Decided to treat myself.

[wodin]

Well I've been thinking about getting a new graphics card for a good year or so, but one thing or another meant I didn't have the money. Well just recently I've had two bluescreen of death and had a feeling it was my old 4870 telling me the time for retirement was now.

So I managed to pick up a ATI 6850 for £93 including shipping! Very pleased with the price. I can't wait to try it out, should be here with in 7 days.

I was a little unsure as I've never heard of Club3D so did a quick check and couldn't see anything negative. I could have got an ASUS for £105 including delivery but every penny counts.

Hopefully it will be as faithful as my 4870 which gave me nearly three years of good service and still managed to more or less keep up, my main issue was the heat, I had to have my fan on 100%. The longest I've had a graphics card actually. I used to buy a new one every 18 months, however those days are over.

[Josh]

You bought a new Vidcard every 18 months? Wow.
IMHO a bit overkill, graphic cards have a cycle, that is about every 2 years they release a new chip (in the meantime they're just polishing up the old ones, adding more memory, speeding up clockspeed, but *nothing* note worthy) , and about ...take or leave every four years you should really really see a lot of difference between your old card and the newer ones. Unless you play lots of graphic-heavy stuff like ... FPS (Crysis anyone?) there's really no need to buy every 18 months. Club 3D used to be (don't know if they still exist??) an A brand in videocards, they don't produce them but they did make pretty good cards. Ofcourse names in this business come and go fast, one year the best the next year forgotten by all.
Anyhoo, I hope you have loads of fun with your card... cause nothing sucks more than a fried card during the weekend... [:D] been there done that... sucks.

[wodin]

Josh I don't buy top of the range, more two from top. Well thats what I used to do. Like I said that stopped awhile ago. I saw it as a minor upgrade investment that kept things ticking, remember I'm going back a few years now where you did get a big difference after 2 years. I never bought a graphic card from the same family\series though. Always the next series along and waited for a few releases and then bought the third from top which was always around £130. I'd never pay more than that for a graphics card.

As I said my 4870 was still managing to kick out the games and look good. Not direct x 11 though. I just new I was needing a new one and I hear the jump from 4870 to 6850 is a fair old whack.

This card will be with me for another 3 years I expect (fingers crossed). I upgraded my memory from 2 gigs to 8 gigs last November for £32. My CPU only has three corse but they run at 3.4 so it's good enough for now.

[Josh]

Hehe that's funny because I always jump a series and pay at least twice as much, that way I can play the newest baddest shooters maxed out on everything. Usually the cycle is 4-5 years. Except for my speakers and headphone, they're more than 10 years old... but so am I LOL.
Hey did you notice that the "soon and coming releases" doesn't fit on your screen anymore? It's too crowded there! Too many upcoming releases! And my creditcard is packed and ready hehehe.

[wodin]

Hmm...I need a bigger screen I know that. 19 inch doesn't cut it at all these days. Maybe next year.

[DuckofTindalos]

I use 3D Club as well, and am quite happy with my GTX580. Upped my RAM today from 6 to 12 Gigs; it's almost criminal how cheap it is...

[Gilmer]

It's always very cool to upgrade something then see how all your programs (games!!) run on it and can the computer now do backflips while running top frame rates.

Makes me want to do it.

[wodin]

Terminus I'm glad someone has a 3D club graphic card. I'd never heard of them so was alittle wary. Excellent news.

[Carolie04]

You bought a new Vidcard every 18 months? Wow.

[Josh]

ORIGINAL: Carolie04

You bought a new Vidcard every 18 months? Wow.

Spammer and already reported.

[SlickWilhelm]

I consider my Radeon 4870 to have been one of the best cards I've ever owned. I used it for a solid three years, and then farmed it down to my son's PC, where it's still giving great pleasure and excellent fps in his games.