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Fill me in on the latest.

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10 Sep 2009
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299
Forgive me for being upfront, but I don't have the time or energy to re-educate myself on the current GPU scene... so if you could give me a brief update, it'd be helpful.

Basically I have an ATI Radeon HD 5850 1GB. I bought it shortly after it released, and it's served me well. Problem is, now I see it's half the price I bought it for, and there's a whole bunch of superior graphics cards out. Damn Moore's Law...

I need to upgrade. Seeing as you know much more about the latest than I do, would it be worth just buying a brand new modern graphics card? Or, shall I go for a Crossfire setup and buy another (now cheap) HD5850?

I'm upgrading for games such as Skyrim and BF3, that will be releaed later this year. So I don't need the absolute cutting edge of specs; just something that will see me through for the next 2 years-ish.

Note - I'll also be upgrading my monitor (and so, resolution) from 1440 x 900 to 1920 x 1080, which will cause further slow-down, making an upgrade even more imperative.
 
GPUs have moved on from your 5850, but not so dramatically as you might think - the current high-end GPUs are still manufactured on the same 40nm process as your 5850. If you want to see a decent performance increase and increase your resolution, you'll want to be looking towards the top end.

The fastest single GPU is the nvidia GTX580 (comparison with the 5850)

More modestly priced options are the AMD 6950 or the GTX460. These cards should cover off the performance loss from the higher resolution, but won't give you much extra in most cases.

A multi-GPU setup might be an option (two of the cards above would be a nice boost...), assuming your motherboard will support it. Alternatively, you could just wait for the next generation 28nm cards, which are due towards the end of the year. These should offer a good performance boost - the 28nm process allows twice the transistor density as 40nm, so expect roughly double the performance of current-generation GPUs.
 
Hehe Thanks, I've got the old rig still also, I just use the old one for messing around now, Although i'm building water cooling to the old spare rig tommoz, I spent about £400 this week on water cooling for it lol, I say it's spare it's been over run by my fella and his Bad Company 2 :(.
 
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I'd say 5850 might serve you well in BF3 (if you don't mind turn down a little AA).

Wait for the 28nm cards, which should be released around BF3 launch. I do not recommend crossfire'ing 1GB cards.
 
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