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5850, where would you go from here?

Best option's a 7850 and it's not even double performance, given it's almost 3 years on at the same flipping price.
Probably not even 50% difference, probably more like 30%.
 
I'm in a similar position with a single GTX 470. I personally am not considering anything below a 7950 as a worthwhile upgrade at the minute. Is Crossfire a possibility for you?
 
In the same exact boat as you bleek. I have just ordered myself a msi twin frozer 7850 upgrading from my asus 5850. My 5850 is a great clocker, i had 900mhz on the core at times and was solid as a rock. I only ever gamed with it a stock settings most of the time though, the main downfall is it just doesn't have the little extra vram the some games require these days. If my 5850 had 1.2-1.5 vram i wouldn't be upgrading!

I am pretty much paying 200 quid for an extra 1gb of vram lol although the 7850's are supposed to overclock well, the msi core comes in at 900mhz default all be it overclocked slightly
 
The upgrade path for such cards just highlights the poor price/performance on offer in the new architecture. By now a 5850 should really be showing its age against a £200 card.

A while ago I sold my 5850 for around £100 and bought a new 6950 for £190. Not much of an upgrade but the reasoning was a relatively cheap upgrade for a marginal performance increase, extra vram and to crossfire the 6950 when its prices come down to a decent level.
 
Same boat here, i considered crossfiring 5850's but cant be arsed dealing with the hassle. Think ill just sit on it until 680 level performance reaches the £200 mark, its not like the 5850 is slow anyway its just the upgrade bug for me :rolleyes:
 
6950 for £169 or 480 if there are any left and put up with the heat.

If you want something current gen that will hold its value more for resale get a 7850.

But the logical (yet over priced) path is to a 7950 IMO.
 
5850, where would you go from here?

I wouldn't, infact I'm not. I'll be keeping mine a while yet. is crossfire an option? you could pick up a second 5850 pretty cheaply
 
If overclocking gives unsatisfactory results, I probably would try crossfire. What resolution do you run (which was what I should have put first)?
 
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The problem will not really be the speed of the card. It will be the vram limitation. So overclocking or adding ten more won't help much.
 
I upgraded to a 7970 from my 5850 after a deep gulp. It was necessary to spend that to make the most of my monitor and a second 5850 in X Fire still wouldn't have had enough memory to avoid stutters. Still smarting about the expenditure but it should last a while.
 
+1 Had my Gigabyte 5850 for just over 2 and a half years now still a Great card only really let down now with lack of VRAM, hoping the 7870's drop in price over the next month or 2 .......
 
Same for me with my 470, how old are they now? Even the great deal on the Kfa 570 is not a big enough jump for me, same goes for the 7850\70, 6950\6970 and then the 680 and the 7950\70 are too expensive. The 680 as it should have been the 670Ti at £200-£250 was the one for us mid-range guys but Nvidia stuffed that up. Real void for people looking to upgrade from 5850\5870\470 etc for around £200+.:(
 
Still using my 4870, it's starting to show its age in Battlefield 3 but everything else I get good frames.

I'm eyeing up the MSI 7870 as I will be mainly playing Diablo 3, with a bit of WoW and BF3 now and again.

OP I would wait a few weeks and see if the prices on the 7870 drop, if you could pick one up for £250ish it would be a good upgrade.
 
Blimey, quite a few of us!

The 5850 has served me supremely well, especially as I always game at native 2048x (only ever run 2xAA as it's enough at that rez) but at ultra detail it's starting to show it's age.

I want to keep heat and noise down hence I've avoided crossfire. That's why the 7' seems a good choice, a 30% bump is enough for now and the lower heat, powerdraw and thus noise is a bonus.
 
there was 6970 second hand going for around 150 ~ 160 £ in members market , considering new gpu prices i was even thinking picking one my self and going crossfire.
 
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