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Is it worth upgrading my 5870?

Depends on what res, How many monitors you use & what games/apps you play use.
What's on your mind ?
 
if you flashed it to a 6970 you would see about 20% gain over the 5870...i personnaly wouldnt bother...depends on what games at what res your trying to run...if you feel your system is struggling then maybe but only you really can answer if 20% is worth it.
 
Wouldn't say it's worth it then mate, Buy another monitor & up the res then Yes.
 
Thundy, I guess it depends on what CPU you have too.

My 5870 is very slightly bottlenecked by my Overclocked Q6600 (3.6GHz) When I try overclock my 5870, I see very little difference in benchmarks apart from game that are more GPU intensive but it's marginal. However, if I clock my CPU higher, then the results show a different story altogether.

With that said, as far as I understand, the Fermi architecture requires less instructions form the CPU.. so maybe this would be a better upgrade.. but this would need confirming.
 
Keep the 5870 as it's still a cracking card, the 6950 is not all that better. The new 28nm cards are due out this year and that would be the best time to upgrade and hopefully see some significant performance gains.
 
cammy5477 said:
now a 6990......well thats a different story :D;)
Click to expand...

Checks bank balance. :(

Admiral Huddy said:
Thundy, I guess it depends on what CPU you have too.

My 5870 is very slightly bottlenecked by my Overclocked Q6600 (3.6GHz) When I try overclock my 5870, I see very little difference in benchmarks apart from game that are more GPU intensive but it's marginal. However, if I clock my CPU higher, then the results show a different story altogether.

With that said, as far as I understand, the Fermi architecture requires less instructions form the CPU.. so maybe this would be a better upgrade.. but this would need confirming.
Click to expand...

I7 920 overclocked to 3.8ghz

RavenXXX2 said:
Keep the 5870 as it's still a cracking card, the 6950 is not all that better. The new 28nm cards are due out this year and that would be the best time to upgrade and hopefully see some significant performance gains.
Click to expand...

Understood. :)
 
I also have a I7 920 at 3.8 and a 5870 and have also been tempted to upgrade but i have decided its not worth it after looking round and am gonna wait til next gen are out which i would recommend you do he same
 
I keep seeing comments on both sides of the GPU vs CPU upgrade argument. Some people say you don't need more than a Q6600 at around 3.2/3.6ghz for gaming. Others say that you won't see enough of a difference going from a 5870 to a GTX580 to be worth it.

Very confusing, might be worth using the Anandtech Bench charts and see if upgrading to whatever card you can afford gives you enough of a boost in the games you play and the res/settings you use.
 
thundy,

there is a very high possiblilty that a 5870 will be on the MM in about 10 days time........;)

Haev just sourced a flashable 6950 from the MM and had to go for it. I game at 5760x1080, so am hopin ghtat i see some improvements. Plus there will be the reduced power draw.
 
I would suggest an additional 5870 for x-fire if you really need the performance boost.

Cheaper than a 6950 and better performance.

Downside is the power draw.

Rara
 
Depends on the AA and rez you run, The 6900 would be worth the upgrade for tessilation but only you can really answer the question of what games you play.
 
I came from 5870 to 6950 at 1920 x 1200,
TBH it's not worth it, I bought the 6950 due to its flashing abilites so went to the 6970 bios with no probs at all, then I read the reports of failing cards so used the unlocked shaders bios and still running with no probs.
Its always the same question, upgrade now while the 5870 is still worth something, or save your money for the next gen cards.
but it's not that much of an upgrade considering the cost involved.
 
The HD6900 series brought large improvements in tessellation performance and Crossfire scaling over the HD5800 series. IIRC,an HD6950 2GB is around the same speed as an HD5870 1GB when both cards are at stock. However, due to the VLIW4 architecture of the HD6900 series there could be further performance boosts in the next year.

TBH,I would probably overclock your HD5870 a bit if extra performance is needed and not all current games are tessellation heavy so I would keep your HD5870.
 
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