How long will the 5850 remain?

[squallypie]

8800gtx still powers many computers till today and i still stick with 8600 gt ( 9600 mgt on my laptop though )... will the 5850 remain strong for another 2-4 years? or will people have to do xfire mid way?

the answer really shapes my new build coz ill need to put a stronger psu, quality mobo for xfire and stronger processor

is it true that the 5850 does 45 fps avg on eyefinity? <-- thats great though!

 

[squallypie]

bump

 

[mindless728]

8800gtx still powers many computers till today and i still stick with 8600 gt ( 9600 mgt on my laptop though )... will the 5850 remain strong for another 2-4 years? or will people have to do xfire mid way?

depends on how hard future games push GPU's and what you accept for graphics quality (2-4 years you won't be maxing out games with a single 5850, i have 2 x 4870's and am just able to max out games, another 2 years would be medium settings probably)

the answer really shapes my new build coz ill need to put a stronger psu, quality mobo for xfire and stronger processor

even with crossfire, you don't need an insane CPU to drive it (ie Phenom II's will do), just get a crossfire motherboard and a good 650w PSU (Corsair 650TX would do)

is it true that the 5850 does 45 fps avg on eyefinity? <-- thats great though!

depends on the settings, as some games will bring a 5850 to its knees at max settings (Crysis and especially Metro 2033 with all DX11 options on)
and with eyefinity you really need 2 cards to drive 3x1920x1080 resolution

 

[jaguarskx]

Definitely within 3 years from now the HD 5850 will become a mid range card. As an example consider the HD 48xx series. At the time they were released they were pretty powerful single GPU video cards.

When the HD 57xx series came out not too long ago, they basically equaled the HD 48xx series in performance, added DX11 and cut power consumption by over 50%. The HD 57xx series are currently considered mid performance cards.


HD 5850 for EyeFinity? For the short term it will be okay, better to get the HD 5870 2GB (4GB if there is such a thing).


How long a video card will last you will depend on you. I kept my X1900XT 512MB for a while skipping the HD 2xxx, 3xxx, and 4xxx generation. It wasn't until it failed after almost 3 years that I bought the HD 5850. I was itching to buy anyway by that point in time.