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Help me spend £500

Bumhug

Bumhug

Bumhug

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Joined
2 Nov 2009
Posts
671
I love my crossfired 4890's and its really hard to find reasons to upgrade, but last night was playing Just Cause 2 and was flyig around in a plane. The sound coming from the PC was more realistic than the sound coming from the speakers :(

I have considered water cooling, but to be honest it scares the crap out of me as I am the sort of person that would have bad luck and end up wrecking my system :) Also seems an expensive thing to do for just 2 cards

So the options are

5970 - The ideal card but over budget, really cant go over £500

GTX480 - Its in budget, and best single gpu on the market. Downside is the noise, trying to avoid that. My case temp is low though so even though its considered loud it cant be louder than my 4890's at the moment and it wont run hotter. Yeah its a power hog but then two 4890's are worse. I like the idea of 3D but also like the idea of eyefinity and the nvidia version needs sli? Which if thats the case will rule the card out.

HD5870 - The likely favorite, does everything I want

Crossfire HD5850's - Looks to offer the best performance for the money. The downside though is crossfire. My case is an Antec 1200, cpu (i7 OC to 4ghz) will sit at 50c on load, case temp will be 44c, this is with all fans set to minumum so its nice and quit. My bottom 4890 will sit at 70c with full load so thats nice and quiet, top one well thats running at over 110c with the fan screaming at 100% (it could very well go higher than that, 110 is the chicken point for me ;)). If I turn all the cases fans onto max the card will sit between 95c and 102c but as well as having the gpu fan at 100% there is lots of noise from the case fans as well. My concern is going the crossfire route is going to give me increased performance but still going to have the same problem with heat and noise. Which is pushing me towards the single card solution.

So with the nvidia option ruled out its down to a 5870 or 2 5850's, performance wise the 5850 wins but am I going to be doomed to the same problem I am trying to avoid?
 
Can you not just buy 2 better (quieter) coolers for your 4890s?

Or is the only option an expensive upgrade?
 
Either wait for the benchmarks of the 2gb 5870 or go xfire 5850s. I went from a 8800gt to a 5870 and this is vastly quiter than my old card lol. You'd probably be suprised how quiet they actually are
 
tibbsey said:
Can you not just buy 2 better (quieter) coolers for your 4890s?

Or is the only option an expensive upgrade?
Click to expand...

The bottom one has Zalman VF2000 on it, thats silent and keeps it very cool, no room for one of them on the top one though. Did try a Zalman GV1000 on the top card, it took some fiddling to get it to fit as the screws on the back of the bottom card were hitting the fan. When it was all sorted though it didnt offer any improvement over the stock card, think it was noisier with the fan at 100% so swapped it back. Its also not a faulty card, can swap them round and have the same problem and running with one card its quiet and stays cool. Which is why I am leaning towards a 5870 rather than go crossfire again.

If anyone has any experience of 2 5850's (or 5870's) on a GA-EX58-UD5 board would like to know if they have had any problems :)
 
Decided to go for 2 5850's only to find they are no longer in the price range. Cheapest card here is £249 add postage on top and 2 goes over the budget. Had a look around and can find some cheaper but have had bad experiences with the companys so wont use them.

New plan, stick with the 4890's for a couple more months, go deaf and sue Powercolor and ATI for lots of monies ;)
 
The 5850's starting at £220 on preorder are well worth waiting for. Hopefully won't be long before stock arrives.
 
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