best bang for buck video card

hey all, im sure im not the first to ask this question, but what is the best bang for buck video card? ive been very comfortable with nVidia cards, but i keep hearing good things about ATI's newer cards.

i currently have an 8800GT and id does pretty good, however im looking to up my computers graphics performance.

i game at 1600x1200, and i'd like to add more AA and AF, which currently kills me if i try to jack everything up.

the games i mostly play are CS:S and L4D.
but i also own: Crysis, Bioshock, TF2, HL2 (ep1&2), and some others. and id really like to increase the performance of crysis for when i do play it (its the only one i cant play at full res)

so for the longest time ive been debating on weather to go with something like a GTX 260/216, or a GTX280 (since they are much cheaper now). but ive also bee hearing about the 4870's and the 4850's. and my MB does support Xfire, but not SLI. the MB is asus p5k3. i probably will not overclock, however whatever i go with will most likely be watercooled. i have a DTek fuzion V2 on my 8800GT that i can use for the new card.

so what do you think will be the best bang/buck setup? :

GTX 280?
GTX 260/216?
4870?
4850?
4850 x-fire?

I would think your card at that resolution playing Source Engine games should be more than sufficient, I can max them out with 8xQAA w/16xAF and still get over 60fps @ 1280x720.

260 (216) or 4870 (1g)

both those cards are pretty sauce.

yea the source and steam games arent that intensive, but like i said, i want to play full res (1600x1200) with AA and AF with these games AND crysis and whatever other crazy came might come out in the future.

hence why i want to upgrade.

thanks chinstrap, could someone compare the 260/216 to the 4870? what about comparing that to a 4850 xfire setup?

With
Crysis at 1600x1200 and full AA AF I would recommend an i7 at 4GB 6GB of 2000MHz RAM and dual 4870x2s or 285s

Might even hit 45FPS average

Every other game will play fine on a 4850 or 260

no harm in getting a 1GB card for future proofing though

well not FULL AA and AF for crysis lol, but i'd like to bump it up a bit to make it pretty.

maybe it was just my machine or what but i jacked up the AA and AF all the way on HL2 to see what would happen on my 8800GT, and everyone looked like they were made of glass. it was like the contrast was unnaturally high and things that were supposed to be dark with maybe a touch of shadowing looked like they were reflecting direct sunlight. is that normal? it didnt look glitchy or anything.

oh and SLIGHTY unrelated question.

whats this about the x-fire connectors? you NEED 2 of them? i know ive setup x-fire for friends using 1 connector and it worked fine. once with 2x4850's and once with 2x3870's

the ATI control center reported Xfire was working correctly and enabled, or was the CCC wrong and you do NEED 2 connectors?

TBH I have always been a High Res gamer so I do not even mess with AA. I like images defined, and to me AA is just a "soft lens" makes everything slightly blurry...

I do not know if you are using a CRT but a 4:3 resolution like 16x12 odds are more likely you are a CRT gamer.

Now... I am not sure if they still do it, but starting with the 8 series nVidia introduced CSAA with is basically MSAA without color sampling. If you get an Nvidia card and it still uses it, and you have aCRT try disabling it. Might see a nice IQ improvement

gsrcrxsi said:

well not FULL AA and AF for crysis lol, but i'd like to bump it up a bit to make it pretty.

maybe it was just my machine or what but i jacked up the AA and AF all the way on HL2 to see what would happen on my 8800GT, and everyone looked like they were made of glass. it was like the contrast was unnaturally high and things that were supposed to be dark with maybe a touch of shadowing looked like they were reflecting direct sunlight. is that normal? it didnt look glitchy or anything.

Click to expand...

Are you sure only AA and AF were cahnged? I know in HL2 episodes which I recently picked up there's one Advanced graphics settings called 'Color Correction' which defaulted on I think but makes things look...not right. Not like you describe but it's better turned off.

As far as the original thread topic, even though there's always the 'wait and see' approach there are supposed to be some new cards soon-ish, within a month or two. GT212 based for NV and 40nm HD4000s for ATi. If you want to get one asap the GTX260-216 (or a GTX260-192 if you can get a smoking deal, it's typically only a few FPS behind the 216) or 4870 1GB are the sweet spot cards imo that would be a notable upgrade from your current card.

1. no its an LCD. samsung syncmaster 204B 20.1"
2. CSAA does sound familiar so maybe that was it, just seemed weird.
3. what is IQ? ive heard that before but not sure what it refers to

i took a quick look at newegg for pricing and it seems 260/216's are priced very close to the 4870 1GB, 4870 is a little cheaper though, making this decision more difficult even

does the 4870 have a uni-sink from dtek (or anyone else) like the one available for gtx 260/280 that will work with the 4870 and the dtek gfx v2? thats the block i currently have and would like to keep using it.

4850 or 4870

DTEK does have a uni-sink for the 4870, I'm pretty sure, if not I know swiftech does, but I am not sure if that will work with your gpu block.

the 4870 is definitely a good choice. The GTX280 will be faster, but it is a bit more expensive, and DTEK definitely has a GT200 uni-sink.

Everyone knows what i'm going to say...


9800GX2

If you're willing to go crossfire, a 2x4830 set up is way awesome for bang for buck.

It beats the GTX280, can be over-clocked astronomically and can be had for as little as $190 shipped.

Beyond that, a 4870 1gb or a 260/216 to have something reliable, new and powerful.

Essenar said:

If you're willing to go crossfire, a 2x4830 set up is way awesome for bang for buck.

It beats the GTX280, can be over-clocked astronomically and can be had for as little as $190 shipped.

Beyond that, a 4870 1gb or a 260/216 to have something reliable, new and powerful.

Click to expand...

that's right, best bang-for-the-buck performance at the moment is 4830 CF IMHO. 4850 CF is also good but there's not much difference between 4830/4850 CF especially when both are overclocked. They beat the GTX280 and 4870 while being cheaper.