Best €200 card and where to get it?

Mickey_37

Hello all, I’ve been out of the graphics card loop for a while now and have €200 to burn on one.

I just want the best bang for my buck and a hassle free site to buy it from.
So I would like to ask your advice/recommendations if I may.

lmimmfn

Nvidia 460 1Gb version( make sure its the 1Gb version as its a much better card and not just on mem )

As for places, well check
http://www.overclockers.co.uk
http://www.scan.co.uk
http://www.komplett.ie

im sure others will give other retailers to check

Icyseanfitz

pixmania.ie is another good one

Pred192

Anything from the ATI HD series, for the past while ATI has been beating Nvidia in graphics and performance. trust me go with ATI. They are directx 11 compatible and are way more powerfull something like the HD 5800 is great.

http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/5020944/art/pixmania/radeon-hd-5830-1-gb-gddr5.html

Just as a comparison I have the ATI HD 5570 and I run crysis on High.

lmimmfn

Pred192 wrote: »

Anything from the ATI HD series, for the past while ATI has been beating Nvidia in graphics and performance. trust me go with ATI. They are directx 11 compatible and are way more powerfull something like the HD 5800 is great.

http://www.pixmania.ie/ie/uk/5020944/art/pixmania/radeon-hd-5830-1-gb-gddr5.html

Just as a comparison I have the ATI HD 5570 and I run crysis on High.

yes ATI for the win the past while but not compared to Nvidia 460 1Gig card, no comparison, the 5850 beats its slightly but you wont get a 5850 for the price of a 460 any time soon

Pred192

lmimmfn wrote: »

yes ATI for the win the past while but not compared to Nvidia 460 1Gig card, no comparison, the 5850 beats its slightly but you wont get a 5850 for the price of a 460 any time soon

If you check my link the ATI is cheaper than the Nvidia...

Icyseanfitz

ya but as far as i know a 5830 wont beat a gtx 460, honestly the 460 is the best bang for buck card right now especially if you intend to overclock

Pred192

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

ya but as far as i know a 5830 wont beat a gtx 460, honestly the 460 is the best bang for buck card right now especially if you intend to overclock

Ok

AIT HD 5830

Processor Frequency 800 MHz

Nvidia 460

Processor Frequency 675 MHz

mentor07825

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

ya but as far as i know a 5830 wont beat a gtx 460, honestly the 460 is the best bang for buck card right now especially if you intend to overclock

Wrong. Even though the 460 is 1gig of RAM it is not the best card, it doesn't even feature in any articles that I have read worth considering. The GTX 4xx series have a heating problem and power consumption. On top of that the amount of processors, plus the clock speed, doesn't even compare to the latest Radeon cards of similar value.

This will help you on your journey, and prevent an expensive **** up.

http://gizmodo.com/5569723/the-best-graphics-cards-at-every-price

mentor07825

Icyseanfitz wrote: »

ya but as far as i know a 5830 wont beat a gtx 460, honestly the 460 is the best bang for buck card right now especially if you intend to overclock

Every card can overclock as well. What you need is a good motherboard to support it, and cooling. No point in getting a card purely for overclocking, only to mess up due to lack of cooling.

Honestly, why would you even bother? You could just overclock the Radeon card out of the box as well and, get this, IT'S BETTER OUT OF THE BOX TOO!! WOW!!!!

Pred192

If you scroll down on the list that mentor07825 has provided you will see under the $200 budget it will show the ATI HD 5830 GPU.

The Nvidia 460gtx isn't a bad card but I recently upgraded my PC and researched all the cards and Nvida at the moment sucks compared to ATI. Nvidia is louder, requires more power and does not provide the same graphics as an ATI card. Right now ATI are dominating the market. They used to be crap compared to Nvidia and Nvidia used to be the leaders but now the tides have turned and Nvidia can't keep up at the moment. Also I know from first hand experience that the Catalyst software for ATI is brilliant and improves the graphics.

mentor07825

Mickey_37 wrote: »

Hello all, I’ve been out of the graphics card loop for a while now and have €200 to burn on one.

I just want the best bang for my buck and a hassle free site to buy it from.
So I would like to ask your advice/recommendations if I may.

Mickey_37 wrote: »

Hello all, I’ve been out of the graphics card loop for a while now and have €200 to burn on one.

I just want the best bang for my buck and a hassle free site to buy it from.
So I would like to ask your advice/recommendations if I may.

All I can say is be smart with your money. Bang for buck? You want the Radeon HD 5830 and I'll tell you why.

The RAM is 1Gig, simple stuff really. This means the amount of graphical computation it can hold at any one time is 1Gig, not to be mistaken for speed. It's like a box, and how much water can you put into that box? You can put 1Gig of water into that box :P

Next we have the price. Saw them going for around €200, pretty sweet, right? Right in your budget as well.

Core Speed: 800. What this means is how fast the overall card is going. The speed of it. It's ensuring that everything gets done FAST. And 800 is pretty fast.

Memory Bus: 256 bit. This is the pipeline bus, you can find these on CPU specs as well. It's the size of the...it's hard to explain...er...transportation. Imagine it like a bus station, thus the bus. The water comes and goes from the bus station. The bigger the bus station, the more can go through per second. The Core speed will then deal with whatever it arrives and sends.

Memory Speed: 1,000 or more, depends on the retailer of the card ala Gigabyte or Asus. What this means is how fast it can deal with the water inside the 1Gig. The higher this is, the more it processes per second. The end result to you is more frames per second, as the memory speed is dealing with so much.

