Hey peeps, I've been looking around your board for the last week or so as I've just got back from my parents house (I'm living in Thailand) and have been playing COD4 on their xbox360. (cool parents eh?)

Coming back to my PC I was disgusted by how it performs and was shocked to see such a difference!

I'm not a complete computer newbie, I've just been away for a while....

I've read the reviews on this site and now understand for my price range the 4850 is the card to go for, in Thailand they mainly have Sapphire or ASUS cards - is there much difference between brands of the ATI chipsets? I also understand that I could crossfire them later - as long as the speeds are the same?

My computer spec at the moment is....

Windows XP
2.67 gigahertz Intel Pentium D (I'm guessing that is dual?)
2g Ram (running 667 on a 533 board - seems to work!)
Board: ASUSTeK Computer INC. P5VDC-X Rev 1.xx
3 Drives
7900gs Nvidia VGA
580w Tagean

Would I be able to play Call of Duty 4 and other new games with this spec and the 4850? Would you recommend I spend money on something else?


Thanks for the advice,

Rob

SO far most of 4850/70 are refference designs, so the manufacturer do not matter (Though I'd stay away from Gainward/Palit, I still can't believe that Palit can make card that will not have exploding capacitors - bad experience from past )

The difference between 4850/70 depends on the screen you have. If you get something like 1280x1024 70 might be an overkill. Especially for your CPU.

I've checked your board, and you can't put anything better on it. It would require major computer overhaul

BTW, I'd also make sure, you have good airflow in your case. 4850 will require good airflow to be efficiently cooled

Great reply thanks, I have a 17" monitor. What does that mean ?

As for the airflow, I think I should be ok. Loads of fans and things are in there.

In the future, I could always get a new MOBO and another 4850 - that would future proof me for a while yeah?

Whoa the Pentium D is old and is going to bottleneck both cards...

Really, I guess it's around 2 years old - but it's a dual 2.6ghz

Would it really effect the performance that much?

I don't usually like to use the term "bottleneck", and I usually always suggest people buy the best video card they can afford, regardless of the processor they have. But really, if you want to game, that Pentium D is old and slow, and is going to badly limit your gaming performance.
In your case, you need to start over with a new motherboard, CPU, memory before you go spending money on a great GPU. The rest of your hardware is just not strong enough to fully get the benefit of a 4850/70.

Hmmm, OK - well looks like I'll be sticking with the original system for a while then. Can't be spending $100s of dollars just to play games with a bit nicer graphics. The missus would kill me!

Thanks for your advice