StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Alright, so i'm upgrading to windows 7 within the next few days, and i've got a bit of money since it was my 21st a few days ago, so thought i'd splash out on a new graphics card. Gonna be used primarily for gaming, so I want something powerful. PC already has 4gb of RAM and a heat sink within it.

So as the topic title says, recommend me something to buy (price range can be up to about £300).

Best recommendation at the moment would be an ATi 5850 or 5870 based card. Not sure what prices are like in the UK but in Australia the price of a 5870 card is around the AUD$550-$600, an 5850 is around AUD$400.

I checked Scan.co.uk, and it looks as if the best bet for that price range is the Radeon 5850, since the 5870 is on just the wrong side of £300 (and probably overkill, especially for the price). You might also want to look at the Radeon 5770, which can be had for £130 or so and is still pretty powerful in most games.

If the 5850 can be had for less than 300 pounds, get it. Short of the 5870, it's the fastest single GPU card out there.

You should PROBABLY be able to get a 5870 in your budget, but I don't know about over-the-pond price differences. If you can get it from a site that sells in US dollars it'll cost about £250 before shipping.

If you're cool with slightly more technical work, you can buy two Radeon HD5770 cards and run them in crossfire mode. That would give you similar performance to a 5780 and be cheaper. Two HD4890s is in your budget and more powerful again, but since you're upgrading to Windows 7 you should have DirectX 11 compatibility near the top of your requirements unless you do upgrades like this every year.

edit: bad at model numbers

edit 2: the 5850 would be more power efficient, doesn't require you to have as many PCIe slots open, and supports Eyefinity triple monitor setup. If those are of interest to you it's a better choice than 2x 5770.

Thanks for the help, ended up splashing out for the 5850, should arrive in a few days.