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5850 to what ?

I'd say the 7870 would be what I'd probably go for. I wouldn't bother with the 6970 since, for example, the 7850 is so much cheaper and is close to the same performance at stock.

7870>6970>7850>6950.

What is the rest of your spec, res etc?
 
May I ask what your performance problems were with serious sam 3? AFAIK it isn't a particularly demanding game and at 1680x1050 resolution with an i7 CPU and HD 5850 graphics card it should have been doing very well indeed.

Have you made sure your graphics drivers are fully up to date? I did hear there was some performance problems with serious sam 3 (even on very high-end hardware) but the newer drivers do help.

As for what card to upgrade to, the GTX 570 for £200 is very tempting, but if you can get a HD 6970 2GB for the same price then I would be tempted to go for that as it will give you a lot more VRAM to play with if you upgrade your monitor in the future.
 
cmndr_andi said:
May I ask what your performance problems were with serious sam 3? AFAIK it isn't a particularly demanding game and at 1680x1050 resolution with an i7 CPU and HD 5850 graphics card it should have been doing very well indeed.

Have you made sure your graphics drivers are fully up to date? I did hear there was some performance problems with serious sam 3 (even on very high-end hardware) but the newer drivers do help.

As for what card to upgrade to, the GTX 570 for £200 is very tempting, but if you can get a HD 6970 2GB for the same price then I would be tempted to go for that as it will give you a lot more VRAM to play with if you upgrade your monitor in the future.
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Thanks there are no major problems as such as i have the latest drivers but it just looks as if it needs a better quality card and if i check the recommended specs on the net the recommended card is a 6970/580 which ties in with what i think (also i have had the card for 2.4 years and the time has come for an upgrade and i cant justify the price of the 680/7900 )
 
MilanoChris said:
Pfft.

Two 5850's will give a lot better performance than a single 6970.
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Yeah i know but the board does only does x16/x8 and i would like 2g of ram and as i am only a casual gamer who likes performance when i do use it i think it is a good deal but in the real world will i notice the difference from a 5850 to a 6970 ? or just wait as i feel i have been doing for ages
 
At your resolution you should be fine with the 1GB VRAM of the HD 5850 - so if you did go down the road of crossfire HD 5850s then that shouldn't be much of a problem. Also a board that does crossfire at PCIE gen2 x8/x8 speeds will not limit the performance of the cards, the performance difference from a x16/x16 setup is only a few % FPS.

However, please bear in mind that there are other complications with crossfire that you don't have to worry about if you have a single card. These are:

- Crossfire scaling in games
- Micro-stutter
- Extra heat to be dissipated

These days crossfire scaling in the big games is rather good - so you get a nice performance boost running two cards. However, crossfire support is not always immediate - so you may have to wait a bit after the launch of the game to get a large performance boost for running a second card. Also, older and less mainstream games often don't support crossfire, so in these instances you will only get the performance of one HD 5850.

Micro stutter is a problem that has been experienced on these cards in various games and is often just a fact of life with a multi-gpu system. This is one of the main reasons why people stick with a single GPU arrangement.

As for the extra heat, depending on your motherboard design the main PCIE ports are relatively close together which means that the two power-hungry cards will be heating each other up. Plus the top card is usually a fair bit hotter due to less airflow from the intake cooling fan and heat from the card below it - depending on your case, graphics card cooling and fan profile this can cause issues with the top card overheating.

Also, please bear in mind that when you put two 1GB graphics cards in crossfire (or SLI) the VRAM is not added. Hence a HD 5850 1GB Crossfire arrangement would effectively still only have 1GB of VRAM available. For your current resolution this shouldn't be much of an issue, however if you upgrade to a higher resolution monitor then this 1GB may not be enough.
 
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Mine only does 8/8 yet I can play BF3 just fine.

£80 or so for a 5850 or another £100 on top for a card that will have less performance.

I know where my money would go.
 
Thanks i do intend to upgrade my monitor after the card

Ie card/monitor/cpu etc as i have done this slowly over the years as its the cycle i am in and i do actually enjoy it
 
Perhaps my crappy old mobo is to blame, but my 2nd 5850 has been used 2 or 3 times since I picked it up over 6 months ago. Every single game i've wanted to play has performed better with a single card. This is the last time I go for a two card solution.
 
bells said:
I still want a 6970 but i cant decide whether it is worth it or not even though it seems worth it for £199.... nobody's talking me into it yet...lol
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I think ALXAndy had a lightning 6970. Maybe he'll pop on this thread later. :)

Edit : sorry, I just realized I got the models mixed up.
 
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