4870 in Crossfire or 5850?

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silasmoon

silasmoon

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Jul 6, 2008
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Right now I have a 4870 (512mb) and it has been a great card. My brother recently gave me an $80 gift certificate to NewEgg, and I am wanting to upgrade my graphics.

Should I get another 4870 (512mb) to put it in Crossfire, or should I get a 5850? (Possibly 5870?)

The crossfire would essentially cost me $70, where the 5850 would be $170.

I play at a resolution of 1680x1050 on a 22'' LG monitor. (W2252TQ)

I play Batman: Arkham Asylum, Fallout 3, COD4, and will buy COD: Modern Warfare 2, Starcraft 2, and Diablo 3.

I want to be able to really crank the graphics up to full-blown max. But it's foreseeable that in the next year or two I will have a 1900x1200 display or even larger (LCD or LED TV). I know there are a limited number of DX 11 games out there, but I wonder if things like D3 will be in DX 11?

My system specs are as follows:

Q6600 @ 3.5ghz
Asus Rampage Formula MoBo
4 gigs OCZ Reaper RAM
750w Corsair PSU
Antec 1200 case
Windows 7 Professional 64 bit

Thoughts / suggestions? Thanks everyone!

 
Solution
coozie7
@ Silasmoon: In a few months time the HD58xx will be available in real quantity and, possibly, a little cheaper. In the meantime hang on to the gift certificate for a while, there are few games a HD4870 cannot play at high/max, you really have no need to upgrade just yet.
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id try to sell that 4870 to a buddy or something and get the 5850.

that might save you a lil more cash, and the 5850 is a great single card solution.

remember on some games ati crossfire does not scale well so in most situations 2 4870's would be great, but some
games wouldnt benefit at all from a crossfire setup.

Have fun
 
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That's a tough one. Usually I would say go with the second 4870 because of the price difference but since you have $80 credit I am leaning the other way. Why don't you just see how much you could get for your 4870 (I'm guessing about $100-$110) and if you sell it, buy the 5850, but if you just can't wait anymore than buy the 4870. Maybe by the time you are able to sell your card the 5850 will come down in price.
 
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How much and when do you think the price will drop?
 
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I think a 5870 would be golden for your resolution. :) Yes, overkill in some games, but would be great for future-proofing and whatnot. Hell I still feel like my 4870 is overkill on a grip of games.

A good deal compared to the 5850 for the money? Probably not.
 
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Yeah my 4870 has been able to really power through some games, I am just looking towards future proofing, and am worried about COD:MW 2's system requirements, since it will be released in November.
 
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with young drivers, the hd 5870 is really proving itself to kill anything and everything at max at 1680x1050, even crysis

for some games it may be overkill, but WHO CARES, going at 500fps is not a bad thing... it just happens when you upgrade lol

so if you can afford it, hd 5870, but you may want to wait for the nvidia cards, i heard they have something up their sleeves worth bragging about

*edit*

with that quad core going at 3.5, you shudnt have too much trouble runnign everything with eyecandy at max
 
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Not entirely true. With "Max" eye candy (max details + AA) ... a single 5870 is not enough for STALKER: Clear Sky or Crysis at 16x10.
 
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Ragsters - when do the nVidia's come out? ETA?

Would love to get a 5870. It's definitely the option I want.

Yeah even at 3.5ghz I still get weakish FPS with 8xAA on Batman Arkham Aslyum maxed out.

I have seen some people say that a 4870 CF = 4870x2, but I am not entirely sure this is true with certain games not scaling crossfire well. Thoughts?

If I couldn't find someone locally to buy my card, where would you guys recommend trying? ebay?

 
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yeah i guess your right, but its def playable... i usually don't turn on aa unless my minimum is over 45 with it on anyway


and @ silas... the new nvidia cards have a release date i think of late november... not too far imo, they usually have stronger/pricier cards, but it should lower the ati cards a bit..and the hd 5890/ hd 5870x2 are around the bend as well, which should also send the market into a freefall
 
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@ Silasmoon: In a few months time the HD58xx will be available in real quantity and, possibly, a little cheaper. In the meantime hang on to the gift certificate for a while, there are few games a HD4870 cannot play at high/max, you really have no need to upgrade just yet.
 
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Solution
get another 4870 and do crosfire, because your resolution is 1680x1050 so 2x4870 will run all your games at max, also keep in mind that 2x4870 preforms faster than a single 5850.

better performance with less money in your situation.

in the other hand if you want to chose a single 5850, it supports directX 11 (means better shaders/pixels quality) and supports bigger resolutions, but im telling you that it will not perform faster than 2x4870 in 1680x1050.

its all up to you.
 
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I have been pondering over the SAME dilemma. To the point that I actually had my 4870 1Gb on ebay, but took it down. You won't get much for your card, and (2) 4870's in CF would whoop a 5850 but fall short of the 5870. I thought about it this way. You have the PSU to run it.... another card is CHEAP... you get MORE performance than the 5850.... You won't need DX11 in the near future.. Look at DX10 not even Call of Duty was DX10... The 5850 and 5870 cards won't go down in price until Nvidia comes out with the competition or they REALLY lower the 275 and 285 cards. So for now another card in Crossfire will give you the BEST BANG FOR THE BUCK...

Enough said.
 
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I keep coming around to the same conclusion. I have my 4870 for sale on Facebook and Craigslist for $100. My only concern is that I might benefit from having the 1gb of RAM vs my current 512mb. As in, if I get a 1GB 5850. I know crossfiring won't combine to give me 1gb.

How much of a difference does the RAM make on a 1650x1080 resolution?
 
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At that resolution the difference isn't much if any. Some games the difference between a 512MB and 1GB is NOTHING. Others, its only a few frames. Once you hit 1920x1200 and higher is when you really can tell. When the 4870 first came out the 512 version has some weird issue where the 1GB card performed MUCH better. They have since corrected this issue through drivers and now the difference isn't that much. See the article above.

My advice is spend $100 and be happy and get more.

 
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That article was pretty eye opening, and I am not entirely sold then on 1gb. However, is it true that 4870s in crossfire are better than a 5850 at times? I am having trouble finding reviews that compare the two. Can I reasonably substitute a 4870x2 as 4870's in crossfire, or is this a misconception due to the scaling issues that exist with crossfire.
 
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Crossfire on that resolution is just waste of money. Go for the 5850 you wont regret it. I guess if you sell your current card you can get away with only about $100 more. Compared to $70 for crossfire I think the $30 more would be worth it.

At that resolution I would always bet on single card, as sli/crossfire gets better scaling at 1920 + resolutions. So even if a 4870x2 might be faster than 5850 on general on HIGH resolutions I guess the diff in speed will be negligble in 1680x1050. Not to say the power / heat efficiency of single card , DX11, and future driver improvements
 
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5850 definitely. Maybe just a tad bit slower but future proof. Also, a few years down the line when you find your FPS is getting low, then just drop a second 5850 in. It'll be cheap then. 4870 crossfire has no upgradability.
 
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