Old high end card or new mid range?

ktec

ktec

New Member
So Im having a tough time deciphering between all the graphic card lingo and I cant decide on what to upgrade to. Current card is a 5450 (:o) with 80 stream processor and 1gb.

I want to stay around $50-60 but want to have high FPS on unreal3, left4dead2 with high settings. I want to play black-ops too with medium settings.

I dont know if I should go with an older gen card like a Radeon 3850 or 4770 or 4890 OR get a newer Radeon 5570. I'm completely lost on Nvidia card names so dont know where to look there.
 
I wouldn't expect high fps in most cards in that price range. I suppose it's possible, but not in those games where the video card is the more important component. If it's mainly based on how good your cpu is, you might be able to get away with good fps on low or medium settings if you are running a modest resolution on your monitor. It's a good idea to get a more recent card- if nothing else you can take advantage of dx11, better cooling, and driver improvements. However, if it was top end and it's now outdated you might get a great bang for the buck. It's still a good product, it's just marked down cause they replaced the series with it's bigger brother.
 
Russ88765 said:
I wouldn't expect high fps in most cards in that price range. I suppose it's possible, but not in those games where the video card is the more important component. If it's mainly based on how good your cpu is, you might be able to get away with good fps on low or medium settings if you are running a modest resolution on your monitor. It's a good idea to get a more recent card- if nothing else you can take advantage of dx11, better cooling, and driver improvements. However, if it was top end and it's now outdated you might get a great bang for the buck. It's still a good product, it's just marked down cause they replaced the series with it's bigger brother.
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THAT'S exactly what im going for.
 
Also a used 4870 is on sale on the forum itself for $70.
That card is really good.You can check it out if you are into used cards.
 
meh, the 4870 sucks way more juice than a 4850 but isn't that much more powerful. The 4850 only needs a single 6 pin power cable, 4870 needs two.

They both have 800 stream processors, the 4870 just has more memory bandwidth which only matters if you're playing with decently high resolution (1920x1080 or higher).
 
He has a 550W PSU of a decent brand.So he is not short on power.An HD4870 is better performer than the HD4850.
And if he is ok with a used card then that would be a good deal but if he is not that bent upon Used cards then the HD4850 or the GTS 250 would be the way to go.
 
No one is arguing that it's not the stronger card, I'm just saying it's not THAT much stronger to warrant the extra price, power consumption, and massive heat that'll come along with it.
 
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