Possibly moving back to ATI?

[sandman3838]

Hello

I know you get this asked a-lot in here but I have to ask it.

About a year ago my 9800gt card died and I picked up on a GTS 450.

Since then I needed to replace my motherboard what I got is a:
ASRock A770DE+ AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 770 ATX AMD

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=13-157-226&SortField=0&SummaryType=0&Pagesize=100&PurchaseMark=&SelectedRating=-1&VideoOnlyMark=False&VendorMark=&IsFeedbackTab=true&Keywords=%28keywords%29&Page=1#scrollFullInfo

Some time in the near future I plan on replacing my Athlon AM2 x2 and 8gb 800hz mem with AM3 and 8gb 1066 to improve my gaming experience with game like First Flight and BattleField 2 Bad Company.

However for right now I'm not really impressed with my GTS 450. Perhaps it doesn't like the new mother board?

Anyway, everywhere I read about how much better the ATI cards are. Even in here with their card reviews. I have to tell you, once upon a time I used ATI all the time until there drivers became really buggy. So I switched to NVIDIA, which have been great.

Now here I am again looking for another card and I seriously thinking about ATI. How are their drivers these days and is there something you all might recommend for about 150 - 250. What about one low and one high?

Thanks for you time. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[PsyKhiqZero]

If your happy with Nvidia I would just step up to a GTX 560 or 560 Ti. They are loads better then a gts 450 you bought. I use a GTX 285 on my primary cuz like you I've had better luck with Nvidia cards. However my Media center runs a ATI 4770 and it hasn't given me cause to complain. Just my 2 cents.

 

[jsc]

GTS450 is not that good of a gaming card.

 

[saint7269]

This is what I would do. Don't sink a lot of money into a video card unless your upgrading your mother board and memory soon. If your willing to send up to $250 get the CPU and GPU now and you'll see a nice bump in how your games run. The 800mhz ram is good. You won't see a big jump going to 1066mhz.


MSI N550GTX-Ti Cyclone OC GeForce GTX 550 Ti
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127573

GIGABYTE Ultra Durable VGA Series GV-R685OC-1GD Radeon HD 6850 1GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125353

AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819103808


Hears a good GPU as well if you want to save more money. It's just not as good as the other two.
SAPPHIRE 100328L Radeon HD 6770 1GB
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102940

Good luck hope this helped.

 

[jryan388]

+1 for Saint7269's comment.

AMD/ATI drivers are really quite stable nowadays. I haven't been interested long enough to know if they were bad in the past, but they work great for my radeon 5750.

I don't think that either AMD or NVidia is better overall. Just look for who has the best card at your price range. Here's the September best graphics cards article by Tom's:
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gaming-performance-radeon-geforce,3018.html
As you can see, there are a fair number of AMD and NVidia cards. Just pick a price.

For your price range, $150-$250, the best value in there is, IMO, the Radeon 6950 1GB for ~220 after rebate. If you don't want to go quite that high, however (and I most certainly wouldn't recommend upgrading at all without a better CPU), a GTX 460 1GB is a great choice.