Any recommend a replacement for X1900XTX

unhappyvirgincustomer_2

Hi,

Think it is time for a new graphics card as my current one is starting to not be able to play some new games!

I currently have a X1900XTX 512 MB and would be looking for a replacement obviously DX10 compliant, more powerful in the £100-£200 range but if anyone can suggest something good outside of that would be interested too.

Had a look myself at a comparison site but think I'm overloaded with info and now not sure what I want. Not bothered if ATI or Nvidia either

Thanks in advance

Gazza1964

Quite difficult to help you as graphic cards improve and get updated more often than I change my pants.

I've just bought a 4870 512mb card and its fantastic ( well about 6 months ago ) - having said that I can only get 35fps in Crysis and thats with settings on High and a 1360 * 768 resolution.

Before purchasing a new card I would think long and hard about where the bottleneck is in your system. You could purchase a new card and then find that it is strangled by your cpu.

Also what kind of motherboard + power supply do you have - do you have crossfire or sli capability - does your power supply have enough umph to drive a new card.

It is very tricky to decide what to do - especially as it is a major purchase - to confuse matters more there is a great table here -http://www.techarp.com/showarticle.aspx?artno=88&pgno=0 click on ati full list and then the table shown and it will enlarge.

If I where to choose now I would probably still get the 4870 but i would get a 1gb version - with the 4890 out it should drop in price - I know people say that memory is not as important as memory type or bit interface but I think it does make a difference when it comes to the crunch.

A 4870 1gb is about £150 now so I would make a top five list and then go on the internet and check out the forums of the games you want to play - which cards are having the most problems?

I have had to spend time tweaking Crysis and Fallout3 to get them to play well but I dont mind that where as other people want things to work "straight out the box".

Sorry Im rambling now - good luck with your choice.

johng_uk

As an avid reader of 'Custom PC' magazine, I can say that they wholeheartedly recommend the HD4870 is one of the best 'bang for buck' graphics cards around atm.

I'm planning to build a PC in the next year or so, and this is the graphics card that I plan to use. The !mb isn't much more expensive than the 512mb model, so I plan to use that as the HD4870 x 2 model is overkill imo.

Gazza1964

What cpu / board are you looking at John.

Percy1983

I assume you are running on a PCI-E, if you have an AGP slot then its a whole different ball game.

As mentioned the 4870 is a great deal but also look at the 4890 as there is some good deals.

What processor are you running out of interest, as the x1900xtx is quite old you processor may also be lagging now.

johng_uk

Dunno mate, it all depends on how far core i7 technology has fallen by the time I get round to it! By all accounts it's started to drop already so watch this space.

If I go core i7, I'll go for - Intel core i7-920 as a cpu. And the Asus P6T Deluxe as a motherboard.

Otherwise the Intel Core 2 Quad Q9650 and the Biostar TPower I45.

Gazza1964

The 920 really is some beast - apparently 4ghz is easily achieved and theres even talk of 4.5ghz with water cooling - incredible.

That certainly would be some system - crossfire or sli ! 24gig of ddr3 -
Now where did i put my check book.....

Good luck with your build.

johng_uk

Gazza1964 wrote: »

The 920 really is some beast - apparently 4ghz is easily achieved and theres even talk of 4.5ghz with water cooling - incredible.

That certainly would be some system - crossfire or sli ! 24gig of ddr3 -
Now where did i put my check book.....

Good luck with your build.

Never mind the cheque book mate, you'd be best off applying for a mortgage. Although given the economic climate, you may have to wait a while to be accepted!!

Thanks - And hope you got/get the answers you're after on here.

unhappyvirgincustomer_2

thanks to you all, been thinking need a upgrade my pc is about 4 years old P IV 3.6ghz is getting on a bit but is fine for the majority of things and not looking for a ultimate gaming machine or anything jsut something taht can run the newer games reasonably.

Something to think about maybe building one up from scratch, I've been wanting to do that for quite a while but just not got around to it. Prob now is my laptop just died so have to look at replacing that before a pc.

definately given me a few things to think about and thanks to you all again

Percy1983

Your P4 3.6 is good enough for gaming but it is right on the bottom end. You could still get some money for it so I would say sell as a whole system and start again. I would recommend an intel e5200 and a board capable of overclocking. Add 4GB ram and a good graphics card and you are off.