Contemplating New Graphics card Setup.

[PakJai]

Imo, just getting one 5850 to later crossfire doesn't really work... why? because you will feel that the 5850 is more than capable when you get it and when it starts struggling you want to upgrade to a new card anyway.

This could be the case, but it can also be that the 5080 will become so unbelievabily cheap that the user decides to get another for a 30-40% preformance boost.

 

[kylew]

This could be the case, but it can also be that the 5080 will become so unbelievabily cheap that the user decides to get another for a 30-40% preformance boost.

That was what I was thinking.

As for a 30-40% performance boost though? Completely untrue, you'd be looking at 70%+ all the way up to 100% in an increasing amount of games.

 

[PakJai]

That was what I was thinking.

As for a 30-40% performance boost though? Completely untrue, you'd be looking at 70%+ all the way up to 100% in an increasing amount of games.

I know the capability of these cards, as I'm currently using them.

I just wanted to be modest, you can for instance replace it with Asus's bios and watercool them for better overclocks etc etc

However, crossfire does depend on the game as well as its drivers to work properly, as for some games, it's optimized for Nvidia, you will see less performance increase on those titles too.

 

[rolypolyman]

Imo, just getting one 5850 to later crossfire doesn't really work... why? because you will feel that the 5850 is more than capable when you get it and when it starts struggling you want to upgrade to a new card anyway.

Agree with this and would go with 2 X 5770 and save that other £230 towards your next new gen card. Look at the Crossfire thread for the 5750\5770 cards and see how they compare very well against both the 5850\5870 cards. Best bang for buck of the new cards in my opinion.

 

[Muel]

I'm thinking now of going for a 5870 over the 5850, yes they cost 42% more, but by my reckoning you get a 30% performance increase, whereas the difference in going for a 5850 over a 5770 is a bump in price of 95% and a performance increase of 50%.

I'll probably still go for a 5850 still though, £340 on a graphics card in one go is a bit much for me!

 

[PakJai]

I'm thinking now of going for a 5870 over the 5850, yes they cost 42% more, but by my reckoning you get a 30% performance increase, whereas the difference in going for a 5850 over a 5770 is a bump in price of 95% and a performance increase of 50%.

I'll probably still go for a 5850 still though, £340 on a graphics card in one go is a bit much for me!

Yeah it depends on your initial budget as well as your patience to wait for the price drops.

5850 is a really good card. I was a bit like you initially.
I was deciding whether to go with 5870, which is the better card, but I ended up with 2 5850's instead due to the facts that it makes more economical sense, and offers comparable performance.

The 5850 will also give you better headrooms for overclock. 5870 however will always be more powerful, but their oc potential isn't as good and ofc, the size of the card and heat issues played a good part on my decision making.

 

[R34pz]

Corsair make arguable the best PSU's with really good 12v rails. You could quite easily run 3x5770's on that setup if you had the right board. I wouldn't worry about it mate, 5xxx cards use much less watts than previous generations. It would be far more likely to struggle with 2x4890 as one of these cards will use as many watts as 2x5770's.

 

[Muel]

Aye from what I've read, my little 650W should be fine for even crossfire 5850s, so it should be fine, there's nothing really that power drawing on my system, just my 140W cpu really. I have two hard drives though, not sure what they really draw roughly?

 

[R34pz]

If I recall, HDD's only draw around 10w each, so they won't be a problem either. The same for a DVDRW drive, the only biggies in a system are the CPU and GFX cards. Your Corsair 650w is very capable of almost any setup, and definately dual top end 5xxx series as 2 of these draws around the same power as 1x4890

 

[mmj_uk]

Whilst you can usually get good bang for buck out of two lesser cards in Crossfire, I would advise going with a single high-end card to begin and keeping Crossfire as a last resort as you are likely to more problems with Crossfire than without.

 

[JeffyB]

Crossfire has matured very well and i have yet to see a game it doesn't give a decent boost in. It's a doddle to set up, my cards were auto detected and all i had to do was hit ok. Your psu would easily power 2 5770's i run mine with a hx620 with the rest of spec in sig. Vey pleased with the crossfire setup, very quite as well.

 

[Muel]

Cheers for the advice guys, I'm sure now I'll either go for the 5850 or 5870, depending on prices at the time, it'll be about 2-3 months I reckon.

I have been looking but I can't find any real world figures really for the increase in goodness I'll get going from a 4670 to a 5850/5870, anyone care to hazard a guess?

EDIT: I was just reading a thing that says that new ATI card will be out in Q1 2010 anyway, so it looks like maybe possibly I've wasted my (and your) time... :/ (Can't find anything as to what will be arriving though really).