Computersight -

As a keen computer gamer I thought I would write this article informing you how exactly these two cards perform in certain games.

Firstly, the 9 series card that costs around £100 now (got mine for £92 on eBay) consistently performs well over modern titles such as call of duty 4, fallout 3, need for speed undercover etc. You can have peace of mind knowing that all modern games play smoothly and that you haven’t wasted your money. This is an extremely good value for money card as you are able to play all these games maxed out at a high resolution without over clocking. You may be thinking why not get a 4850?’ because I am aware that it is its rival. But once over clocked the performance is consistently better than the 4850, trust me. Also there is no point buying a factory over clocked 9800 GTX because you can simply over clock yourself to give the same performance and go way beyond these factory over clocked models for a cheaper price.

Speaking of over clocking I must say that I was extremely surprised that this baby could hit 850 MHz on the core clock that’s a 175 MHz increase from the stock 675. The performance is Crysis was noticeably better! And gave not bad game play at 1680 x 1050 (all on very high). This was a 24 frame rate average.

Moving on, the 4870. I currently own this card (stole it from eBay for £110). Performance wise it was definitely worth the upgrade. I can play Crysis with a 30 frame rate average at 1680 x 1050 all on very high! And over clocked to 840 MHz (using Riva tuner) and memory on 1100 MHz (from 900!) because catalyst limits it to 790 MHz. I can get a 32-33 frame rate average which is surprisingly smooth on Crysis. I would highly recommend downloading it as it is simple to use and gives you better clock speeds.

This card rivals the GTX 260. Performance wise they are equal. You might be thinking that the 4870 is cheaper but now you can find a brand new GTX 260 ZOTAC edition for £132!!

I would highly recommend these two cards as they are great for over clocking and you can be sure that all the games you buy from now on will be lag free.