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Confused at all the advice...

dharvey86

dharvey86

dharvey86

Associate
Joined
12 Jan 2010
Posts
128
Hello all.

I currently have a ATi Radeon HD5870 and want to upgrade for Battlefield 3 obviously. ;)

I have a bit of money to play with say £300 (hope to sell my card for £100 so Ill only have to stump up £200.)

Im reading myself into a hole here as I see one suggestion read on and someone comes back with a counter suggestion, which leads to another suggestion!

What do people suggest I do? Im not sure I have room to Sli due to a 850w power unit being housed at the bottom of my case.

The rest of my system is the following:
i7 920
6gb of Tri channel ram DDR3

Thanks for any help!
 
Thank you for advice everyone.

I may try and see if my 5870 will fit in the current slot that's free and look at crossfire method, if I can get my hands on another!

Will it be enough for BF3?
 
I am in a similar position myself of wanting to upgrade my 5850. It has served me well but with the exception of my soundcard, PSU and network card the oldest part of my system is now the GPU. The weak link. I don't have a motherboard capable of supporting SLI or any decent Crossfire and I don't like multi-GPU setups for various reasons anyway.

Think it is best to see how Battlefield 3 runs - the full game, as I don't think the Beta will be representitive of the final game demands. On the side I have been looking at the GTX 570 (including the EVGA with extra VRAM) and Radeon 6970. I would like the ability to drive a 2560 x 1440 resolution athalf decent framerate for reviewing and using monitors of that resolution but wouldn't expect to run the likes of BF3 at that resolution (lovely though it would be). A lot of people suggest that the extra VRAM of the EVGA 570 or Radeon 6970 would be an advantage but from the benchmarks of current titles I honestly can't see it. There is also quite a title performance split for the AMD and Nvidia solutions with different titles favouring different cards. Realistically I would like to play BF3 at pretty high settings (the rest of my system will cope no problems) at 1920 x 1080 with at least 4xAA. I also play Arma2 which is very demanding and will be looking at ArmA3 next summer.

So I have come to the conclusion that I should either wait for the next generation for some extra power or buy one of the afforementioned cards as a stopgap before upgrading again next year. It's a tough call.
 
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Sorry, I have to admit to some smiles when people say "Is my <pretty good card> enough for BF3?"

Of COURSE it is enough. The game will RUN on it just fine at sensible quality. What it might not do is allow you to have ultra settings at HD res.

Just thought I'd throw that in here in case the OP might prefer to save his money until the game is actually out and tested before deciding :) (Also I believe the open beta is out today?)
 
dharvey86 said:
See if i can get my hands on 5870
Click to expand...

if you find some at a decnent price..let me know....i thought about this also...but all the main component suppliers are charging an arm and a leg if they have any 5870's now :(
I think you can also X-fire it with a 5850 1gb...although i may be wrong about this.
 
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