Can you provide some tech advice on this PC rig?

[Flying_Nutcase]

Hi,

I'm considering buying this rig: http://www.trademe.co.nz/computers/desktops/no-monitor/auction-471723657.htm

I would plan to put the graphics card, the Sapphire HD5850 Extreme, into my current rig in the future, so having two gaming rigs (IL2 etc LAN party with my wife, yea-hah!). I just wanted to confirm that the 5850 will fit my current rig's motherboard, the Gigabyte GA-EP45-DS3LR.

Specs of 5850: http://www.amd.com/us/products/desktop/graphics/ati-radeon-hd-5000/hd-5850/pages/ati-radeon-hd-5850-overview.aspx#3

Specs of the motherboard: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/product-page.aspx?pid=2898#sp

Thanks in advance for any help. There's no point in 'going for it' with doubt in the back of one's mind.

Flying Nutcase

PS Any thoughts about the choice of the new rig would be appreciated too. Ta...

[Gamekeeper]

Your card will fit the board, important info is power supply, type, wattage and does it have necessary leads?

500 Watt or greater power supply with two 75W 6-pin PCI Express® power connectors recommended (600 Watt and four 6-pin connectors for ATI CrossFireX™ technology in dual mode).
Certified power supplies are recommended. Refer to http://support.amd.com/us/certified/power-supplies/Pages/listing.aspx for a list of Certified products.

[Flying_Nutcase]

Thx for the reply Gamekeeper. My current rig has an Antec True Power Quattro TPQ-1000 1000W PSU.

[JtD]

In Il-2, you often were better off with an NVidia card of similar performance. Il-2 is CPU heavy, not GPU. ATI seemed to stress the CPU more than NVidia, so that sometimes a worse NVidia gave better performance than a better ATI. Not sure if that is still true.

[Whacker]

In Il-2, you often were better off with an NVidia card of similar performance. Il-2 is CPU heavy, not GPU. ATI seemed to stress the CPU more than NVidia, so that sometimes a worse NVidia gave better performance than a better ATI. Not sure if that is still true.

True and false. True in that IL2 does seem to work a bit better with Nvidia based cards. False in that ATI is more "cpu intensive" or anything like that than Nvidia. The performance gap between those two closed pretty decisively with the previous generation 6xxx/5xx, and seems to be holding true for the newest. Up until my current PC, I had owned only Nvidia cards in every single previous machine. IL2 works fine on my ATi 6970's, as long as crossfire is turned off.

[Gamekeeper]

Thx for the reply Gamekeeper. My current rig has an Antec True Power Quattro TPQ-1000 1000W PSU.

That is one of the certified (http://support.amd.com/us/certified/power-supplies/Pages/details.aspx?item=54) PSU's