Looking for A New Video Card

[beartooth91]

Ok Folks,

I've got an aging Biostar TF560A2+ motherboard running a Brisbane 4000+ dual core processor. After many years of going with budget video cards, I bought a XFX 8600GT card two years ago, specifically for SH4 and ROW. I get 20-30 fps with 4x AA and 8x AF, high quality at 1440x900. I'm going to upgrade the processor to a Phenom x3 or x4 and have decided to buy a newer video card as well. I'm limited based on -

Monitor resolution: I have a 19" LCD with a native/max resolution of 1440x900.
Power supply: I bought a nice Sparkle 350 watt last year for the machine. Its a 350 but does have two 12v rails at 18a and 16a; 300 watts combined.
Budget is $70 to $115. I don't want to spend more.
Based on the above, I'm coming up with 4 choices:

ATI Radeon HD 4670
Nvidia 9600 GT
Nvidia 9800 GT low power editions
ATI Radeon HD 4770
Most of the above say you need a 400 watt or better p/s, but, there are many out there running them with 350's.

I guess my 1st question, considering I've had almost exclusively Nvidia cards; is there a difference in visual quality with this game (and PE) between Nvidia and ATI ?
It appears most here run with Nvidia cards. I've read and heard it said the ATI cards used to give a bit better graphics while the Nvidia's were a bit faster. That was before DX10 had everyone switch to a more unified architecture (8000 and HD series were the 1st, I believe). I don't know if that's true anymore.
Do the environmental graphics tweaks in PE favor Nvidia based cards ?

[Wilcke]

I just run Nvidia cards, I currently run the 9800GT and its fine at 1920 by 1080. My CPU is the bottle neck now an old AMD X2 4800, what a dog.

As for the power requirements, Google PC PSU calculator and you will get a nice online PSU calculator and you will know if you have enough power.

Best of luck.

[cdrsubron7]

Myself, I would suggest the ATI HD 4770. I've used both Nvidia and ATI cards over the years but have always come back to ATI as my favorite. But I really think that you would not go wrong with either of the four choices. One other consideration you might want to think about is cooling. The newer cards tend to run a little hotter and you want to make sure that you have adequate cooling in your computer case.

[Matt86]

I'm running a Chaintec OC edition 9600GT with max settings at slightly lower resolution than you and cant complain - plus the price has dropped in recent months... The main factor should be price I guess, I know some ATI cards are very fast for their price range. Just don't fall for the trap of going for a cheaper card with more memory but a restricted memory bandwidth - 256 minimum.

[beartooth91]

I went with the Radeon HD 4670 as I was concerned about the power supply. I'm familiar with the Nvidia tweaks thread, but, is there an equivalent for us ATI users ? I've been searching through the forums, but, don't see anything with the equivalent specifics mentioned in that thread.

[PL_Andrev]

4770 is most economical choose.

1) 4770 has similar results as GT9800 and 50% higher results than 4670
2) On 4770 you can have faster DDR5 memory
3) 4770 has lowest power consumption

A 4670 is the worst choose.