Which 3d card?

[KevinUK]

I'm looking at the £300 range.

Is ATI still the best?

I was going to go with hd4850x2 2gb for per £ performance but then I saw this chart and it is by far the loudest and that is important to me so I would be willing to pay £380 for hd4870x2 2gb for the quieter model.

I'm thinking:

10,000rpm hard drive 300gb Veloci Raptor (with my existing hard drives for music/vids)
E8600 cpu. (I wont worry about getting a cheaper one then overclocking).
4gb ram - need to read up but want to spend £200+ so its fast.

I was going to wait until February but prices are only increasing so I'm gonna order this weekend!

Ebuyer told me the CPU when they next get stock will cost a lot more than the current price and dabs.com says the 4870x2 will soon cost £40 more

 

[Kryten]

Hmm, probably not that accurate re price rises but then again it's their business, they probably know something we don't

Graphics cards are much of a muchness at the moment, the 4870x2 is still a rock performer but probably only worth it if you've a large screen and run at least 1920x1200 resolution. Otherwise I'd probably suggest getting a single card with the view to doubling up (crossfire) later down the line if you need more juice, or a higher end nvidia card like the GTX280. Drivers are getting a little rough from both parties so it's the lesser of two evils - it's anyones guess at the moment


Hehe, just realised, not seen them called "3d cards" for bloody years

 

[SheepCow]

Makes me want to get my Voodoo Banshee out the drawer!

 

[nath]

Where's my Power VR? I wanna play Ultim@te Race!

 

[Kryten]

Nath, that's out of order - now you're just twanging the parts of my brain that wants to play old games :| Loved Ultimate Race, but not nearly as much as Motorhead

 

[KevinUK]

Well back in my day we had the option of 2 or 3d, not like now a days with no choice!

Considering my monitor is 1680x1050 I'll go with 4870 1gb. This chart shows they all seem to perform the same apart from silly high resolutions which only give 30fps in far cry 2 anyway.

Far Cry 2 PC VGA Graphics performance review

 

[Yaka]

ati are still like creative in making shit drivers tho

 

[Helme]

Thats odd, I haven't had any problems with my 4850 and Catalyst.

 

[Kryten]

They're no worse than nVidia, in fact for the last few months they've been far ahead of Nvidia in the software side.
2 evils, lesser of.

 

[Bodhi]

The nVidia drivers for my laptop are fucking shit. If I ever get a BSOD it's cos of the dogwank 9600M GS driver.


That is all.

 

[Kryten]

I have nothing more to add on the subject, however just thought I'd point out that for some unknown and moronically childish reason, I found the word "dogwank" hilarious :|

Almost as funny as "moist".

 

[kirennia]

The nVidia drivers for my laptop are fucking shit. If I ever get a BSOD it's cos of the dogwank 9600M GS driver.


That is all.

I haven't even been able to find any for my 8600M :/ Other then really obscure ones...

 

[Embattle]

A rather annoying recent trend seems to be Nvidia passing the driver updates to manufacturers of laptops and letting them release them, thus they don't provide a universal version of the driver and in turn this means even slower updates.

 

[Embattle]

Ironically they've just changed it - Notebook Drivers

 

[Yaka]

A rather annoying recent trend seems to be Nvidia passing the driver updates to manufacturers of laptops and letting them release them, thus they don't provide a universal version of the driver and in turn this means even slower updates.

think the main reason for it was pretty much every lappy manufacturer was not following nvidias reference design and using components that caused issues with thier mobile chips.

 

[kirennia]

Ironically they've just changed it - Notebook Drivers

Lil bump but thanks for pointing this out