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Disillusioned fan boy fed up waiting for Fermi needs advice

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I've been holding out for the release of the new fermi cards from nvidia, but to be honest i'm fed up waiting and have decided to buy one of the ATI cards

So as a disillusioned nvidia fan boy, who knows nothing about ATI cards, which should I go for?

Narrowed it down to either 5850 or 5870. I understand the 5850 can be OC'd to near 5870 performance

Is one manufacturer better than the other? Quite like ASUS and the sapphire seems to be getting good reviews.
 
hard choice really, if it were me in your situation i would resist to see if the 5000 series are going to come down in price once stock gets beter which i think is happening now. at the minute the 5850 and 5870 are not worth the money when you consider two 5770's can be had for less than £240 and in some benchmarks beat the 5870 card, once the 5870 are £250 or less thats when i would be considering them

manufacturers just stick their stickers on, its really about the warranty and price.
 
I have the Sapphire 5850 and even on my old x2 Athlon it is giving me amazing frame rates. You also get a copy of Dirt 2 and a copy of Shattered Horizon through Sapphire select club :)

It idles at about 33c in my crap case and never goes above 58c in full load.
 
Saffire or Asus are the 2 main ones, powercolour is a good conteder as well.

What you have to relise is that with most of the stock the equipment is identicle just with a different sticker on it, the only 2 unique ones at the moment are the Asus with the custome bios and the Saffire Vapor-X with the custome cooler
 
i believe all the new 5*** cards are experiencing driver problems, so a heads up on that issue. Go for something like a 4890 until fermi comes out (which i believe i read was around march).
 
Most people are having issues with the 5770 not the 5850 and 5870 so if your gonna go high end then i would not worry yourself to much
 
i believe all the new 5*** cards are experiencing driver problems, so a heads up on that issue. Go for something like a 4890 until fermi comes out (which i believe i read was around march).

No real big issues here on my 5870. Hot fix 12 driver had an issue but the release version seems fine. 9.11 are solid.
 
hard choice really, if it were me in your situation i would resist to see if the 5000 series are going to come down in price once stock gets beter which i think is happening now. at the minute the 5850 and 5870 are not worth the money when you consider two 5770's can be had for less than £240 and in some benchmarks beat the 5870 card, once the 5870 are £250 or less thats when i would be considering them

manufacturers just stick their stickers on, its really about the warranty and price.

the only problem with xcrossfire some older games just don't support it.. i know its silly but warcraft in some places actually struggles @ high rez with max details QQ.

wtb my second gpu working on that..
 
Buy a 260 GTX core 216 as a stop gap, it's what any sensible fan boy should do, I should know I bought 2! 295 GTX performance for £250.
I can't really see much difference between my 285 GTX which I sold for what I paid for it, and a single 260 GTX core 216 at 1680 x 1050.
 
Traditionally nV stock coolers >> ATI stock coolers. The brands really dictated which third party cooler you got along with warranty as stated previously. I think the 5 series coolers are ok (except the 5970) but will improve as companies have time to improve on them.

Your 8800gts setup means you're going to have to go very high end to come up with something better. I think they would provide better performance than a 4890.
 
I've been holding out for the release of the new fermi cards from nvidia, but to be honest i'm fed up waiting and have decided to buy one of the ATI cards

So as a disillusioned nvidia fan boy, who knows nothing about ATI cards, which should I go for?

Narrowed it down to either 5850 or 5870. I understand the 5850 can be OC'd to near 5870 performance

Is one manufacturer better than the other? Quite like ASUS and the sapphire seems to be getting good reviews.

Why can't you wait a couple of months ? Specs will come out before the cards are released so you should be able to gauge what the first releases will be like. What do you need a 5xxx card for just now ?
 
I've been holding out for the release of the new fermi cards from nvidia, but to be honest i'm fed up waiting and have decided to buy one of the ATI cards

So as a disillusioned nvidia fan boy, who knows nothing about ATI cards, which should I go for?

Narrowed it down to either 5850 or 5870. I understand the 5850 can be OC'd to near 5870 performance

Is one manufacturer better than the other? Quite like ASUS and the sapphire seems to be getting good reviews.

don't do it man, if I was an nvidia "fan boy" I would feel dirty getting an ATi product

... your bringing shame to the nvidia fan boy society!!!

just get a 8500gt or whatever its been re branded to, to tide you over

;)
 
5870 in comparison to the 5850 is a waste of cash, with the right bios(maybe not even a bios flash these days, not really kept up on software updates which might be able to do it without the flash) you can basically get the 5870 speed when overclocked, the only thing you lack is a few shaders but with the same clockspeeds on both cards in almost every game they perform all but identically.

The 5770 I've not used personally and have seen varying reports, while its high/average framerate seems to be very competitive compared to a 5850/70, its lows are reported to be a bit lower and more prone to larger drops which would be more noticeable.

Pray retailers stop ripping everyone off and return the pricing to launch pricing(as it should have been the whole way even without much stock) and then pick up a 5850.

Fermi's release is unlikely to push AMD's pricing down, the cores simply cost more to make, the pcb's more expensive and we simply won't see a 5850 at sub £150 just because Fermi is out. Likewise its very unlikely Fermi will be able to beat AMD on a price performance at any level, so you'll likely get better performance from 2x £200 AMD cards than a single £400 Nvidia card, though depending on yields and their want to undercut AMD you might see some slower Fermi cut down parts at decent prices. But considering Nvidia's higher base cost per core, all they'll do is match AMD on price/performance, not beat them as its not in their interest to give us free extra performance. personally I wouldn't wait just to get something of an equal price/performance when you can get it now.

The key question is of course though, are any games struggling on your sli setup right now? If not, wait till they do and buy then, maybe no game will really push you to the breaking point before Fermi is out anyway and you can make a better choice.
 
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