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4850---Crossfire or upgrade

cambb

cambb

cambb

Associate
Joined
4 Jul 2007
Posts
261
Hi,

i'm going to be buying the i5 barebones system and fit my current 4850 512mb into it. I'm now thinking if i should be upgrading the graphics card as well or buy another to crossfire it. I've got around £150 spare any ideas or thoughts?

I do game a bit playing left 4 dead 2 and will be buying BF2.

Thanks
 
If your £150 doesn't include the 4850 money, you could sell the 4850 on a well known auction site and go for a 5830/5850

Otherwise a 5770 would be a good bet.
 
sjcf1 said:
If your £150 doesn't include the 4850 money, you could sell the 4850 on a well known auction site and go for a 5830/5850

Otherwise a 5770 would be a good bet.
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+1 on that. You could probably get around £50 for a 4850 if you sell it at the right place, possibly more.
 
cambb said:
if i upgrade i will sell the 4850. what performance would i get from crossfiring the 4850.
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If you were to get another 4850 and crossfire them, you will not see a significant increase in fram rates. Without looking at some benchmarks are wouldn't be 100% sure, but i'd guess you would get an increase of 1fps to 30fps. Can anyone confirm this?

I think upgrading to a new card is definately the way to go, if you're unsure for now, maybe wait and see what Nvidia brings to the table with their DX11 cards.
 
Think upgrading to a new DX11 card would be the best option, especially if you want to enjoy BC2 in all its graphical glory.
 
I would sell the 4850 at that high street second hand computer parts shop they pay £45 cash for 4850's so will work out better than selling on auction and having to pay postage.
 
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Crossfire is the way to go with 5770, i think when i played the beta i was like 70-90 fps maybe a bit higher in places(think it was over 100 in some places depending whats going on) with 5770 in crossfire.
Thats with everything maxed in the beta, with HBAO off at 1680x1050 resolution

A single 5770 card, maybe 40-50 fps at a guess
 
I don't think it's worth going for a 5770 from a 4850. The performance difference is too little. CrossFire with another 4850 (if you're at 1680x1050 or above) or grab a 5850.
 
C64 said:
I would sell the 4850 at that high street second hand computer parts shop they pay £45 cash for 4850's then I would scrape together a bit more and get a 5850.
I have a sneaky feeling that the 5770 isn't going to be performing well with bad company 2 under dx11 and higher resolutions.
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Yeah, a 5770 on Bad company 2 with all the eye candy and DX11 will stuggle with anything over 19" native.

The 5850 however will be able to cope fine with its 256bit memory width (apposed to 128bit of the 5770) and the extra cores (that are clocked in higher too). Only new problem you will run into is powering it, you may have to purchase a new power supply too.
 
I am in the same boat as you I am using 4850 512mb.

I did not think it was worth going for a 5770 from a 4850 and I have been thinking that the best card would be 5850

I had order the card, but in the end I decided to cancel and go with another 4850 card in crossfire as I pick one up in MM for £50

I have decided to waiting for the refresh cards from ATI before upgrading

Couple of reasons

ATI indicated a refresh of the 5000 series of cards coming out in the mid of the year.

More cards are coming out with better aftermarket coolers.

NVidia card may have an impact on prices.

Cost is just too much at present.

If you do go with 5850 check out PSU as suggested by IIGAZI360II
 
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cambb said:
if i upgrade i will sell the 4850. what performance would i get from crossfiring the 4850.
Click to expand...

I ruled this out because you are still limited to 512K. Whilst I run at 1650, I already had a couple of titles that required over 512K when running with tripple buffer and 4xaa.

I'd estimate a pair of 4850's to pack more grunt than my 5850 (though my 4850 would barely overclock - 5850s do), but they demand more than just the sum of their TDPs, in return. The massive permanent power drain running 2 of these over the space of the 18ish months I'd expect to keep my 5850 (its already 5 months now!), would eat noticeably into the saving I'd make going 4850 sli.

You then have noise. I assume you dont have the original dire reference cooler, else you probably wouldnt have posted this thread. I was going to shift my cpu off my loop and just have it do 2 4850s. But I'd then have to spend 30+ on a cpu cooler. That would probably worked out quieter than the 5850 when gaming, but the 5850 isnt that bad.
 
It's situations like this that make me wonder why peopkle use the line "i'll buy one card and add another later" when in practice its often better to sell the old card and put the funds towards a new card. If your alright with crossfire you can't go wrong wioth a couple of 5770's otherwise 5850 will serve you well.
 
5770 crossifre is great, but beyond your budget. 5770 on it's own is great. If you can scrape money for a 5850 or 5870 that would be fantastic.
 
I have changed my mind I wouldn't say the 5850 represents good value really now do not think it's worth £230 +.
 
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