And I'm down to one of two choices:

1. ATI Radeon 6850 (Sapphire TOXIC, 1GB or GDDR5 RAM)

2. nVIDIA GeForce GTX-460 (Galaxy SuperOC 1GB of GDDR5 RAM)

I'll also take recs of cheap ($200ish MAXIMUM) cards under advisement. But I basically want to know which card to fucking get.

 

I can't speak for the radeon card, but I have a GTX 460 in my rig, and its amazing. I obviously use it mostly for gaming, and I've yet to find anything I can't play at max settings.

 

Between the two, I'd pick the 6850, as it appears to perform better than the 460 across the board in terms of video games. Benchmarks for the two cards can be seen here. You could also check to see which manufacturer provides better warranty for your card in case things go wrong, and base your decision off that.

 

nVIDIA is more reliable: until recently, I've always stuck with their make of cards, but I got a Radeon for my birthday. I wish I got an nVIDIA.

 

I use a 470 and the thing is a space heater. I've heard that the 460s largely eliminated that problem, so I'd go with that.

However, I used to use a 260-216 and it played just about everything at max settings. BC2, Mass Effect 2, Arkham Asylum, Dragon Age, etc: it blasted everything out of the water even at 1920x1200.

Edit: I'd pick a better distro than Galaxy, though. I always use EVGA for my nVIDIA products.

 

If you can stretch the budget, get a 6950 and then tweak it and get a 6970 for the price of a 6950.

 

I'd say anything above a GTS250 is pretty good (it's the card I'm using right now). From what I've observed over the years is that nVidia has always been the most reliable for me in terms of usage. I had a Ti4600 for at least 3 or 4 years, and a Ge-Force 3 for the same amount of time before the fans finally died on me.

 

MURTON, YOU FUCKER. I WAS WAITING FOR YOUR INPUT. YOU FUCKING SHOW UP AFTER I'VE MADE MY DECISION. I HATE YOU SOOOOOOOO MUCH.

Anyway. EVGA GeForce GTX460. Thanks, y'all.

 

Good choice. Even though I love my 470, I wish I had gotten a 460 just for the polishing they did on it.

Also, don't forget to register your card with EVGA before you put it in your machine! They have a lifetime RMA policy that you have to register in the first month or so.

 

Everybody else is so dejected.

Awwww.