Best budget graphics cards? (R1500 and under)

Rob-Dynamix said:
Good stuff. So what are you getting? Was thinking about the Asus GTX260 (nvidia) any good, would you still go for ATi, must say I am a fan of them aswell (ATI that is)
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I've always been an Nvidia fan. But I've had 3 of them break on me. I even fixed my one card with a multimeter and a soldering iron back in '05. Still works to this day. My current 8600GT is throwing odd lines across my screen as well and I'm pretty sure it's going to conk out any day now.

Unfortunately for the medium level cards, ATi seems to be better, whereas NVidia still dominates top end cards.

So it'll either be the 4870 or 4890 if I had to choose a card.
 
i've got a 4850 and runs great. Although i would like to invest in an aftermarket cooler.

4890 +1 for cooling
 
The 56x series from Ati have DirectX 11, so that may be a good choice for the price bracket you are gunning for.
 
The 56xx series cannot even compete with a 4770, let alone a 4850.

The best HD5000 series (in terms of price) would be an HD5850, or two 5770's in Crossfire.
The 5850 is about R3000, i'd recommend saving up for one of those.
 
Trowalts said:
I'm thinking the same, I've narrowed it down to one of these:

4870 (R2362)
http://www.prophecy.co.za/sapphire-111331440r-toxic-vapor-chamber-cooler-copper-p-46661.html


4890 (R2444)
http://www.prophecy.co.za/sapphire-hd4890-ddr5-vaporx-express-p-56405.html

with less than a R100 diffrence I'll probably end up going for the 4890 though
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huh?

A mate of mine bought the 4890 from prophecy for just under R2k incl. shipping in November. Hard to believe the prices jumped that much.
 
Ok, so heres a side question. If I was changing my mind and moving to an ATI card, wouldnt it be better on an AMD board?
 
Well that's the whole idea of the Dragon platform. However I'm not sure what advantage it really offers.
 
I have the dragon platform running the Toxic HD 4870 linked above. With a 955 Phenom II, it's not bad runs well, but it's not all it's hyped up to be. The 4870 really is bang for buck though wow, had mine for a year now and games are still playable at 1920x1080.
 
Lupus said:
I have the dragon platform running the Toxic HD 4870 linked above. With a 955 Phenom II, it's not bad runs well, but it's not all it's hyped up to be. The 4870 really is bang for buck though wow, had mine for a year now and games are still playable at 1920x1080.
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I am just so very very scared of AMD (had issues in the past) but these new nvidias look really power hungry and hot. That 7950 of my wifes is a real machine killer - I would hate to see what the modern one have you contending with.

I really dont want the heat issues her machine has, but I do want a decent machine.
 
I think cards are a lot more stable generally across the board than they used to be angotull. You shouldn't worry about an ATI card or Nvidia atm.
 
Dragon is AMD/ATI's unified graphics platform - taking an AMD Phenom (1 or 2) cpu and an ATI gfx card onto a 790 board architecture or equivalent AM2+. Supposedly you should gain performance benefits but I haven't seen any strong data to indicate that it offers real world enhancements beyond a cool moniker.
 
I've not had any other motherboard, but I have had a 7750 BE on this motherboard and the benefits gained I think are mainly just from swapping chips.
 
And yet you would think that somehow there would be some advantage to be gained by using the 2 together. Odd.
 
jasong said:
Dragon is AMD/ATI's unified graphics platform - taking an AMD Phenom (1 or 2) cpu and an ATI gfx card onto a 790 board architecture or equivalent AM2+. Supposedly you should gain performance benefits but I haven't seen any strong data to indicate that it offers real world enhancements beyond a cool moniker.
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oh ok, thanks :)
I think I'll stick with get a quad extreme and leave the compatibility issues alone then :D
 
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