[j0k3rk1ll3r]

Hey Guys,

I just recently got my computer back up and running after a recent Lightening storm sent a surge through the Network port and fried my Motherboard,(along with half the electronics in the house) stupid cable modem and router were NOT on a power strip) So here I sit contemplating what new Video card i should get, ATi or Nvidia, 9800gt or HD5670...460GT or 260GT,

So what i do is play TF2 and left 4 Dead and Fallout 3, on my 1024x1600 monitor, i would like a smooth frame rate, (30+) without breaking the bank ($130 max) im just wondering what to consider, ASUS or sparkle, Sapphire or MSi, there are just so many options, my last card was a EVGA 9600GT which was Great! (but i sold it once my comp fried) Ive had bad luck with Sapphire and will not get another one of there cards, and Sparkle just looks cheap...

Looking for an opinion from fellow gamers who have built and used such cards in there system (my system in detail is in my Signature) 450watt power supply I'm still running Win XP prox32, Im also wondering where i can get a heavily reduced price (maybe free) windows 7... (Ive always wanted to try DX 11)

Thanks for listening and looking forward to reading some results

[augie]

I'd go for ATI as one gets more bang for the buck. What frame rate did your 9600GT get? As you can see in my sig I have several GPU's but all nVidia. BTW, I don't game and can only run benchmarks on my cards.

[ar1stotle]

For what it's worth, strictly from a gaming perspective, from what I've seen lately ATI's offerings get a little more bang for the buck. However, I'm in classes for parallel computing where we write code in CUDA, which obviously only runs on NVIDIA GPUs. General purpose languages for ATI GPUs just aren't as far along...

That being said, I'm kinda torn myself by what card I would buy if I was looking for one right now. While ATI will probably get more FPS for my buck at the moment, other programs seem more likely to use GPU acceleration via CUDA, which only runs on NVIDIA cards. I guess you posted that over a month ago but in case you haven't picked up a card yet (which, black friday is probably a decent time to pick one up) it's worth considering if you care about performance in other applications such as photo/video editing.

[Computerwiz2489]

The HD 5670 and 9800GT are comparatively weak cards.

The sweet spot ATM is the GTX 460, but it will be overkill for your resolution. You could consider the GTX 460SE, which is a bit cheaper but it will be fine.

Unless if you can get a 9800GT for like $50. well it's more of what you want For your reso the 9800GT and HD 5670 will be more than enough. The HD 5670 will be sorta future proof but the GTX 460/SE will give you the most bang for your buck, esp. when you wanna get a monitor with a better resolution.

I have a 5770 HD but I'm having big problems with the drivers, namely at boot or wake up from sleep the monitor flashes. I dont think the card knows what the proper refresh rate is at times. It's solved by unplugging the DVI cable but it's annoying when it happens. So it seems ATI/AMD has slipped in terms of driver quality as of late and I'm not inclined to recommend ATI cards at this point.

[jackslap]

Am running sapphire 5770 on asus board with phenom 11x4, 8 gigs of ram and son plays a vast number of games , have had no issues at all with it, will soon get another to crossfire with to see what happens.