Shopping for a new graphics card

[shadowfox]

Please read carefully before making suggestions here - if anyone suggests a R4k+ card I'm going to track them down and stab them with something dirty and rusty.

Anyways - my rig is still running on my old GF9400 - which has been serving me pretty well for the most part, but I've pretty much pushed it and I think it's on it's way to GFX card heaven.

As much as I'd like to get a graphics card capable of running the Starship Enterprise by itself, my finances are a little strained, so I've got to keep costs as low as possible. For the record, I'd also like to stick to NVidia.

So I'm looking at the following options - which all clock in at under R1k - depending on where you shop:

MSI GeForce Graphics Card GT430
MSI GeForce Graphics Card GT440
MSI GeForce Graphics Card GT520

So, very much budget choices - the 520 being the most viable in terms of cost, but I'm out of touch with developments, and if it chokes just running Win 7 obviously not much use - at the very least a slight upgrade over the 9400 would be best.

Any advice here?

[frank007]

I would see if i could stretch the budget and get the GTX460. you can maybe find them for about R1500 now but that card will beat every card you have listed.

[shadowfox]

Yeah ... I'd love to, but my budget doesn't allow it ... even the 440 is a stretch for me.

[frank007]

cant you wait a bit?

[shadowfox]

No guarantee that things will improve - and on the other hand, I'm starting to experience regular crashes in games like Aion which have been running fine up until recently.

I'm having an easier time now that it's winter, so the card's less likely to overheat, but I'd rather have a new card in before it dies or have another one of those events where it dies mid-application and I'm stuck without a PC for a few days.

[frank007]

it will not kill you to be with out your PC for a few days trust me, unless your pc is connected to your life support system in that case order it now lol. Its hard but you can do it.

[Xero]

I really think you are limiting yourself to settle for a card with sub par performance
If you take into account the Hierarchy of GFX Cards, for the same pricing you could basically get an ATI/AMD 5570 or for literally 200 bucks more a 5750
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...90,2879-7.html

[shadowfox]

I really think you are limiting yourself to settle for a card with sub par performance
If you take into account the Hierarchy of GFX Cards, for the same pricing you could basically get an ATI/AMD 5570 or for literally 200 bucks more a 5750
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...90,2879-7.html

Well ... you're right - I am limiting myself a bit, that's a fair point. However, my approach is this - if it works, why change it. I've been using NVidia cards all these years (all the way back to my old TNT2) because they work, and they do what I need them to do. Also, I've never known what the hierarchy was where ATi is concerned - so when it comes to equivalent cards between the two manufacturers, I always draw a blank.

In any case, getting another NVidia card also saves me a lot of hassle - unslot the one card, slot in the other. No messing around uninstalling one set of drivers and installing another.

In terms of performance, the 5570 and the 430 and 440 are very similar really - the 5570 consistently outperforms the 2 NVidia cards in Benchmark programs for the most part, in games it goes one way or the other. Neither of those really prove anything for me - because the figures on Tom's Hardware come from running the games at relatively high settings - I set mine down. Maybe for some gamers visuals are everything - I basically just want to load the game and use this gun to make that bloke on my screen dead. I'm don't need to be able to precisely determine his sperm count if I accidentally shoot him in the nuts (or not accidentally - depending on my levels of aggravation for the day ).

In the end it just boils down to two questions for me:

1. Does it work and do what I want it to do? and
2. How much is it going to cost me?

In terms of pricing, I've only looked at Take2 so far - and the 430 and 5570 are both in the R680 range.

@Havoc & og:

I'm always a little wary of 2nd hand PC parts - I once took an old card of mine to a friend for him to borrow - somewhere between me taking it out my machine and slotting it into his it had gone from a perfectly working card to a perfectly non-working piece of crap.

[HavocXphere]

2nd hand? I'm sure there are lots of people dumping cards in that price range & you probably know 1 or 2.

[OGBuzz]

yeah you will find excellent deals at carbonite.co.za