Recommend me a videocard.

[emzie]

ITT: doing things for me

Currently running a Radeon 4870, but it's only 512 mb (oops!). It's probably not going to hold up over the next few years.

For WoW and Civ V, neither of which are TOO demanding, though I'd like to play WoW with high / highest settings at a decent FPS.

Looking for something that will age decently over 3 years. Price isn't a large concern. I cannot SLI / crossfire on this motherboard. I'd rather not also buy a new power supply, current is 600 watts.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Nothing.

There's no video card that will age decently over 3 years unless you want to shell out 500+ USD.

 

[emzie]

Nothing.

There's no video card that will age decently over 3 years unless you want to shell out 500+ USD.

Which I'm willing to do. Keep in mind by decently, I don't mean play a first person shooter released in 2013 at 120 FPS. I mean play WoW-like games decently in 2013.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

HD 5870 would be my choice then.

 

[fromeast2west]

If you're OK for the next few months my advice would be to wait.

While the reality with tech is that there's always something 'just around the corner', it's particularly true of the GPU market right now.

Nvidia is just starting to fill out it's DX11 line with Fermi based processors (and better drivers).

At the same time ATI is claiming that 6xxx series parts are due by the end of the year.

Those two developments should see a large drop in prices for DX11 parts in general, and decent performance improvements on the top end.

If you really want to buy now, my general advice is always buy one level below the peak. It's usually the best combo of price/performance/longevity without getting hit was FPS tax.

 

[emzie]

The thing is waiting a few months just means there's another release a quarter away.

The 5870 1gig would be ~520 CAD and the 2gig ~100 more. How do these cards compare to nvidia's stuff? The difference between the two is something I don't really understand as well.

 

[civ_king]

ATI 5970>GTX 480
the 5970 is CAD$800 though

 

[emzie]

ATI 5970>GTX 480
the 5970 is CAD$800 though

It's approaching a thousand with tax. Not doing that, no. 5870 2gig is probably what I will do.

 

[Genocidicbunny]

Whats your monitor resolution. Unless you're doing 3x eyefinity or have a 2560x display, the 1GB will work just fine.

 

[cardgame]

why are there video cards that cost more than my whole PC?

 

[fromeast2west]

The thing is waiting a few months just means there's another release a quarter away.

That's true to an extent, and I mentioned as much in my post, but that doesn't mean there are times it's better to wait. This happens to be one of those times (if you don't have any specific need in the next few months).

With the coming developments from both ATI and Nvidia, plus the price competition for the back to school and holiday shopping periods, it's a good time to wait.

Nvidia won't have a new architecture for a while, and ATIs 6000 series cards will mostly be a die shrink, so the biggest thing you'll miss by buying now are probably the expected price cuts.

For anyone shopping the $200 and under range it's definitely a time to wait as the higher binned DX11 parts should start pushing into the mid level cards this autumn.

 

[Fëanor]

ATI's 5xxx refresh series WONT be a die shrink. I will be very disappointed in AMD/ATI if they end up pretending those cards are something new and call them the 6xxx seriers, at least when nVidia started to shamelessly re-badge their cards they (usually) did a die shrink, what AMD/ATI plans is just a firmware update and pretending its something new is just dishonest.

Anyway the 4870 should be able to give a good gaming experience with Civ5 and depending on what resolution you game other current games should run fine. If you like to game on with very high settings and resolutions (1920x1200 +) its simply going to cost you loads of cash, the 5970 is the best non-crossfire/sli solution. the X2 versions of the 460 and 480 should be here in a month or two.

Personally i'm leaning towards a 460 to replace my 2x 4850 in CrossfireX, even though the 460 is probably slightly slower it should be good enough until the true next gen cards come next year.

 

[GoodGame]

why are there video cards that cost more than my whole PC?

Same reason why there are sports cars that cost more than some people's row houses.

 

[fromeast2west]

ATI's 5xxx refresh series WONT be a die shrink.

TSMC and Global Foundries are both skipping to 28nm now? I hadn't heard, but I'm not totally surprised.

 

[emzie]

Whats your monitor resolution. Unless you're doing 3x eyefinity or have a 2560x display, the 1GB will work just fine.

I'm using a 22" but this will become my wife's monitor. I'll probably get a 24" so 1920. 2560 is like 30" iirc and I have no intention of going that large. I understand how processing speeds and memory speeds, but not how important total memory is.

I do want to be able to set view distance to max distance. I assume that would require more ram. If for a 100 dollars more, I'd be able to scale into ~'13 better, it'd be worth it. However, if it's a resolution thing, then I'll save that money

 

[Genocidicbunny]

1GB of VRAM still works fine at 1920x resolutions. HardOCP did some testing on the 2GB version and they found that unless you were running at really high resolutions, or very, very high textures it made no difference, at least none worth the price.

 

[Fëanor]

TSMC and Global Foundries are both skipping to 28nm now? I hadn't heard, but I'm not totally surprised.

It would seem that 28nm generation will be delayed to till next year's back to school season.

I wouldn't be surprised if availability will be very poor till X-Mas 2011.