Thinking Of Upgrading My Nvidia GTX 280...

Last year I bought a brand new Nvidia Geforce GTX 280 brand new for just £150!

It runs most of my games smoothly at 1920X1080...

However, certain games struggle on it such as crysis and battlefield bad company 2.

I was going to buy a GTX 480 but it's far too expensive and out of my price range.

The Radeon 5970 would be my dream card but again it's way too expensive.

Are there ANY ATI cards priced between £300-£350 and is BETTER than a GTX 470?

I'm not too familiar with ati cards but came up with these two:

Sapphire Radeon HD 5850 Vapor-X 2GB GDDR5

&

XFX Radeon HD 5850 Radeon HD 5850 XXX 1GB GDDR5

Would any of the two cards listed above give me more performance than a GTX 470?

If not, what other ATI cards are inbetween the GTX 470 & 480 for a good price?

 

5870 is in the exact spot for you, faster than the 470 and here in the UK bout £320.

 

5870 is the only one. 5850 should come out slightly cheaper, and slightly slower, than a 470.

I notice you overclock though, and to be truthful, there's really very little difference between an overclocked 5850 and an overclocked 5870.

 

Yeah, not much difference.

I found a VERY good deal for the 5850... It's the XXX Black edition and it's just £247.

Link - http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductID=1108663&source=froogle

It's the 1GB XFX HD 5850 XXX, PCI-E 2.0(x16), 4500MHz GDDR5, GPU 755MHz, 1440 Cores, DP/ 2x DL DVI-I/ HDMI

It looks very tempting and it's a good price plus it's already overclocked...

What do you gurus think?

If I was to buy the 5850, it will replace my old GTX 280...

The 5850 looks VERY tempting though... and it's almost £100 cheaper than the 5870

 

i also vote for 5870.

 

The 5850 is a fantastic value card, but tbh it isn't really THAT much faster than your 280. Not worth it upgrading to the 5850 IMO. The extra fps isn't worth your £247, put it that way.

 

Found it for 234.99
http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials...aphics+Card+-+Games+Edition!+?productId=40691

I got my 470 for £264 an can overclock it past 480 performance

 

Your only making at HARDER for me to choose, lol!

It's like choosing between a bmw & a mercedes as I love both...

Ok, between £200-£350, what can I buy whether it be ATI or Nvidia that will give me at least a 25-30% boost over my old GTX 280 & is best bang for my bucks!

 

Well you ever benched that 280 on crysis warhead what kind fps are you getting.

 

I never tried, but I play it on gamer, 1680X1050 and it's around 25fps... Quite choppy and I was unhappy the GTX 280 was unable to smoothly run the game, I was expecting around 50 fps not low 20's...

The ONLY 2 games that struggle are Crysis & Battlefield Bad Company 2...

Aliens vs predator plays silky smooth , 60 + fps minimum, no slow downs at all...

 

Yeah bc2 doesn't struggle on mine but also cpu limited cause my gpu never break 45% usage :wanker:

 

This card got me interested and performed quite well and beating the GTX 285 by at least 10-15% or more in most tests and costs more than the GTX 470 but far cheaper than the GTX 480...

XFX ATI Radeon HD 5870 "AVP Edition" 1024MB GDDR5

I can get it for just £310

Or

Should I get this overclocked one:

XFX ATi Radeon HD5870 XXX.

The XXX edition costs an extra £30 but is overclocked and gives out 166.6gb/s memory bandwidth...

Would it be better to buy the standard 5870 and overclock it myself or should I get the preoverclocked XXX edition and further overclock it? What's best?

Lastly, if I was not to get an XFX XXX version, which other standard one is better for overclocking?

Thanks in advance!

 

If your happy to OC yourself then no need to get the XXX version.

 

No reason to get a 5870. Overclocked 5850 will be 3 or less FPS behind an overclocked 5870 in every game.

http://en.inpai.com.cn/doc/enshowcont.asp?id=7688&pageid=7221

When clocked the same, the 5850 and 5870 are essentially the same card. In reviews, the reason you see a difference between the two, is because the 5850 is stock clocked at 725Mhz and the 5870 is at 850mhz. The extra 140 shaders mean very little.

 

Won't somebody think of the drivers!

 

Seems you are right.

The BEST 5850 I found was the XFX HD 5850 XXX 4500MHz GDDR5, GPU 755MHz, 1440 Cores

Would this one be the BEST one to get? It's quite a lot cheaper than the 5870...

Only £247...

http://www.scan.co.uk/Product.aspx?WebProductID=1108663&source=froogle

 

I am selling my GTX 280 in ebay for around £150 and will order the XFX 1gb 5870 XXX Edition, I made up my mind.

It's performance is great and excellent value for your money...

 

good choice. let us know how you get on...

use driver sweeper and do a good clean out of nvidia and then get testing with afterburner and fraps installed.

i wouldnt worry about 3dmarkvantage etc but res evil 5 and aliens versus predator are both great benchmarks you can get from the download section.

i did a format/install to be on the safe side but some will say this isnt necessary. for me it was the only way to be 100 percent sure.

 

OverclockersUK have some of the cheapest 470 1280mb @£259 inc vat

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=56&sortby=nameAsc&subid=1810&mfrid=

 

Wooo that's a steal http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-032-ZT&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1810 259.99