I'm using an ATI 5770, and highly recommend it.

Also, you can check out TomsHardware for graphics card reviews. Every month they post an analysis of best budget graphics cards for a whole bunch of different price brackets.

Here's the article for February: (March one should be out in a few days)

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-gaming-graphics-card,2544.html

FragKrag

United States11556 Posts

March 06 2010 07:47 GMT

#23

The funny thing is that it is actually fairly out of date on the higher power cards like the 5850. Yes, there was a time in January when the 5850 could be found for $290 (even as low as $270 with newegg combo I think), but since late February (about the week before the HD 5830 launch) they were upped to around $310-320. :<

The 5750 has also increased in price to the point where the lowest is $150ish, making it a terrible buy when the 5770 is just $10 more.

The 4870 isn't dead yet though, just a bad buy.

The thing I hate the most about the Tom's Hardware "cost effective" part is that they only take into account cost effectiveness, and when they brandish the cards like that (like 2x 4890s in Xfire in the $400 category), people buy those without thinking about the drawbacks they have :|

imho, benchmarks are much better, people just have to take the time to look at them.

deth

Australia1757 Posts

March 06 2010 08:46 GMT

#24

actually with my 250 GTS and AMD Athlon X2 6000+ I get lag when I scroll as well, I have no idea what the problem is :/

Nub4ever

Canada1981 Posts

March 06 2010 17:48 GMT

#25

What shader are you running on and what is the like amount of memory or w/e it's called on ur card?

semantics

10040 Posts

March 06 2010 17:52 GMT

#26

On March 06 2010 17:46 dethrawr wrote:
actually with my 250 GTS and AMD Athlon X2 6000+ I get lag when I scroll as well, I have no idea what the problem is :/

That cpu is fairly aged i'd turn down things like physics and reflections maybe that's it assuming you have reasonable settings for the rest of the game which would probably be default high to ultra depending if thats a 512 or 1 gig card with that card

Nub4ever

Canada1981 Posts

March 06 2010 18:09 GMT

#27

Then is
it possible that my CPU is the problem? Or having my old gpu has similar results as an old CPU?

FragKrag

United States11556 Posts

March 06 2010 18:37 GMT

#28

Your CPU should be fine, it's your GPU that is bottlenecking your performance.

semantics

10040 Posts

March 06 2010 18:42 GMT

#29

A 6000+ gives the same performance of like a E5200+ but without the high overclocking ability

with reflections and physics being bunted off to the cpu i'd at-least see if that's it as a cpu is less likely to handle a spike caused by moving the screen as well.

in other words i'd lower my settings to min then isolate what is the issue by bring up certain values although my initial guess is the cpu.

As for the OP your cpu is just fine it's not great as it's the bad series of quadcores amd was making but it's still fairly powerful

the guy i was posting to had a GTS250 which should run the game pretty much on ultra if it's the 1 gig version so a more likely suspect for his drop in performance is his cpu, your gpu is just bad.

Nub4ever

Canada1981 Posts

March 06 2010 22:17 GMT

#30

Ok, guess I'm off to save money for the new GPU :D

teh leet newb

United States1999 Posts

March 07 2010 05:35 GMT

#31

The 5770 is definitely within your price range:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&Description=radeon 5770&bop=And&ActiveSearchResult=True&Order=PRICE

I have this card, and it runs all games at max settings at full settings (Dragon Age, SC2, etc).

FragKrag

United States11556 Posts

March 07 2010 05:59 GMT

#32

Make sure you stick with the 1GB GDDR5 version if you buy a 5770.

yooniball

United States21 Posts

March 07 2010 10:55 GMT

#33

You are using a 9300 and playing on the best settings? That is definitely the problem here... GeForce 9300 cannot handle all that. And the ATI cards people are recommending are very solid. The 9300 you are using should not be used to play SC2 at ultra settings no matter what because you will just lag like crazy from the awesome texturing that you GPU is doing, which in turn cuts down on your ability to play. Try lowering your settings all to low and you will see all the lag go away I bet. Anyone here have problems with Tri-Sli on SC2? I get flicker issues with it. I got 3x 275 gtx's and I cannot get them to not flicker...

Nub4ever

Canada1981 Posts

March 07 2010 19:29 GMT

#34

People have said this soo many times, I don't know whats going on but with my 9300 I can run everything on Ultra/Extreme except for Shader which I must keep on low or it lags horribly when I scroll.

KingKRule

United States84 Posts

March 07 2010 19:30 GMT

#35

Is AMD even competitive anymore? I feel like they're just churning out cheap ass graphics cards nowadays cuz they know they can't compete in quality against intel.

FragKrag

United States11556 Posts

March 07 2010 19:43 GMT

#36

yooniball: I have no idea about tri-SLi, but from what I heard from all of the random people that come comment, SC2 does not support SLi. I have no idea whether it's true or not though, because I haven't actually done any research on it :p. Best bet is just to ask Blizzard tech support.

KingKRule, I'm not sure what you are talking about. Intel makes some of the worst graphics on the market because they are all integrated GPUs. Intel does not have a single dedicated GPU on the market at the moment.

yooniball

United States21 Posts

March 08 2010 00:33 GMT

#37

I know that SLI works for SC2 because I have tried it. TRI SLI does not work however. I didn't think AMD and Intel were any where on the GPU market? I thought it was ATI and nVidia?

Go to www.systemrequirementslab.com and see if SC2 beta will run it. I don't know if it is up on the site yet though. I'm almost certain a 9300 is definitely not powerful enough to run SC2 on ultra.

FragKrag

United States11556 Posts

March 08 2010 00:34 GMT

#38

ATi was acquired by AMD

UrASofty

Canada772 Posts

March 08 2010 04:05 GMT

#39

On March 06 2010 13:03 FragKrag wrote:
The 5750 is actually the card I consider the worst. I would honestly go with the GTS 250. (me going for nvidia product?!?!?!!?!)

If you dont mind me asking, why is the 5750 the worst?