If prices never come down, that defeats the object of waiting doesn't it?
I didnt say that they never would. I merely stated that prices would not drop on 4890/4870 by any significant amount on the launch of the 5xxx Series.
In fact, I expect these cards to be EOL pretty quickly. We dont see new 3870/3850's still kicking around do we?
I would say buying a 4870 now was a bad idea. The 5850s will be £140 for a lot more performance. Yeah it's more money, but it'll most definitely be worth the extra.
Also, it's a win-win situation. You can wait until the latest cards are out and see if you want one, and even if you don't, the last gen will at worst be the same price, and at best have dropped to make room for the latest cards.
Well, I think dual 4870s + £30 in my back pocket for a new monitor vs. a single 5850 at £140 ... well I'm looking forward to bench numbers on the 5850, lets say that. And saying 'a lot more performance' is totally subjective at this point, as we have no hard data to compare to as is the price speculation. I think the 5850 will hit a slightly higher price point on the base line OEM cards at around £160 - mere speculation, but what I expect.
Cards do drop in price a lot in my experience.
When I bought my 4850s, I got them for about £120 each, mine are 512MB ones, and the ones you can get now for £80 are 1GB ones.
That's quite a drop in less than a year I think.
Take in to account the price of the 1GBs last year, and you're looking at close to a halving in price.
Now your talking more sense
Yes prices do drop, but tell me, is me buying a single 5850 at extra cost going to give me a
significant increase in frame rates over going to 4870 Crossfire,
from a single 8800GS?
When I made my purchasing decision, I was actually sad enough to sit down with a spreadsheet, and work out:
A) What card or cards were going to give me a minimum 60FPS in the high end games of today at 1920x1200.
B) What card or cards were going to give me a minimum 50% increase in frame rates over a 8800GT 1GB (Notice: I picked a higher card than even what I had in my rig)?
I then set about dealing with prices, frames per pound, average frame rates across bench marks, and all sorts of silly statistical stuff like that. And time and time again, the 4870 Crossfire won out over any other combination on the prices that I could buy the different cards at.
I already had the rig to handle high power cards, and a crossfire motherboard, and a PSU capable for it, so there was no further cost to me other than the cards themselves.
So to me, now was the time buy
