Should I upgrade my hd 4650?

OnDborder said:

Maybe spend a little more and go with a gtx460 . 115 after rebate http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121390

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hall1k said:

I do like my current card because it's nice and quiet, low power, and requires no power connector (thus there's some flexibility as to what rigs I can use it in, plus it makes cable management easier). It can play the games I like pretty well (no trouble with any MMOs, which is mostly what I play). I don't even play games much anymore, as being a full-time student and researcher really doesn't leave much time for that. Besides, I feel I've kind of grown out of it anyways. I've tried my hardest but I just can't find any modern games that I can really get excited over. I absolutely loved God of War (obviously), and I've always loved final fantasy and WoW, but that's about it really. All I see out there now is shooter after shooter. Doesn't leave many options for someone who absolutely detests shooters .

Anyway, despite all this I still have that old itch to get the latest and greatest. I'm currently building a core i5 2500k rig with an asus p8p67 pro and 4gb of 1333 ddr3, a seasonic s12ii 620w psu, and a mugen 3 cpu cooler, mostly because I have very heavy scientific computation to do as part of my research.

If I were to upgrade, I probably wouldn't want to spend more than $100 on a card. Given that budget, is it even worth upgrading? Most cards I've seen in that price range have even less stream processors than my current one. How important is DX11 for gaming? Don't many games use opengl and whatnot, making dx11 useless for those games?

If you do think I should upgrade, is ATI or NVIDIA better at that price range? Which third party brand should I go with? I've usually stuck with HIS because of their IceQ coolers, but those are way out of my price range.

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Domino said:

I'm in a similar boat. My current rig can max any game, but not at a constant 60fps+ as I'd like. But I just don't have the time anymore. I'm going to be doing a lot of engineering computation next year, so I'm thinking of grabbing a bulldozer CPU when it comes out and maybe a second 5850.

For a hundred bucks, I wouldn't bother upgrading. Nothing is going to be worth from a 4650 imo. You'd get a signficant jump, but not enough to justify it imo.

You can get a 5850 for 160 CAD if you're willing to up your budget.

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Theocnoob said:

Not tremendously faster than a 460 for 150% the price IMO. OP, I'd suggest scrounging an extra couple of bucks to get yourself into a 460. You might find an open box for 80 or 90, or one used for 60 on a local Buy Sell forum. In Canada we have redflagdeals.com where people regularly sell used but perfectly good hardware at 50% of retail I'm sure there's such a thing where you are too.

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Domino said:

I'm in a similar boat. My current rig can max any game, but not at a constant 60fps+ as I'd like. But I just don't have the time anymore. I'm going to be doing a lot of engineering computation next year, so I'm thinking of grabbing a bulldozer CPU when it comes out and maybe a second 5850.

For a hundred bucks, I wouldn't bother upgrading. Nothing is going to be worth from a 4650 imo. You'd get a signficant jump, but not enough to justify it imo.

You can get a 5850 for 160 CAD if you're willing to up your budget.

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hall1k said:

What kind of stuff are you doing? One of the guys on my research team (we study protein interactions) is working on a program to calculate the electrostatic potential between a protein complex and its surrounding solvent. Turns out it's an insanely difficult computational problem. He's had an eight processor (i7 800-series I think, so that's maybe 64 threads with HT), 48GB ram system running the program for months now. The main array in the program occupies about 45GB itself (it's basically an array representing every atom surrounding the protein).

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Theocnoob said:

Not tremendously faster than a 460 for 150% the price IMO. OP, I'd suggest scrounging an extra couple of bucks to get yourself into a 460. You might find an open box for 80 or 90, or one used for 60 on a local Buy Sell forum. In Canada we have redflagdeals.com where people regularly sell used but perfectly good hardware at 50% of retail I'm sure there's such a thing where you are too.

Click to expand...