Overall you have a good card for the budget you're on, which is a pretty good budget. You can overclock ANY card but this card is better then the GTX 460 out of the box as that card is less off in comparison with the clock speed, meaning it's slower so less frames per second.

Now, I don't care which card you go for. I'm just here to enlighten you, but if you go for the 460 then be my guest, but you're going to be the loser for it.

Also this comprehensive list is pretty good for reference right now: http://gizmodo.com/5569723/the-best-graphics-cards-at-every-price

And there you have it. Your question has been answered and I have effectively ended the point of the thread.

lmimmfn

Pred192 wrote: »

Ok

AIT HD 5830

Processor Frequency 800 MHz

Nvidia 460

Processor Frequency 675 MHz

you have got to be kidding :rolleyes:

mentor07825 wrote: »

All I can say is be smart with your money. Bang for buck? You want the Radeon HD 5830 and I'll tell you why.

Wrong

mentor07825 wrote: »

Overall you have a good card for the budget you're on, which is a pretty good budget. You can overclock ANY card but this card is better then the GTX 460 out of the box as that card is less off in comparison with the clock speed, meaning it's slower so less frames per second.

:rolleyes:
Do you know anything about video cards?

mentor07825 wrote: »

Now, I don't care which card you go for. I'm just here to enlighten you, but if you go for the 460 then be my guest, but you're going to be the loser for it.

riiiiighhhhhttttttt, so if he got an Nvidia 460 for 25euro more than a 5830 he would be a loser for getting a card that performs on average 10% faster than the 5830 not to mention it supports Physx( while a little gimmicky its better to have it that not )

mentor07825 wrote: »

Also this comprehensive list is pretty good for reference right now: http://gizmodo.com/5569723/the-best-graphics-cards-at-every-price

except that its old and was made when the 460 didnt exist

mentor07825 wrote: »

And there you have it. Your question has been answered and I have effectively ended the point of the thread.

:rolleyes:

OP, check out the benchmarks here for legit and up to date charts - http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-460-review/15

Mickey_37

Thanks very much for the help guys.
I didn't expect so much debate over this but in the end I think I’m going to go with the 460 1GB.
I’ve always been an nvidia man and I think the 460 has the edge on the 5830. Power and noise aside.

One more question though,

My currant PC is fairly old (put it together myself, it was top of the line in '06!).
I’m just wondering if I would see much of an increase in frame rates moving to the 460 with my specs below.

I have an 8800GT alpha dog (factory overclocked) card in my machine at the minute.

Specs,
AMD Athlon X2 4800+ (socket 939)
ASUS A8N32-SLI Deluxe
3 GB of DDR1 Ram
Win 7
22" LCD 1680X1050 native

Am I wasting my money?
I get about 20 to 25 FPS in battlefield BC2 at 1440X900 with almost all of the fancy crap turned off.

Just want it to play at a smooth 60fps.

Pred192

lmimmfn wrote: »

you have got to be kidding :rolleyes:


Wrong


:rolleyes:
Do you know anything about video cards?


riiiiighhhhhttttttt, so if he got an Nvidia 460 for 25euro more than a 5830 he would be a loser for getting a card that performs on average 10% faster than the 5830 not to mention it supports Physx( while a little gimmicky its better to have it that not )


except that its old and was made when the 460 didnt exist


:rolleyes:

OP, check out the benchmarks here for legit and up to date charts - http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-460-review/15

Dude ok so your whole comment basically said "oh 5830 sucks 460 is better with no proof. Dude your a moron ok so just shut up and come back when you have proof. I have a mag here full of reviews (got it about 2 months ago) and it has the 470 a little higher in spec than the 5830 in some games they were on average and some the 5830 beat it. So you tell me how would the 460 beat the 5830 if the 5830 can compare to the 470?? dude your just a Nvidia fan and want to promote there crap just because the marketing says so. You can overclock any card you want. I mean you can overclock anything in your pc so that doesn't come into it. Just because your a Nvidia fan doesnt mean you should get that card. Do some research on it and you will see that the 5830 is better.

Skerries

Toms hardware has it as the 460 being on top
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/2010-gaming-graphics-charts-high-quality/compare,2366.html?prod[4291]=on&prod[4341]=on

PogMoThoin

The thing is, last year Ati sold their gpu's at decent prices to combat the dominance of Nvidia. This year they've developed the tactic usually used by Nvidia of deliberately keeping their prices up and starving supply (5850). Nvidia are now the ones dropping prices to compete,
http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/faith/nvidia-drops-the-price-of-gtx460-another-20/

lmimmfn

PogMoThoin wrote: »

The thing is, last year Ati sold their gpu's at decent prices to combat the dominance of Nvidia. This year they've developed the tactic usually used by Nvidia of deliberately keeping their prices up and starving supply (5850). Nvidia are now the ones dropping prices to compete,
http://www.kitguru.net/components/graphic-cards/faith/nvidia-drops-the-price-of-gtx460-another-20/

Exactly, and ATI( or rather now just AMD ) need to cut their prices, especially for the 5850, its still not back down to release day prices, but i think they'll do their usual stunt and wait until the first batches of 460's are exhausted before dropping.

Also Sothern Islands isint due until October/November so they can only try and compete on price( and probably why theyre holding out as long as possible ).

Luckily it is driving down the second hand price of 5050's as shopping around they can be got for around 175euro delivered