I always go for cards with good Power/Consuption ratio.

Radeon 6950 can be easily tweaked for low voltage via software like MSI Afterburner. Although same applies to 560 Ti, which should be optimal.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2022-06-08, 16:06:

I always go for cards with good Power/Consuption ratio.

Radeon 6950 can be easily tweaked for low voltage via software like MSI Afterburner. Although same applies to 560 Ti, which should be optimal.

Yes, tempting (but also probably rather noisy), but I'd like to stay a bit more period correct - the Radeon HD 6950 (release: December 15, 2010) is almost on the end of the timeline, more than a year later than the core CPU 🙁

I'd say a HD4850. Just one. From my perspective when it was new, the HD5xxx series were considered a bit of a hog to bother upgrading from then (as well as PhysX still being relevant, which may cut in upgrade interests if you're using a HD3/4 and want some silly ragdolls, flying papers(tm) and goo at the side). HD6 would resolve all that inefficiency and have nice prices going into 2011 but that's after this period. DX11 may have debuted at this time, but not the games that made much use of it. Everyone played Borderlands, TF2 (before the extreme cosmetic creep and MvM), COD MW/MW2, and these HD3/4 cards were absolutely fine for them.

I'd say HD5 only if it's in the mutually appropriate excess with a Core i7-950.

I'd choose GTX460 (or GTS450 GDDR5 if HD4850 performance level is alright).
As said before, PhysX was still relevant so why not take advantage of it?

leileilol wrote on 2022-06-08, 17:05:

I'd say a HD4850. Just one. From my perspective when it was new, the HD5xxx series were considered a bit of a hog to bother upgrading from then

Back then I upgraded(?) from HD4870 512MB (with Accelero Twin Turbo) to HD5770 Vapor-X 1GB. Over all I didn't give away any gaming performance, but ran a much cooler and silent card.

[/quote]
Back then I upgraded(?) from HD4870 512MB (with Accelero Twin Turbo) to HD5770 Vapor-X 1GB. Over all I didn't give away any gaming performance, but ran a much cooler and silent card.
[/quote]

I still swing between the HD 5770 or the (some month later) GTX 460 ...
... but I've bought my first GTX 460 along with a I7-2700 Sandybridge which is a 2011 CPU ...

The HD5850 and the GTX460 are close on the power consumption, but the HD5850 in theory is more powerful, so I think the HD5850 is a better option.

is the PC gonna be running Vista or 7 (or XP?)

cool system btw.

GTX460 seems like a really hot card or is 160w tdp not bad?

I was planning on using an old GTX570 i had from my old Win7 build in my own XP build but decided against as it could pull in too much power. My PSU is 550w but apparently the card demands a 600w at least. So i'm leaving in my 9800GTX+ 512mb, just playing it safe.

I built a new Core i7-860 PC at the end of 2009 with a Radeon HD 5850 so I'd say its pretty period correct.

foil_fresh wrote:

I was planning on using an old GTX570 i had from my old Win7 build in my own XP build but decided against as it could pull in too much power.

Same recommendation: just underclock/undervolt it.

foil_fresh wrote on 2022-06-09, 05:03:

is the PC gonna be running Vista or 7 (or XP?) […]
Show full quote

is the PC gonna be running Vista or 7 (or XP?)

cool system btw.

GTX460 seems like a really hot card or is 160w tdp not bad?

I was planning on using an old GTX570 i had from my old Win7 build in my own XP build but decided against as it could pull in too much power. My PSU is 550w but apparently the card demands a 600w at least. So i'm leaving in my 9800GTX+ 512mb, just playing it safe.

What about a GTX 750ti or similar? It works with Office PCs (350w PSU).

Also, isn't all that stuff a bit overkill?
In the late 2000s, something like a Geforce 7, 8 or 9 was common.
Some of these GPUs were integrated into chipsets, even.

All the stuff you guys seem to talk about wasn't something I even had heard of before 2013 or so. That's so confusing.

Jo22 wrote:

That's so confusing.

Time flies fast, huh? Radeon 5850 is almost 13 years old. So yeah, Radeon HD 5xxx series cards were popular choice in 2010.

In the late 2000s, something like a Geforce 7, 8 or 9 was common.

GeForce 7 cards quickly dropped off after 2007.

