I want a new graphics card

[m4a1]

I have 200 dollars

need a card better than Nvidia 8400gs 512 Vram

Hopefully from ATI OR Nvidia

[aegis]

I'd go with a GTS 250 if you have a monitor resolution smaller than 1920x1080 or a GTX 260 Core 216 if you have a higher-resolution monitor.

[Relative]

I just did a similar upgrade and went for a 260 Core 216. I've been quite happy with the upgrade.

[Master-Athmos]

Well were you sort of satisfied with your recent card or was it just a temporary solution? As the 8400 is a very weak card it would be no use to buy something extremely powerful if you don't need it at all...

So even an ATI HD4670 might be totally sufficent which already is several times faster than your 8400GS. In addition to that what CPU do you have? If it'll become a bottleneck the fastest graphics cards won't do any good anyway...

[Spawn_Retard]

buy a nvidia 9800 x2

just do it.


If you buy a ATI your setting yourself up for problems, even if the performance is better for you money, compatibility is what you want over everything else.


just trust a person who's looked into cards recently, sli a nvidia 9800 x2 if you have money, and you wont have to upgrade for a couple of years.

[Master-Athmos]

Well apart from using SLI to sort of create "one card" with good performance is the wrong way doing it (-> buying one very good card is better than combining two weaker ones for various reasons - mainly SLI being about to get the most performance out of recent technology rather than being an "upgrade option")...

In addition to that your ATI comment is pretty much plain wrong. Especially nowadays where there are no more "big problems" like no shadows with ATI GPUs in Spring there's no excuse to exclude them in the first place (while there was none anyway when not looking just at Spring)...

[MidKnight]

Lots of Spring graphic options work on ATi these days, but as an ATi owner, I have one major complaint: NO SNOW!1!!11!
BAAAAAAAAW!
unrelated: I halfway-fixed the precipitation gadget, will a GL-fu master please come and help me finish the fix? Thank you.

But that's pretty much it. A single gadget used on less than 1% of maps is pretty much the epitome of frustration ATi's going to cause you with spring. NVidia still has nicer drivers though, in my opinion.

[aegis]

buy a nvidia 9800 x2

sli doesn't improve performance in all cases, and you're not gonna need it or a high-powered card unless you have a huge monitor.

9800 is an older card anyway - the gts 250 has the same horsepower as a single one, but is a smaller card and is slightly more efficient.
a dual 9800 will make lots of heat and possibly burn out like my 9800 did :)

I wouldn't get older-model cards at this point in time... if anything, you'll have a problem with epic size.

[imbaczek]

ati is pretty good, actually. i'm a happy 4850 user.

[aegis]

as an ATi owner, I have one major complaint: NO SNOW!1!!11!

ati still isn't *quite* there apparently?
and I've seen more quality cuda stuffs than whatever ati uses... badaboom is way better than ati's encoding utility...

[imbaczek]

the problem with snow is that whoever made the shader didn't test it on ati. it's not really an ati problem that glsl implementations aren't compatible.

(i tried fixing the shader and it blew the driver up tho, but i know next to nothing about glsl)

[aegis]

it's not really an ati problem that glsl implementations aren't compatible.

it's not really an ati problem that they didn't decide to be compatible with nvidia, who had better opengl support for a long time?

[imbaczek]

i don't know who is more compatible with glsl spec. who had better drivers in the past is irrelevant.

[Master-Athmos]

Afaik it's usually not so much about something like compatibility but rather the use of vendor specific operations...

[Caydr]

Radeon 4870 is a good card, it's about $200 or something. It's what I used, until I saw a 4890 on sale for $199, and sold my 4870 for $175 to some tit at work.

Though TBH I would hold on to what you've got until the next round of graphics cards start coming out later this year. It's like buying a car, the best time to get a 2008 is when the 2009 was just released, and it gives you a chance to see if you might want the new 2009 features.

[JohannesH]

How soon will the price of the current cards likely start falling big time, after the "new generation" of cards is out?

[aegis]

prices fall pretty much right before/when new technology is released.

[bobthedinosaur]

SKS... eh eh??

[Master-Athmos]

Well I wouldn't anticipate serious price drops until NVIDIA released their respective chip upgrades countering ATI's which probably won't happen this year though. In addition to that the HD4000 series imo already is cheap as hell when looking at what one vendor's high-end GPUs used to cost...

[Spawn_Retard]

buy a nvidia 9800 x2

sli doesn't improve performance in all cases, and you're not gonna need it or a high-powered card unless you have a huge monitor.

9800 is an older card anyway - the gts 250 has the same horsepower as a single one, but is a smaller card and is slightly more efficient.
a dual 9800 will make lots of heat and possibly burn out like my 9800 did :)

I wouldn't get older-model cards at this point in time... if anything, you'll have a problem with epic size.

Now i had the exact opposite with my gts 250, it burnt out within a few months of having it.

When i bought my 9800 x2 and from using a computer with it SLI'd it felt alot smoother.

I agree about the heat, but why are you buying an expensive computer with high horse power if your not going to either have a good cooling system and or case for the thing.

Yes i know ATI has come along way, but theres still stuff that ATI doesn't support, and its funny when you see people who use them , and turn around and tell me that this particular object wasn't purple all the time, and it was their fail card that was causing problems.