new card on a budget

[Richy99]

i say a budget looking at spending around £100-120 on a new card, the x1950pro i have is starting to finally show its ages and serious sam 3 gets unplayable even at 1024x768

so im looking at gettting a new card, i have been looking at the radeon 6850 and the nvidia 560 (non ti version), im hestitant toget a better card due to the bottlenecking of the system by the cpu/chipset

it has been a few years since i have looked at hardware so am out of touch a bit regarding this, but i do know that either card would give a significant increase in framerates over the existing card

suggestins welcome on which one to get

[Mountain Mania]

The AMD cards have an advantage (NOT BOTTLENECKING MUCH) with slightly underpowered cpu's.

Not positive how pounds translate into US dollars but an AMD 7770 should be in your grasp and if you can stretch the budget slightly an AMD 7850 is even better.

[Richy99]

i as looking at the 7770 but it has a 128bit bus whilst the 6850 has a 256bit bus so in theory shouldnt the 6850 be better for bandwidth?

[Mountain Mania]

i as looking at the 7770 but it has a 128bit bus whilst the 6850 has a 256bit bus so in theory shouldnt the 6850 be better for bandwidth?

Regarding buswidth you're right. However the faster core + memory speed of the 7770 puts it right on par, neck + neck with the 6850:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/536?vs=539

The HD7850 will oc from an 860 Mhz core to over 1200 Mhz in some cases. Even at stock speeds that will annihilate the older 6850:

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/549?vs=539

[Richy99]

the 7850 is out of my price range

so now it seems whther its 6850 or a 7770

[Mountain Mania]

Of course a Geforce GTX 560 is also in your price range, its faster then AMD's 7700 and the 6850. Not sure how it will scale with your cpu, but it still should be faster.
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/543?vs=539