I'm so anxious about this I guess I'll just write about it. I odered my second HD4850 graphics card from Newegg afew hours ago, they havent shipped it yet but I should have it sometime next week, shooting for wednesday or thrusday. I got a Powercolor 512Mb one simply because I was looking for the cheapest one there and when you select the "lowest price" option the first one that comes up the Powercolor one. Im really glad it comes with a $20 rebate but Powercolor has some issues with their rebates so im kind of iffi about them and rebates but anywho...
Anyone looking at this would say it is save to assume that I got this card for better performance in games, and yes it is safe to assume that but that is not the primary reason I got the card. Now, don't get me wrong I id get it for better performance... on games to come. Right now I'm getting insane performance in the games I play most such as CoD4 and CoD:WaW, but I dont just use my rig for gaming, because I like to take my rig as far as she can go, I do some overclocking and Benchmarking with her. I've seen people with a 4850 crossfire set up and similar othe specs to mine get pretty drastic jump in their score just by adding another card. I've seen people get around 18000 with a 4850 Crossfire set up. My current highest 3DMark06 score is 14142 with one card, so my coal is to break 20000.
So yes I got the card for boosting my bench scores but there is one more not so obvious reason why I got it. The subliminal reason I got the card is to look good. See, I'm planning to go to Quakecon this year and I want to look good (or at least half way decent) beside the guy with the $8000 computer. I saw some G4 coverage last year on Quakecon and they said thats how far the prices from the computers ranged. I'm personally looking forward to seeing some Corei7 extreme systems or some Quadfire 4870X2 setups.
Along with the card I got an aftermarket cooler for my first 4850. I got it because I have the stock ATi cooler on the card and it does an amazing job at keeping my card at 80 degress celcious... so I kinda want to change it. I choose to get the ZALMAN VF1000 for it because its relatively cheap and by the reviews on newegg, people are reporting drastic (we're talking about 25 degress) temperature drops with that cooler and I havent seen anything better so I got it. The Cooler with the Powercolor is not the ATi cooler and people have said it yield pretty good temps, nothing like 80C or anything, they said at max under load 65. (hell that was my idle!)
So overall I'm really looking forward to this upgrade and I hope I achieve my goal ;D and if anyone is planning to head to Quakecon 09' I hope to see ya there! Its my first time going so im also exited for that. Probably spending most of my time in th BYOC room and look for some anouncements from I.D software...
Log in to comment