Which Graphics Card?

[dairy a1r]

I recently ordered an AMD 1090t and an ASUS m5a88 - v (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131733), with 8gb of Vengeance RAM.

I've never bought a GPU before, and am trying to balance price vs performance. I'm not a heavy gamer, but I want to be able to run games like BF3 and COD3. Is the Radeon 6790 a good choice for my system, or should I get a couple cheaper models and crossfire?

 

[nna2]

that should be good for bf3

 

[dairy a1r]

So would it then be overkill to get a 6870?

 

[nna2]

if you want lol, couldnt hurt if you have the money to spend on it

 

[rvilkman]

6870 is at a good price point, so the improvement over 6790 is justified.

Depending on the resolution of your monitor it should provide you with either good or great performance.

For 1680x1050 you can get 6870 or GTX560 and play games at high or even maxed out settings depending on game.
For 1920x1200(or 1080) you can get 6950 or GTX560Ti and play games at high or even maxed out settings depending on game

Check out the latest tom's HW article on best GPU's for the money for reference on expected performance.

 

[gcatalin]

depends on the resolution your using...

 

[ksampanna]

So would it then be overkill to get a 6870?

depends on the resolution you're running the game on & display settings. The 6870 would be overkill for something like 1280X720. On the other hand, it would probably be the minimum required for 1920X1080 with everything to the max.