GPU Recommendation for Fallout 3 / Red Alert 3

[Skippman]

Hey gang,

I've been out of the PC gaming arena for a while. Just picked up Crysis Warhead and my machine finally started having problems with a game. I'm getting errors reporting that my Crossfire setup isn't working anymore (traced it down to a possible dongle issue) and it's giving me wierd graphix glitches when I exit the game (font's are fuzy but the wallpapers fine, won't revert to desktops resolution of 1920x1200 and stays at 1440x900, etc) that I cannot resolve except to reboot 3 or 4 times, something I've not had to do in months.

So, I got to thinking. I can sit here a nurse these issues. Or I can finally upgrade my twin X1900XT's to something more modern. All the problems I've been having here with the cards, other than the Crossfire issue, lead me to believe it's poor driver support. That's making me leary of going with ATI for a 3rd round (Had a 9800 Pro for a while). So I'm at a toss up between ATI and Nvidia. On the one hand, my Mobo is a Crossfire board if I decide to go that route again in the future. On the other hand it seems that price/performace wise Nvidia is currently the leader of the pack.

I have Fallout 3 and Red Alert 3 on pre-order and both ship later this month so I'll probably be buying in the next week or so. My current system specs are in my banner below. Based on what I have, what do you recommend I trade out to? I figure at this point any of the newer cards are going to be faster than what I'm running now.

List of games I play:

Fallout 3
Oblivion
Crysis/Warhead
CnC3/RA3

Little help here fellas!

[Apoptosis]

With you budget of $300 I would suggest a Radeon HD 4870 1GB GDDR5 graphics card... After rebate they are down to $269.99. As for NVIDIA being the head of the pack on price versus performance, it would be the other way around ;)

[DMB2000uk]

What sort of money were you thinking of spending?

Anything from a 3870 upwards will outperform your current setup.

I'm tempted to suggest a 4870X2 to you, but it depends on the money that you want to spend.

Dan

[Apoptosis]

$300 is his budget.

[DMB2000uk]

Ah, i did start typing before you replied the first time (so didn't know), but got distracted and decided to post anyway.

The 4870 is the card to go for in that price range then.

Dan

[Skippman]

Sounds like the best bet. I'll look around and see what I can get one for. I'm assuming that all the major boards are refrence designs (mem spd, clock spd, etc)? I've had pretty decent luck with Sapphire and HiS cards in the past so was planning to check them out first.

Also, since I'm only running a 600W PSU do I need to be concerned about power consumption outstipping my current PSU?

[martini161]

Sounds like the best bet. I'll look around and see what I can get one for. I'm assuming that all the major boards are refrence designs (mem spd, clock spd, etc)? I've had pretty decent luck with Sapphire and HiS cards in the past so was planning to check them out first.

Also, since I'm only running a 600W PSU do I need to be concerned about power consumption outstipping my current PSU?

not with a single card, maybe if you end up doing crossfire, depends on the quality of the psu

[Skippman]

Answered my own question.

Used the Antec PSU calculator. Rates my systems consumption at 345w with the new GPU. Turns out going to the faster card is going to drop my wattage load by 37w eliminating the second card. Plus I should reduce my overall thermal load by eliminating a second card from the machine (less heat generated, better air flow).

[vicaphit]

Answered my own question.

Used the Antec PSU calculator. Rates my systems consumption at 345w with the new GPU. Turns out going to the faster card is going to drop my wattage load by 37w eliminating the second card. Plus I should reduce my overall thermal load by eliminating a second card from the machine (less heat generated, better air flow).

Win/win!

Let us know how it fares.

[Skippman]

Ok, narrowed it down to two finalists.

The Power Color AX4870 which is Crossfire ready and has a core clock set to 800mhz.

or

The SAPPHIRE 100243-1GL which is also Crossfire ready and has a core clock set to 750mhz.

I've never owned a card from Color Power before but I know the name and they've been around a while. I've used Sapphire in the past and had good experiences. Will the extra 50mhz clock speed make that much of a diffrence?

[DMB2000uk]

Go for the powercolor, that heatsink works a lot better than the stock one.

And it's overclocked to boot!

Dan

[Skippman]

Ordered the Power Color card last night from New Egg. No rebate, but I'm inpatent!

I guess now I should look into overclocking my E6600 as I'm worried it won't keep up w/ the GPU. Wish I knew more about that. Any good articles you recommend?

[DMB2000uk]

http://forums.legitreviews.com/about10789.html

^_^

Dan

[Skippman]

Do you think going quad core would make any diffrence at all? Or am I throwing money at a dead spec?

[DMB2000uk]

Won't effect gaming, but if you do a lot of multi-threaded CPU intensive stuff then it could help.

Dan

[Sapientun]

Do you think going quad core would make any diffrence at all? Or am I throwing money at a dead spec?

Most games don't support multithreading more than on 2 cores. Even if it did, I doubt that you would see significant performance boost seeing as the GPU handles most of the load.
Save your money ;)

[Skippman]

Ok, so I'll stick to my current processor.

I'm wondering if my system might be so hot because my fans are not adequate. I'm using the stock fans that came with my Super Flower case and can't find the CFM rating for them anywhere on the net.

I have two 80mm fans on the front, side by side at the bottom of the case. I have one 80mm fan at the top of the case as a blow hole. And I have two 80mm fans in the rear. Here's a picture of the case. Mine does not have the side fan that's pictured as it wasn't offered with the window'd case.

So I have two fans pushing and three fans pulling. If they all have the same airflow rate I'm guessing the case is running at negative preasure. I'm wondering if I install two higher performance fans up front if it will increase my airflow.

What do you guys think? And is there a fan in particular (80mm) that you'd recommend?

[martini161]

a delta screamer

[Skippman]

a delta screamer

Is that a joke I'm just not getting?

[Alathald]

It's one of the loudest (and most powerful) case fans ever made.