Graphics Card!

I think it’s time to be rid of my GeForce 8600 GTS and get a new card. Question is, which one? I’d like to stick to nVidia and stay at or under $200. I’m not sure how much power I have, but I’d wager not much.

EDIT: Eh, this should be in the Tech forum.

Hmm, I was also planning on getting a new card. In fact, oddly enough that’s what i was coming here to post, but saw this. I was gonna ask if the nVidia GTX 465 was a good one, it’s $200. Maybe we’ll both get our answer.

Unless you desperately need PhysX, you should stay open to both ATi and nVidia.

In your price range (~$200), the best cards you can get are the Radeon HD 6850 (IMO the best bang-for-the-buck card out there), or the GTX 465 1gb. You should really be deciding between those two.

If you’d like to save some money, the Radeon HD 5770 is in the $120-140 range, but it doesn’t perform nearly as well as the above cards (its somewhere around a GTX 260 and Radeon HD 4870 performance wise). Its still one of the best in its price range tho, and has DX11 too.

I’d personally recommend the Radeon HD 6850, which when crossfired with another 6850 performs just as well as the 5890 in many games, including crysis. It also requires only a 6 pin connector, and draws less power than the GTX 465 (see this review for comparisons).

But… let us know what power supply you have first. If price and power draw are both serious concerns, you’ll still notice a very significant performance increase with a 5770, and if your current system handled a 8600gts it should handle a 5770 quite fine.
Google “8600gts vs 5770” and see what people are saying, like on this page.

I don’t know anything about power supplies. All I know is that I’m plugged into the wall haha

The ati 6850 is the best choice imo, and you’re going to have to look into the power supply thing. Check around in you computer to try to find out what you have. An ati 6850 requires a 500w PSU.

If you open up your computer and type out exactly what’s on the sticker on the power supply, that should be more than enough for us to tell you what cards it would support.

Either way, I stand by my suggestion of either the 5770 or 6850.

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