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Advice needed, ordering tonight!

Auraomega

Auraomega

Auraomega

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Ok I'll be ordering my PC tonight, but I'm still uncertain of what graphics I want :(

I would ideally like a 5850 but >£210 is pushing it in my opinion, and more than I have to budget, I don't have a respectable graphics card to fall back on in the mean time (8500gt... lol), and it seems blasphemous to build an i5 PC and run such a poor card. My other option is a 5770 and get another 5770 down the line when they come down.

My question is simple really; could I get away with a 5770 for now? My monitor res is 1680x1050, and today I got Crysis and Crysis Warhead which I'd like to play on here. I want to play at 2-4x AA and with at least some AF on too as it does make a difference to me... and to make things even worse I hate tearing, so if tearing happens whatever FPS I can expect from Crysis, will it be able to handle the hit that Vsync will have? I also plan on getting S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Call of Pripyat when it's released and run the above settings.

Am I asking too much of the card and should I wait for the 5850 to drop? How long would that be do you reckon?

Argh, if only this was easier to fit into budget :p
 
A single 5770 at that res with aa etc would perform pretty poorly on Crysis.

Personally i would purchase one 5770 and learn to deal with lower settings for a while. Then buy another for crossfire after, as 2 of them will easily outperform the 5850
 
A 5770 with Crysis at 1680x1050 should be ok though if you are really sensitive then maybe not. On my 4870 which is roughly the same as a 5770 averaged around 30-40fps and a bit higher in Warhead with 2xAA and 16xAF.

Didn't notice tearing as Crysis isn't one of those shooters which needs insanely high FPS to feel smooth.

A tip though is to use the CUDAATS config as I felt it really helps performance plus imo it makes the game look better. Used the level 4 or 5 setting iirc.

http://incrysis.com/forums/viewtopic.php?id=23117

EDIT. Vsync is not going to happen unfortunately :(
 
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chaparral said:
A single fast card (I.E 5850) is far better then having two slow cards running in crossfire or SLI...
Click to expand...

Agreed, as not all games are made to perform well with dual cards(+) setups.

The idea of " the more cards you add, the more power you get" doesn't apply with all games. With some you will benefit and notice good improvements, whereas others you will not.
It depends a lot on the GPU drivers as well as the game design ie. S.T.A.L.K.E.R favor ATI cards while Crysis favors Nvidia.

I would personally go for the better card and then add another one, rather than going for slower cards now. This way your setup will be capable of playing the latest games thus lasting longer until your need to upgrade it again.

I would wait for the price drop in January before your order though. Unless it's an absolute must. The reason people went all out for these cards was due to Xmas, but now that it is over, the demand should drop to a more stabilized level and you will see stock coming back in and E-Taliers will have to be competitive with their prices again.
 
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I played Warhead on my 5770 at that res, with 2xaa, gamer settings. It ran nice and smooth, averaging around 40fps or so. Pity I don't really like the game because it looked stunning lol. As i've said before, I bought the 5770 purely to reduce the electric bill and the heat from my 4850. I really didn't expect it to perform anywhere near as well as it does, in some games it's literally twice the frame rates, and the 4850 is still a really decent card at lower resolutions. For example Modern Warfare 2 runs at 1920x1080, maximum settings with 4xaa, silky smooth all of the time, I was truly gobsmacked because I thought the 128bit bus would cripple the card, and in reviews the framerates are much lower than what I get. For the time being a single 5770 will do you nicely coming from a low card, you will see a huge difference. Then later if you crossfire you will have fantastic performance, beating even a 5870 in some games :)
Edit: btw my setup is only a Phenom II, X3 720BE, not overclocked atm, with 4gig of DDR2 800 ram, nowhere near as good as yours, so I would expect even better performance on yours at a lower resolution than on mine.
 
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get the 5850 & don't look back :) you won't [SUPERSTUFF] :)

All charge ATI Dx11 Win7x64

Nvidia meh :eek: (1st time switch to ATI after 100% 10+ yrs Nvidia)
 
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If you can stretch your budget to a 5850, you will be completely stunned at its perfomance, and no game is going to slow it down for at least the next 12 months looking at the games lineup for 2010. Hell, even my 5770 which I originally planned on crossfiring later will handle everything with ease amazingly. The 5xxx series are fantastic cards despite the lukewarm reception many have given them.
 
Thanks for the replies.

First off, I have to admit I'm not a fan of multi-gpu setups, more heat, more noise, more power required, more hassle.

@liquidex:
I get the feeling I'm quite sensitive to jerking, most games <50 bugs me... not sure I'd be willing to take a risk on the price to be fair. That link however does look interesting whichever card I go for :p

@PakJai:
I was thinking about waiting, however everyone has been saying the price will drop at start of December, then mid December, I feel like the poor souls waiting for Fermi, so many promises but you never seem to quite get there... that plus it seems the prices have gone UP, certainly not good and will rise even more when VAT goes to 17.5% again (£5 at what I believe is RRP, that's £5 less in my wallet).

Well I'll see how things go, I could buy all the other stuff I need for my new PC (fan after all isn't in stock), and wait for the card to come into stock... it's just a hassle I'd rather avoid if possible (and as I said, it seems wrong to use such a weak card in a powerful PC).

Needless to say, I'll be putting off purchasing again for a short while while I think it over.
 
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