Vid card advice: ~ok to lock now~

Jaded

My Gforce 8800 just crapped itself out this weekend and I find myself in need of a new video card. I'm a WoW'er only... ok, I play Civ3 occasionally too.
Anyone have some suggestions for a card around 250$ Canadian?

Mods: Please feel free to lock

Dman

It turns out I'm lazy and haven't been paying attention to video cards since I got mine.

Here be video cards:

http://www.newegg.ca/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2000380048%204018&name=%24200%20-%20%24300

I play WoW with a 9800gtx and it rocks but it looks like $250 can get you something even better.

wunderbar

Dont' buy from newegg.ca

go to ncix.com, since they're actually based in Canada they don't rape you on shipping costs.

anyway, I'd look for an ATI Radeon HD 4870, which can be had for as little as $200. If you can swing an extra $20, you can get a 4890 for the $260-$270 range.

Topweasel

I would look at an ATI Radeon 4890 or a Geforce 285GTX. They are probably the best bang for the buck at near high end performance. You could do better but the the prices start to jump a lot more then the performance.

Jaded

So I found a card I wanted. The Sapphire Toxic edition...
However, upon openning my case... a 375W power supply... everything I've seen suggests 450W minimum power... so I go down to the shop I get my parts from... because I am running a dell they have to order the power supply...

3 - 8 days until it arrives...

My death knight wails in anguish.

I was told something about pin placement on the power supply could fuck up my compy if I just got a generic power supply and installed it... any validity to this?

Tofystedeth

Depends on what your compy is. If it is an older prebuilt one, sometimes those have non-standard pins. I've heard of such thing happening, but not actually come across. Most of my non-standard runnins have been with fasteners and placement.

But wow, a 250$ graphics card? You can get one for about $100(US) that'd run WoW and Civ on probably the highest settings. Simultaneously. WoW isn't terribly demanding. Though I admit I haven't played CiV4.

My 70$ one ran it on high settings just fine until my shitty motherboard crapped out.

Scrublet

I was running WoW on an old Nvidia 7900GT and an AMD Athlon XP 3800+ with 1GB of DDR2. With this hardware I was running at 1920x1080 with full graphics and 4xAA. Never had any frame rate issues. My guess is one of the cheaper new AMD cards like the 4850 would blow you away.

Jaded

The downside is that I have just about 520$ of instore credit where I go... so I'd like to get rid of some of it. Tell me... if I picked up the video card and ran it on my 375W supply until the new power supply arrived, what would happen?

Tofystedeth

It might work. It might not work.
It might work poorly. It all kind of depends on if your crappy one is still sufficient, or barely insufficient or whatever.

As for the in store credit:
I've found the best way to get rid of that is
<-Internet strangers.

Jaded

Would the video card be in danger of becoming unusable?
That is my main concern. I -could- go 10 more days without wow.
But you know how it is... dailies, rep grind, raid... etc etc

Tofystedeth

I'd say its more likely to make your PSU unusable than anything. But I say this from the standpoint of someone for whom electricity comes from the magic hole in the wall. I plug my stuff in there and it makes them work.

Scrublet

If you buy a video card that outshines your PSU, your computer will "randomly" reboot. Depending on how good your PSU is at putting amps over the 12V line, and how big a card you buy, you might only experience the reboots during heavy game loads, or it might happen during startup. I can't imagine this being good for the hardware. It's definitely not good for the software.

Topweasel

If you have that much in store get the 600W+ BFG power supply or something. You are seriously going to need it.

Veitsev

If you have that much store credit go buy the power supply. You can get a really nice one in store for around $100. Your power supply is no where near enough for that card. My 4850 (I am assuming this is what you are talking about when you mean Sapphire Toxic) killed my cheap 500 watt PSU. I ended up getting a BFG 650 for a little under $100. Works great. Dont' think you can just skimp out on the PSU. It really is not worth it. You will be able to run the computer but its going to have trouble any time you do something excessive. After my PSU was fucked I had to unplug the CD drives and other accessories just to get it to start. Also make sure you have more than enough cooling and airflow, because that card is huge.

Jaded

The store had to special order a PSU for me... as stated above they were concerned about pin placement. I'm taking it easy until I get a power supply that will adequately power my card. Thank you for all your help H/A, as always it's been a pleasure, and informative!

Mods: Please lock

Neyla

Tofystedeth wrote: »

As for the in store credit:
I've found the best way to get rid of that is
<-Internet strangers.

Don't worry, I have that covered

PeregrineFalcon

Jaded wrote: »

The store had to special order a PSU for me... as stated above they were concerned about pin placement. I'm taking it easy until I get a power supply that will adequately power my card. Thank you for all your help H/A, as always it's been a pleasure, and informative!

Mods: Please lock

Unless you have a seriously old Dell I raise an eyebrow at the "special power supply required" bit ... I'm pretty sure Dell switched to the standard ATX PSU a few years back.

urahonky

PeregrineFalcon wrote: »

Jaded wrote: »

The store had to special order a PSU for me... as stated above they were concerned about pin placement. I'm taking it easy until I get a power supply that will adequately power my card. Thank you for all your help H/A, as always it's been a pleasure, and informative!

Mods: Please lock

Unless you have a seriously old Dell I raise an eyebrow at the "special power supply required" bit ... I'm pretty sure Dell switched to the standard ATX PSU a few years back.

Could be a smaller case PSU.

PeregrineFalcon

urahonky wrote: »

Could be a smaller case PSU.

as stated above they were concerned about pin placement

I'm just a bit worried that he'll get his new upgraded PSU, plug it in, and it will let the Magical Blue Smoke out.

Neyla

urahonky wrote: »

PeregrineFalcon wrote: »

Jaded wrote: »

The store had to special order a PSU for me... as stated above they were concerned about pin placement. I'm taking it easy until I get a power supply that will adequately power my card. Thank you for all your help H/A, as always it's been a pleasure, and informative!

Mods: Please lock

Unless you have a seriously old Dell I raise an eyebrow at the "special power supply required" bit ... I'm pretty sure Dell switched to the standard ATX PSU a few years back.

Could be a smaller case PSU.

Well his dell is a XPS/Dimension 410/9200, as per his service tag. And it is only a couple years old (almost 3 i think).

urahonky

Pin placement? What the...

Unless they mean the cable that goes into the motherboard wouldn't be long enough, but that's still strange.