Jo22 wrote on 2022-06-09, 06:36:

Also, isn't all that stuff a bit overkill? In the late 2000s, something like a Geforce 7, 8 or 9 was common. Some of these GPUs […]
Show full quote

Also, isn't all that stuff a bit overkill?
In the late 2000s, something like a Geforce 7, 8 or 9 was common.
Some of these GPUs were integrated into chipsets, even.

All the stuff you guys seem to talk about wasn't something I even had heard of before 2013 or so. That's so confusing.

Back in 2009 I had a midrange Core 2 Duo with a GT 8600 (silent) video card.
Now I am building the PC that I couldn't afford back then 😉

The CPU that I am using for this built was released in August 2009.
To keep it authentic, the rest of the Hardware should be from around the same period - that means roughly between Mid 2009 and Mid 2010.
As reference see GPU-History: http://www.vgamuseum.info/images/doc/history.png

foil_fresh wrote on 2022-06-09, 05:03:

is the PC gonna be running Vista or 7 (or XP?)

Haven't decided about the OS yet - Windows 7 was released in Oktober 2009.
As I am always a bit reluctant about OS changes, I probably would have used XP back then.

Yeah XP's very period correct as there was the infamous Windows Vista reluctance, and XP wasn't killed off in support yet. Instead, what matters there is SP2 vs SP3.

My experience with games from the last XP era, that is, 2019-2013, has not been good at all, the loss between DX9 and DX10, (even DX11 was available in 2010) is quite important in some cases. A very exaggerated example is ID Software's Rage(2011), with the same hardware on Win7 and XP it seems as if there were two different games, even save games on a 32bit OS don't work on a 64bit OS; It is true that this is the most extreme case that I found, but it exists.
RE6(2012) also changes a lot, but less.
From my point of view, the release of Win 7 was almost a start from scratch, as if we had suddenly reached the 21st century at all.
The computer I use for that era is similar to yours but from AMD (Phenom II X4 960T) and has 8gb of DDR2 RAM, so XP would be wasting a lot of memory.

Hoping wrote:

A very exaggerated example is ID Software's Rage(2011)

Which is OpenGL and looks exactly the same on any OS, with caveat that any 32-bit OS (not only XP) probably will have more texture streaming (can be tweaked). But Windows XP 64-bit exist.

RE6(2012) also changes a lot, but less.

That statement is completely nonsensical, especially in context of Rage.

Excluding some games like Crysis 3, there was no real pressure to switch from XP gaming before PS4 and Xbox One were released.

Did you try the game (Rage) before saying that it will look the same, my experience was bad, but it was a newer graphics card (R7260x) than the ones the OP listed, with a very bad XP driver for sure, the worst problem was the maximum usable RAM on XP (the computer I used in that test has 4gb), like you said it had a lot of problems with the textures, but Rage is a unique example. And Re6 uses DX, I'm only mentioning the games I've tested back then. But calm down, I don't have anything against XP. XP 64 was not so common, and the drivers support was... well, it existed. In the hole life of XP, only a few customers were using the 64 bit version, at least here where I live, I can count them with one hand, and we didn't work with big companies, only small ones, and we were a small company, and I don't remember a home customer with XP 64,but of course it depends on everyone's experience.

I only think that a gaming computer from that era would be better with Win7. But is his computer not mine, and he will decide, it's only my opinion.
And the fact that XP only supports DX9 is true, but maybe I'm wrong. I mentioned it because the cards the OP listed are DX10 or DX11, I like XP but until its limits, and tried DX10 in XP, but it's not perfect, it breaks compatibility.
And you are right, most gamers around here didn't rush to Win7 after what happened with Vista, but for example, they paid a lot for a GTX 8800 and never used DX10, it was a shame.
Back then I did not play a lot of games, so I don't have a big personal experience, only the experience of fixing the customers computers:(

Today I play more games, and most are a bit old, thanks god.😀

OK Ladies and Gentlemen, please can we focus on the initial question 😉

BTW, I've just bought this Radeon HD 5850 for little money 😀

Hoping wrote:

Did you try the game (Rage) before saying that it will look the same

Yeah, tried it. No significant problems or issues with RAM. AMD drivers had problems with RAGE, that's for sure.

And Re6 uses DX

RE6 is a multiplatform game for Xbox 360/PS3 (Shader Model 3.0 hardware) and doesn't look or run significantly better on DX11.