pouët.net

I've been living with a midend Radeon HD 4650, and want to upgrade.
Problem: I'm using a 400W power supply, so I'd either get another mid-end GPU (the HD 5670 requires at least 400W, all the higher models require more), or I get a new power supply along with the new GPU.

I'm tempted to get a nVidia GTX 285, I don't want to wait until Fermi gets out, I also don't want a dual-gpu. Would you recommend me against it and to get a HD 58x0 instead?

Also, what power supply would you suggest? I've got a Briza Midi-Tower silver 6099-C9 case.

Thanks for your help ;)

Oh, and the whole stuff should stay <400€.

on the powersupply: beQuiet was always a good choice for me. solid, quiet, affordable.

PS: Be Quiet! BQT E7-600W € 99,-
GC: PowerColor HD5850 (HDMI, 2x DVI, DisplayPort) €289,-
Seen at alternate.de
You´d be €2 below your max
Can´t go wrong, but I´m sure someone´ll say a "green card" is better ;-)
Have fun puttin´it together...

best nvidia you can afford.

mct: Funny, I've been watching alternate as well.

My main problem is the following decision: Get nVidia to watch all non-ati demos (i'll keep my own old ATI card to test my productions against it), or get a DirectX11 card.
What's more worth? I think ATI has the leading.

ATi sucks, period.

I was using nvidia until recently i got a ATI 5770, it's not a beast but is enough to move on the d3d11.... but xTr1m, if i remember you prefer to work with GL, so you probably don't care about d3d11?

@lx: I don't prefer anything, OGL is just smaller for 4ks. I like to play around as well.

Maybe I should also mention, that I have an Asus P6T SE, which has CrossFire X technology...

you are referring to power suply and crossfire in term of choice... but in terms of coding, if d3d11 is a strong requirement and you really want to play with it, go for an ATI5850 + a good and cheap power suply as mct said... if not, you have the choice for both nvidia and ati.

On the power supply the golden rule is:; you get what you pay for, don't be cheap. A cheap 600 watts one may only in reality run at 600 for few hours before becoming unstable, where the good 'brand' ones often will go a lot higher than they are rated to, permanently.

The last one I got is a Corsair 750 and it is pretty good and fall in the 2nd category I mentioned. Pc Power and cooling also makes very, very good stuff that will last you forever. Go for brands, it is not that much more expensive when you consider how much 'more' you get for your money. Go cheap on everything else, not the PSU.

I got this gfx card the last time;


Msi geforce 275gtx. I got it because of the sexy cooling solution which is completely quiet even under heavy load. And it leaves A LOT of headroom for OC'ing before it will start to be heard or heat up seriously. It does require a well ventilated case however as it unlike other gfx cards does not push the hot air out of the back of the case. I have not run into anything it will not take a 'full settings' at high resolutions as long as 'full settings' is not DX11. But I suspect it will be a while before that is relevant in any way and the first generation of new tech is as a rule of thumb, something to avoid like it was one fire.

nvidia uses red PCBs now?

xTr1m, about GL and DX, so far the 3 times I was seriously running out of space in a 4k I switched to DX and got some precious extra hundred(s of) bytes back.

I'm in the "always ATI if you can" group, but I have no big issue when I have to use nvidia, just have to be more careful in programming that's it.

iq: Funny, I had the contrary case yesterday.

But well, I've made up my mind, thanks everyone who helped me decide:

- be quiet! Straight Power E7 600W € 99,90
- Sapphire HD5850 € 264

I'm gonna order in 30 minutes, unless someone explicitly warns me against Sapphire and suggests another vendor.

about the be quiet psu i noticed this;

Scope of delivery

1x beQuiet power supply
1x Power cord
1x Instructions in German, English, French, Spanish

If that is the case, check out that it does not mean that you need to have all the other cables for connecting it to the system.

OpenGL with ATI drivers has been screwed since 9.10 for many apps in my workflow(they just give you a blank screen), haven't tried 10.1 yet though. So apart from the piss-poor driver issues that they just don't fix they have nice hardware. 2 5850's in crossfire is meant to be excellent performance for a decent price, but crossfire support can be a bit hit and miss so you could just go for it's big brother.

Get a Fat Agnus.

i think a HD4650 should be enough :D

Too late, today I'm gonna pick up my brand-new HD 5850.

If you want highend because you want to do cool graphics/gpgpu stuff: ati.
If you want highend because you're worrying about crysis 2 not running properly: nvidia.

Those things use more power than my house heaters.

My HD5850 doesnt work, apparently it came faulty. Garbled and flashing screen (at bios time), and just one DVI output works. Warranty issue?

(yes, I did everything right, i'm no newbie. 2x 6pin power cables plugged in, 600W power supply works, bios updated to most recent version (12/30/09)).

I'm now using the HD 4650 again and everything works well, so i'm sure it's the new GPU that is faulty.