After several years of great service my nVidea 7900gs is dying. Games have quickly become unplayable due, I assume to VRAM failure. Causing artifacts such as these (link below) and several stuck pixels. 7900 GS (512 mb) Visual errors. - Tech Support Forum I am running a Intel E5200 with a small OC and 4GB Ram all on an ASUS P5QL Pro. I am only using a 1028x720 tft so don't push resolution but like higher textures and AA. I have around £100 ($150) to play with so as an nVidea fanboy I my first thought is the nVidea GTS 250. It may just be a re branded, slightly tweaked 9800 GTX but it will give me a good but not dramatic performance boost and get me gaming again with the added DX10 capabilities. Or should I do the unthinkable; jump ship and pick up an ATI HD4850 or If I can find a good deal a 4870? Thoughts and comments please.
Well, what power supply do you have? That would be one thing to consider with a video card upgrade, as those are a major power draw besides the CPU. Personally, I like nVidia's drivers over ATi/AMD as far as use goes, but the Radeon HD's are quite competitive. However, at 1024x768, I would just look at what's cheaper, because you're not going to get to a stage where either one is going to make a major difference. Double that resolution, then differences will show, but not at what you use now.
The PSU is an ASUS 360W that come as standard with the ASUS TA210 chassis. So low power consumption is a plus. http://www.aoaforums.com/frontpage/computer-hardware-58/627-review-asus-ta-210-atx-case.html
if you go for ATI, go for the HD5xxx series (starting from 5770 up to 5870) - those ought to give you somewhat of a performance boost.
