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Squilliam on 29 June 2009
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TheThunder said:
Squilliam said:

AMD typically prices their cards in the $250-$300 range for the high end (5870) which is around where you're looking to pay now. They also price their cards at $150-$200 for the mid/high cards (5850 range). The HD 4890/70/30's will probably be the HD 5830/57** range.

Direct x 11 brings 3 main things:

Tessellation -> It means that a card can output a crapload of polygons like for example Forza 3 with over 1M polygons and as the card gets weaker with time it helps more.

Compute Shader -> It means that the cards shaders can process a much wider variety of workloads for example it can speed up rendering/deconding, the games can offload physics calculations etc.

A new process node -> The cards are made on the 40nm process nodes which means more performance, less power usage. So whilst an HD4870 may have 800 shaders you can expect more for the next generation cards. AMD predicts their next generation cards will be faster than the GTX 285.

Direct X 11 is probably the most important change since Direct X 9 in what it brings to the GPU sphere in computing.

then I'll probably get the 4850 for now till I see the new AMD cards and a real game with DX 11 and upgrade and they should be much cheaper then and I found a 4850 for 123 $CAD.

how do you think Empire: Total War would run on the 4850 on a 1366x768 res?? would I be able to go High on the settings ?

so what do you think about the heating will be an Issue ??

and is 420W enough ?

The Mail in Rebate thing what is it exactly and how does it work ??

BTW thanks Squilliam & ph4nt for the help much appreciated.

The HD 4850 is a very fast card by anyones standards. You could run Crysis on high at that resolution ultra smooth with a good framerate. I didn't realize you had such a small monitor! It can definately give you maximum settings on any and all games released right now at that resolution.

The XFX HD 4850 has dual slot cooling so it will blow the hot air out the back which means that any standard case won't overheat with it installed.

The PC Power n Cooling PSU you have there is listed as 'check' under stock status. Its a really good PSU but the only negative is that in only has 1 PCI-E 6 pin power connector meaning you cannot use a high end card. Its not such a big deal, it doesn't sound like you'd choose an ultra high end card anyway so shouldn't be an issue. Otherwise the PSU is an excellent quality unit.

Another option for the PSU is this one: http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=35456&vpn=OCZ700MXSP&manufacture=OCZ%20Technology#Specifications

Its 700W and its an OCZ which is another pretty good brand. Its $89 after MIR and it has an extra 8 pin PCI-E power cord so that means you can add a high end card later if you so wish and its in stock. But unfortunately the deal ends on the 30th and it'll go back to the regular non rebate $119 price.

Mail in rebate is where you pay full retail price for an item and you send away a card to the manufacturer and 4 weeks later or so they send you back a cheque for $xx.

 



Tease.