Best VGA for $200+ish

[Adionik]

I know AMD/Nvidia is coming out with some new cards on the 15th or what not right now...but I was wondering what I should be looking to get after the price drop after they release the new GPU's

I was thinking:

ATI 4870 $125-150 now
ATI 4890 $200 now
GeForce GT 260 $160-180
GeForce GTX 275 1792MB


I'm coming from a fucking Radeon X1950pro, i'm guessing any of these cards are going to be a MASSIVE upgrade since i'm like on 10th generation technology here. I'm on a 22" monitor 1680x1050 unfortunately. I know they're going to bottleneck my CPU but I don't care...will still be an upgrade.

Anyone have any experience with either of these cards?

I'm waiting either way...consumer wins

[SRTie4k]

I love my GTX 260. With my CPU/RAM combo, it will play Crysis at full at 25-30FPS through most scenes, with only a few slowdowns in certain areas.

But I think with the negligible price difference between the 260 and the 275, you're better off spending the $30 extra to get a 275 for that extra 10-15% of usable power.

[Adionik]

How big is your 260? I'm thinking some HDD re-arrangement may be neccessary, these new GPUs seem to be fucking huge.

[SRTie4k]

Quote: Originally Posted by Adionik

How big is your 260? I'm thinking some HDD re-arrangement may be neccessary, these new GPUs seem to be fucking huge.

It's pretty big, I don't know exact length, but in my Lian Li case with a HDD cage in the front with HDD's arranged facing back to front and with PSU at the top of the case, I had probably 2mm of clearance to the cage.

My new Lian Li, with the cage setup with HDD's facing side to side and the PSU at the bottom of the case, I've got more than enough clearance to the 5.25" shelf and the HDD cage.

The best thing you can do is find the measurements of the reference board online and measure the space you have available from PCI-E primary to the front of the case with the idea that a GTX card (and I believe most higher end ATI cards as well) are 2 slots thick.