia card for $150 you'll be waiting around for a while.

For ATI, I'd say you want a 5770.

fadingathedges

Will I hate you/my life if I give ATi another go? ;p In the past I could rely on driver issues cropping up periodically with my ATi's. I heard that used to be pretty common for ATi cards but that they had gotten their shit together... once bitten though...


e~

I followed the link in your sig, are the nVidia 260's worth the $50 jump over a 5770?

lowlylowlycook

The main thing people complain about is the lack of a Nhancer(sp) kind of utility that can be used to run profiles for each game automatically. I think they are probably as stable as NVidia's now.

fadingathedges

Thank you for the input.


I'm lookin at this guy: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133270

It's only about $25 more than the ATi I would likely have picked from the page you linked.


This still on my mind as well:

Is there a use for my old card once I have a new one? Pretty sure I've got two slots.

What is PhysX?

vonPoonBurGer

You'd be spending $25 more for the same performance, but if you really feel you must...

fadingathedges wrote: »

What is PhysX?

Nvidia's proprietary hardware-accelerated physics engine (formerly being developed by a company of the same name, which was later bought out by Nvidia). Supported by a bunch of games. Won't work without hax if you've got any ATI hardware, because the latest drivers check for the presence of ATI hardware and disable the hardware-accelerated physics if it's found. Strikes me as a silly goose-ish move on Nvidia's part, and (a small) part of the reason I'm likely to switch brands on my next GPU purchase.

fadingathedges

How often could that possibly come up? I can't really even be annoyed by the principle.

It sounds like you need mixed ATi and nVidia bits in one system to run into that... and if you have more than one GPU, why? SLI or something, most likely, which means you need pretty analogous cards anyhow.

Maybe if you had an on-board ATi there would be a legitimate gripe.


Anyhow - thank you guys for the info, I think I'll spend the $25 for the security blanket factor... plus nVidia hasn't ever burnt me, so I feel like continuing to support them is a good thing.

lowlylowlycook

fadingathedges wrote: »

Thank you for the input.


I'm lookin at this guy: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133270

It's only about $25 more than the ATi I would likely have picked from the page you linked.


This still on my mind as well:

Is there a use for my old card once I have a new one? Pretty sure I've got two slots.

What is PhysX?

Well 260s were sometimes selling for under $150 back when they were competitive cards so I don't know why you'd pay $200 for one not in stock now. Anyway those cards are decent but don't have DX11 and don't have the very nice idle power consumption of ATI's newest cards.

Also make sure your PSU is up to running it. It should have 2 PCI-E connectors.

Stormwatcher

ATI has a much better Bang/Your Buck ratio.
And their drivers have been better lately AFAIK. I've read many times how people should rollback the latest nVidia drivers in order to run some new game, and that didn't happen to ATI at least ever since I got a 4850 2 years ago (was it 2 years already?). There was also a "make the cooling fan stop working completely) bug this past month in nvidia drivers.

You can make different config profiles (including fan speeds, AA on or off, so on) on the Catalyst Control Center and activate them with a hotkey combo (say, alt+Shift+a for AA on). I used to do that a lot.

Dark Shroud

ATI has a schedule of updating their drivers monthly for bugs & performance.

The rumor mill also has it that ATI will also have game XML profile downloads available from their site for when new games come out. To tell their control center how to best run the game.

fadingathedges

I went with this 5770, thanks again for all the advice.

Dark Shroud

fadingathedges wrote: »

I went with this 5770, thanks again for all the advice.

That's a very good choice. The Hawk is a little over clocking monster.

vonPoonBurGer

fadingathedges wrote: »

How often could that possibly come up? I can't really even be annoyed by the principle.

It sounds like you need mixed ATi and nVidia bits in one system to run into that... and if you have more than one GPU, why?

Because you can use the second GPU as a dedicated physics card so you don't take a framerate hit by running graphics and physics on the primary GPU. Unless you just decided to switch brands, in which case Nvidia is going out of their way to screw with you.