I have come to the inevitable conclusion that I'm going to need to give KitKat a kick in the GPU arse for Fishcon. I could do with a bit of advice as to whats the best bit of kit to plug into her...
Given my current situation I need to look at value for money, as I don't actually play a huge amount of games on the PC at the moment. My brief digging and perusing of the various tech sites leads me to believe that my best bet would be an ATI 4850
http://www.ebuyer.com/product/148952
Does this sound about right? At the moment I have 7900GT SLi, so I need to see benefits over that build...
The card looks could and
The card looks could and should provide approx double the performance. You could get the std version and overclock for less cash
Powercolour HD 4850
Good spot, and even better
Good spot, and even better price.
Just ordered one :-) Slightly depressing that it's 20% of the cost, and twice the power of my current cards...
Bastard. I was going to get
Bastard. I was going to get one of those. Now if I get one, you'll just say you won because you did it first, or thought about it first. Even when I've been thinking about it since August.
Fish, you've linked the 4830, is that intentional?
It's the same, but
It's the same, but underclocked...
Ah, right. Nice. Given that
Ah, right. Nice. Given that you'll get a double-up increase in power, and I've only got half of what you have, it'll make my PC fly!
The ATI cards are pretty
The ATI cards are pretty good these days the 4870x2 I've been running for a while now has been very capable.
The only minor thing I have found is that the optimisation in the drivers can be a bit iffy. There is this widget called Catalyst AI which uses texture analysis to work out the best way to render stuff without image quality reduction at the highest speed. Very occasionally it gets its knickers in a twist and causes flickering, usually on newer or more obscure stuff. Often a driver update will sort that out but till then it's a simple matter to turn it off (a single check box in the driver) it's still worth having on most of the time because it also handles the bug fixes and workarounds for certain games. This is a pretty minor annoyance and very quickly remedied with a quick alt tab out of the game switch Catalyst AI off and then back to the action and it is pretty infrequent, I've had worse issues with nvidia stuff and the peculiarities of SLI to be honest.
Installed the 4830 tonight,
Installed the 4830 tonight, and it runs like a dream. With the SLi 7900GT's UT3 was jerky on small Deathmatch levels with a lot of peeps in aone area, now it's uber smooth, even turned up. Now I just need to get my FPS reflexes back...
Excellent smithers. Thanks
Excellent smithers. Thanks for the update. Will order mine tomorrow. :)
Raa! I'll still be running
Raa! I'll still be running the 7950s. Seems like I'll be sat with teh mini rig...
If the 7900s need a good new home let me know as I may well have one.
Ordered++.
Ordered++.
Arrived yesterday. Hurrah!
Arrived yesterday. Hurrah! But then I ran Icar last night, so didn't get a chance to install it. Tonight, I'm also busy. BUM.