What's a good mid-range gpu?

I'm in the market for a good mid to upper mid-range graphics card. I noticed all of the Nvidia cards just took a price cut, but the ATI cards are competitive and apparently produce better video quallity w/AA. I've always had nvidia cards but the new 48xx ATI cards look awesome! What to do?

I am running a CrossFire setup here with 2 ATI X1950XTX's wich are I would say mid to high end cards, and from my experience ATI cards fair better (when matched equally with nVidia counterparts) in higher resolution and AA

My pre- CrossFire setup was (since I am guessing you are thinkig single card setup?)

ATI X1950XTX 256MB GDDR3
Catalyst 8.7
AA 6x
AAA on
Antisotropic filtering maxed at 16x
Catalyst AI on
Overdrive at approx 15% above stock
(basically all settings to maximum or best quality)

screen res 1280x1020 on my 21" CRT (I maintain for all my games, video software) and it was smooth
the only thing I have changed is added aother X1950XTX

The only thing you have to consider with a card as above, your PSU needs to have a 6 pin power lead for the card and should be in the 450W+ range
Also it is a BIG and heavy card

if you are thinking a little less $$$ I also run a ATI X1650 with 512 MB ram... a smaller card and doesn't require the extra PSU hookup
I believe they run anywhere from 70 and up (depends if you get a "built by" or "powered by" ATI card


I haven't had the chance to try out the HD series but I have heard good things about them

oh my card cost me........$200ish/card (they are genuine built by ATI cards not knock offs wich can in some cases be more costly)
I understand Sapphire makes a decent "powered by" ATI card

Although if I get some $$$$$ then I want to CrossFireX a pair of those ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 (2 Crossfire'd GPU's on a single card) totals up 4 GPU's

You have to check your power supply some cards need 400 watts our more.I ran in to that my computer has only 300 watts the top cards wont work

My current stats are:
amd 4400 x2 2.2Ghz @2.4Ghz
Ultra Xfinity 650w PSU
2Gigs of G-Skill @3-3-3-6 2t
Audigy 2zs 5.1
7950gt @610Mhz gpu/750Mhz vram
GPU and CPU are liquid cooled.

Power supply is rated for 35 amps on the 12 volt rail... I only have one PCIe slot so I'm looking for the best single card solution.

You will find that that a people argue about this a lot on the tech forums.

I won't try to say that either is bad or good just to inform you of what I like.

I prefer Nvidia. I have 2 8800 gts cards in my system. To run in SLI (Nvidia) or Crossfire (Ati) you need a motherboard designed for that... Mine is a Striker II Formula which runs SLI.

Since you are interested in one card I will explain why I chose Nvidia.

I had a Nvidia card and decided to give ATI a try because they were a little cheaper. Unfortunately I never really got over the change as the picture always seemed bland. (for lack of a better term). I tried 2 different cards on my systems and after a year or so of tolerating Ati's graphics I finally bought a Nvidia again. I enjoyed it so much that I sold off my other card and bought another Nvidia.

I have read many forum topics on this subject with specs about this and that but for me the Nvidia card just simply gives a better picture. If I had to do it all again I think I would try to find people with both cards and visit them to see which one I liked better because all of the stats in the world couldn't have helped me see the difference.

When running games I don't have any problems running most @ max without SLI and pretty much everything runs well at max with SLI.

Here is where I get my Video Cards from...

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?minorcatid=108

Hope this helps.

This is the card that I have x2.
http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=22689&vpn=320-P2-N815-AR&manufacture=eVGA

http://www.futureshop.ca/catalog/proddetail.asp?logon=&langid=EN&sku_id=0665000FS10096083&catid=

This is what i would get if it would work in my computer

It really makes me mad my computer is a quad 6600 750 hard drive HD TV FM TURNER 3 gig mem and they only put a 300w power supply some day ill change it

I really appreciate the feed back guys and any other PC gamers please let me know your REAL knowledge of these cards. Honestly, if I take all of the info from the net and ball it up, I'm no further ahead than just reading benchmark charts and opinions. For some reason I feel like I can trust my local brethren to give me direction. I know I said "mid" range card but I'm looking hard at the 8800 gts or gtx AND the ATI 3870 and 3870x2.... Wicked %@$# cards! I dont really want to change my setup (because I just got it right). I just need some last gen GPU horse power. I don't feel that it's nessesary to spend extra $ on a PCIe 2.0 card that I cant support, unless it would help.

Jimmy T

Its kinda off topic but to Wickens... If you want a good deal(and you don't mind going for a good tour), check out the TD outlet in Burlington. You need to get off the QEW at Guelph Line then turn left on the service road. You can see the store from the QE... I sound like a friggen TD salesman but their Ultra PSUs are getting better and they're cheap! I got my 650w for around $100. Probably doesn't make the wattage it states, but, 35 Amps on a 12 volt rail is pretty good for that kind of $.

Thanks Jimmy T i hope you get a good card

I am running a 8800 GTX and love it. Gaming is done on a 24" monitor so I can pump the resolution up to 1920x1200. The new Nvidia 260 and 280 cards look pretty sweet as well. And yes even the ATI 4xxx series cards look impressive. Competition is forcing the prices down which is good too.

Well after quite alot of reading I just bought a Palit Radeon HD 4850 512MB GDDR3 PCI-E Video Card for $214 from NCIX. (Thanks Katzz!) Great price and $20 dollar mail in rebate. I've never tried ATI before so I hope this one works out. I like the fact that I can still liquid cool this one easily and it should fit my case no problem.

Let us know how you like it... I would really be interested in your opinion especially because you are going from Nvidia to Ati... It may have an impact on my own decisions over the next few years.

Well tonight I pushed my 7950 as hard as I could and came up with a 5976 score on 3Dmark 06. The funny thing is I never got over 40C on the GPU but it went to hell after 650Mhz core and 800Mhz Mem. I'm sure that if I knew how to increase the voltage I could go higher yet. Maybe thats just my old gpu tapping out! Anyway, I will have before and after screen shots takin with FRAPS, and the best in game and 3Dmark 06 benchmarks posted on Tuesday or something. The card will be here Monday cause I missed the dellivery on Friday while I was at work. (#@%$@!!!!)
*DONE*
Well... I took screen shots in Crysis and Oblivion on the same settings and they looked really similar.(Too similar to bother posting them) The only thing that set the Crysis shots apart were the dates they were takin. The oblivion shots favored the ATI card slightly but nothing notable. This doesn't really speak well for the ATI card since my 7950gt is a pretty old card compaired to the 4850. I paid twice as much for the 7950 though. Compaired to an 8800 or 9800 the video quality may not be as good on a 4850, but my frame rates tripled in most games! I don't care about 100s of FPS but it sure made a difference in the games that ran 15 or 20.

FurMark v1.4.0 fullscreen @ 1280x1024
7950:min 17fps avg 20fps max 27fps @635Core 750RAM
4850:min 61fps avg 71fps max 103fps @500Core 993RAM(stock)39c idle