GeForce/Radeon purchasing options...

Ryodin

New Member
The computer I recently bought is pretty much outright ridiculous, except it has an integrated graphics chip (GeForce 6150SE). Therefor I am replacing it. I'm considering going with Nvidia's 9800GTX+, Sapphire Radeon HD 3650 (1Gb GDDR2 version), Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 (currently what I'm thinking of getting). I have bad blood with Nvidia honestly, I had a 6800 Ultra and it just went all kinds of wrong on me. From what I hear the 4850 has some heating issues caused by the fan being set too low (correctable). So that isn't _much_ of an issue for me.
I'm also considering getting more than one card and utilizing the crossfire/SLI option. I don't know, however, whether I could crossfire the 3650 and 4850 without problems. The 4850 outperforms the 3650, but the 3650 is much cheaper and has 1gb memory...
Long story short- opinions?
 
Radeon 4850. There. Yes, they have heating problems but that's because the automatic fan control is no good, earlier or later they're going to release a driver update that fixes it. The 3650 is no match against either of the other cards you posted, the 1gig of VRAM ain't going to help, esp. when it'sG DDR2. General consensus is that 4850/4870 are currently some of the best performance-for-value high-end cards. Out of the ones you posted, though, 4850 would be the way to go.
 
single 4850 imo... price is good, power consumption is ok, and all your games will play on high settings (for the most part). if you really want fps go with a single 4870, but make sure you psu has two 6-pin pci-e connectors because the 4870 consumes a good bit of power. its the best card on the market imo, even just because it handles AA better than any other card.

they call 4870 the best quality graphics card (for high settings and lots of processing power) and the 4850 the "value king" lol. for some reason nvidia is charging a ridiculous amount of money for the gtx 280 just because it gets higher benchmarks without AA and AF.. but who in their right mind doesnt want to run those settings by getting a CHEAPER card? lol
 
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