which video card manufacturer

i wanna go with the ATI Radeon HD 3870 but im not too sure of which manufacturer to go with. i just put together a high end gaming system last night but i need a graphics card to go with it and alot of the reviews on the graphics cards are mixed so im not too sure of which to go with

 

ATI is a good brand. sapphire is also a good brand video card too.

 

i have an ati card right now... but dude check this nvidia card out GeForce 8800 GTS. ive seen this card in action while playing hellgate and CoD:4 and i must say it was one of the most breathe taking things ive ever seen. but yeah, that ati youre looking at is pretty beast as well.

 

save the money and buy 9800-series card...

 

9800...from what i herd those are gonna be 400+ bucks...i think ill pass on that until the price drops a bit. i dont need to play Crysis on max graphics THAT badly lol

ive been looking at the sapphire radeon HD 3870s and theres a 40 dollar difference between 2 of them. their specs are exactly the same so what makes the other 1 worth 40 more bucks?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102732 ($230)
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102719 ($190)

 

From what I can see, the more expensive one has a memory clock that is 50mhz higher...which I would say is not worth the money.

 

one of the members had the sapphire HD3870 and said the heatsink/fan was noisy. you want one with a dual slot setup, not just for sound, but better cooling. HIS HD3870 is one of the cards to look at.

also, make sure you have a solid 500w power supply (antec, corsair, seasonic, thermaltake). the HD3870 cards require 450w, but having a little more power leaves room for other upgrades.

 

i have a 650w psu and only 1 pci-e slot =/ so i cant go dual cards

so i definitely wanna go for the Radeon HD 3870 so should I get the sapphire or the HIS? Sapphire has alot of good reviews, the HIS has good reviews too but also theres the 23% ppl rated it 1 out of 5

 

dual slot means it takes up two slots instead of one. doesn't matter if you only have one pci-e slot.

you will probably cover one of the standard pci slots or a pci-e x1 slot with a dual slot HD3870.

 

ok i dont mind covering one of the slots so which manufacture should i go with then? HIS or Sapphire? i was leaning toward more with Sapphire for the main fact that HIS has 23% 1 out of 5 ratings thats a real turn off for me. i cant buy it right away anyways, unless my parents let me take money out of my "emergency" money cuz this is an emergency! i wanna play amazing games ASAP!!!

 

HIS and Sapphire are very good brand, go for the one that is cheaper. If not go for the one thats overclocked

 

they both cost the exact same, their specs are identical except the sapphire doesnt state its core clock.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102719
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814161215

 

here's a quote from one of the aD addicts in the pc build thread

 

Indeed, and that's the exact shocking cooler I'm referring to. It's unnecessarily noisy, and sounds very cheap. It gave me a severe headache after only an hour, and was actually so bad I had to remove it. Now I may be a bit nutty about keeping my PC quiet, but even when I had a noisy CPU cooler it didn't give me headaches.
The HIS cooler is a million times better.

Right now, the HD3870 is probably the best card to have still (the 9800s will be terrible, so don't worry about being left in the dust by them, you won't be) and the HIS is probably the best of all of them.

 

Ahh Sam, look they are quoting you now!

I would get a 8800GT if I were you. It's only 200 and it honestly does perform quite a bit better than a 3870. Only reason you would get a 3870 is if because it's a lot cheaper in England from what Sam says.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814133205

If you're bent on getting the 3870 then it's the HIS one for sure.

 

True, though you can find HD3870s with Zalman coolers for $180, but since the HIS is only an extra $10 there's no real point in not getting that version. Even so, I stick by the HD3870 still beind a decent choice for any gamer since the performance difference for the 8800GT, while it is worth considering, is realistically rather minor compared to the detail levels most games offer (if it's unplayable on one, it'll be unplayable on the other), and the HD3870 is generally a much more efficient card, certainly quieter, and as long as you're not an idiot with the drivers, produces very impressive visuals. The HD3870 when overclocked performs about the same as the 8800GT, and I don't notice the difference in games, I really don't, so consequently I don't run the card overclocked, there's no point. On that basis there's really nothing real-world separating the two cards. Additionally, the 8800GT may get better scores when AA and AF are used, but that's because nvidia's AA isn't as detailed as ATI's, it's as simple as that. You want a higher frame rate so you can turn the detail up. When the detail of the ATI card is higher anyway, what have you gained?

 

So what about all those drivers problems you were having? My card still can't run AVIVO properly and CCC doesn't work as it should for me.

 

Well, I fixed the crashes by using Catalyst again, not the Omega drivers, and I fixed the corrupt graphics by um, changing Mipmap to high quality rather than high performance! lol!
Now catalyst works as it always has.

 

ok i went along with HIS *crosses fingers* and i also got Crysis, i know i wont be able to play on max settings smoothly but thats fine for now. about how hot should this thing running at? on my computer case, on the front it has the temperature monitor of the CPU and HDD, i was wondering if i could just put HDD wire on the video card heatsink so that way i can keep a good eye on the temperature of the video card. o yea how hot should my CPU be running at on idle, when i first boot it up its usually around 35c but then it goes up to around 40-42c. my CPU is AMD Athlon 64 x2 6400+ Black Edition 3.2GHz and i used the Artic Cooling 64 Freezer Pro heatsink/fan

 

Those temps are fine for that CPU. As for the graphics heatsink, ATITool or Catalyst Control Center can tell you how warm the card is. You're safe up to the low 90s (ºC).