Radeon 4870 $120 Budget

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ultra619

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Aug 13, 2011
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APPROXIMATE PURCHASE DATE: Beginning of January 2012

USAGE FROM MOST TO LEAST IMPORTANT: BF3 medium-High, performance should be better than my current 4870.

CURRENT GPU AND POWER SUPPLY: ATI Radeon HD 4870 512 MB, PSU Antec EarthWatts EA-650 GREEN 650W ATX12V v2.3 SLI Ready CrossFire Certified 80 PLUS BRONZE Certified Active PFC Power Supply

OTHER RELEVANT SYSTEM SPECS: CPU: Core 2 Quad Q6400 4gig ddr2 mobo: p5g41-m le

PREFERRED WEBSITE(S) FOR PARTS: newegg.com

PARTS PREFERENCES:

OVERCLOCKING: Yes SLI OR CROSSFIRE: Maybe

MONITOR RESOLUTION: 1440:900

ADDITIONAL COMMENTS: If possible budget 270 dollars with a HDMI monitor at least (1680:1050)
 
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The HD6850 is roughly 30-35% faster than the HD4870 on average at high resolutions. It will also give you DX11 and much improved power efficiency. Whether it is worth the money you need to decide I guess. Personally I would recommend at least saving up slightly more for an HD6870 which would be closer to a 60% increase in performance. Here is one for $140 after rebate with a free game you could ebay to get closer to the $120 you were talking about;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131378
FYI your processor runs at 2.13ghz which is quite low these days even for a quad core. Many games still just use 2 cores and especially in those it is going to restrict the performance of any card you might buy(probably already...
you could also hold out till next year when new hardware - 22 nm ivb, 28 nm amd and nvidia cards come out and see what happens with them. imo, right now, the 6850 and higher are better than the 4870, and at your res. the 512 mb of vram is a bit low.
 
The HD6850 is roughly 30-35% faster than the HD4870 on average at high resolutions. It will also give you DX11 and much improved power efficiency. Whether it is worth the money you need to decide I guess. Personally I would recommend at least saving up slightly more for an HD6870 which would be closer to a 60% increase in performance. Here is one for $140 after rebate with a free game you could ebay to get closer to the $120 you were talking about;
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814131378
FYI your processor runs at 2.13ghz which is quite low these days even for a quad core. Many games still just use 2 cores and especially in those it is going to restrict the performance of any card you might buy(probably already an issue if you are running an HD4870 at 1440x900.) I would overclock that processor as much as you can. A decent cooler is $20-30 if you are still on the stock one. With good cooling you should be able to get it up somewhere in the 3-3.5ghz range which would help a lot.
For the monitor this is a good page to keep an eye on;
http://www.logicbuy.com/categorydeals/computers/lcd-monitors
 
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