Need a New Card, and is it reliable to buy off of ebay?

[zerkz]

Hello all,

Just built a system with a unlocked Caliisto Phenom II X2 (into 4 cores, at 3.2 ghz), with OCZ DDR3 1600 4 GB's of Ram, and a single slot 16X PCI express Asrock Mobo.

Anyways, I'm a somewhat heavy gamer. I do alot of WoW (Yes, low spec game, but try running above 30-40 in a Wintergrasp match), Will do alot of Diablo 3, want to beat Metro 2033, and perhaps a few other high end games.

I've been slaving away at walmart, so my paycheck should be 500$, but I'm not willing to spend more then half of it (I have to save for some other things when College semester rolls back around).

So Budget is 200$ - 250$

Preferences :
Durable
Overclock-power
Equality in terms to the CPU/RAM (I want to try and make my parts somewhat equal, as to not form a bottleneck)
GOOD drivers (I'm not a honest fan of ATI's drivers, or Catalyst)


I notice that the GTX 260 falls within that range, but I was looking for something a bit more advanced, like direct X 11 for example. Fermi's are simply too expensive for me (unless I could find a cheaper one on Ebay).

Note: I saw a particular 5850 Radeon on Ebay for pretty cheap, would it be safe to purchase from here?

[King107s]

I've been pretty lucky on ebay, just ask a lot of questions and read their feedback for sales of SIMILAR items.

I find it funny that some people on there will have 99.7% positive feedback because they sold 9,700 units of a $1 cell phone face plate but sold 300 completly defective $300 PS3's. Seems to be a flawed system right?

[zerkz]

anyone have any recommendations for actual video cards? It seems theres a huge price change between the GTX 260 and the Fermis.. and theres nothing in between for Nvidia.

ATI though.. does.

[Joeteck]

Your budget is pretty good. I would get a GTX 465 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130555&cm_re=GTX_465-_-14-130-555-_-Product). Unless your stuck on AMD / ATI, then I would go with a 5850 (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150494&cm_re=5850-_-14-150-494-_-Product)

[zerkz]

I got my pay check and it was $518, so I'm set to go. I'm going to order a GTX 465 from ASUS, (its 280$), but I heard they have the chance to unlock to a GTX 470, and even ASUS has released a official tool to help with this.

Seems best bang for the buck.