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Itching to upgrade that Ati 5870 to a shiny new 6 series card ?:rolleyes:

Exactly benchmark junkies ;) should only apply... Kinda dissapointed with ATI this year was looking forward to a nice new update... but also have to say i'm really enjoying the 5870 and would probably be sad to part with it in the future.. May even keep it as a spare or setup a HTPC with it. I even looked at the GTX 580 this year even after promising myself never to buy another nvidia card ever again after the disaster with the Hercules 3D Prophet II Ultra 64Mb I purchased many years ago for £400 non-retail version and the retail version was over £550 :eek: and then ATI came out with the 9000 series cards a year later for like £150 that totally distroyed the Hercules 3D Prophet II Ultra 64Mb. Also the other thing that upset me with the Hercules 3D Prophet II Ultra 64Mb was the image quality in 2D was so bad compared to the Matrox Millennium G400 32MB card I had before it.. After the Hercules 3D Prophet II Ultra 64Mb I bought an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128MB AGP and got back the nice video quality in 2D and 3D and never looked at nvidia till this year..
 
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I'm still very happy with my recent upgrade to the MSI 5850 Twin FrozR for just £125. I found most games at 1920 res don't even require the full power of my 5850 overclocked to 975MHz, so I am using a lower overclock profile of just 835MHz for most games and let the card runs cooler and consume less power.

The 6950 cost over £100 extra over what I paid for my 5850. Even with the BIOs flash to 6970 being taken into account, I guess it's really down to individual to decide if it really worth paying £100 extra, plus having a much hotter running and higher power consumption card only for the sake of making a few games more playable (Crysis, Metro2033, ArmaII).

I guess the extra memory does benefit those who game using Eyefinity or game at 2560 res, but most people only game on a single 1920 res monitor.
 
Currently waiting on:-

ATI 6990
Micron RealSSD C400

before I retire my old Q6600 rig and drop some £££ on Sandybridge etc.

HEADRAT
 
Marine-RX179 said:
I'm still very happy with my recent upgrade to the MSI 5850 Twin FrozR for just £125. I found most games at 1920 res don't even require the full power of my 5850 overclocked to 975MHz, so I am using a lower overclock profile of just 835MHz for most games and let the card runs cooler and consume less power.

The 6950 cost over £100 extra over what I paid for my 5850. Even with the BIOs flash to 6970 being taken into account, I guess it's really down to individual to decide if it really worth paying £100 extra, plus having a much hotter running and higher power consumption card only for the sake of making a few games more playable (Crysis, Metro2033, ArmaII).

I guess the extra memory does benefit those who game using Eyefinity or game at 2560 res, but most people only game on a single 1920 res monitor.
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Arma 2 is actually much more CPU dependent if you already have a decent GPU (like the 5850). I will be building a Sandy Bridge system this afternoon (hopefully) and will, at some point, be doing a mini-review focussing on how it changed Arma 2 and Operation Arrowhead performance over my Q6600 @3.2Ghz. I have identified many instances in the game that are purely CPU bottlenecked (with GPU making a relatively minor contribution) on the settings I play using my overclocked 5850. I couldn't possibly justify upgrading my graphics card to any single card at the moment but the rest of the system I could. :)
 
PCM2 said:
Arma 2 is actually much more CPU dependent if you already have a decent GPU (like the 5850). I will be building a Sandy Bridge system this afternoon (hopefully) and will, at some point, be doing a mini-review focussing on how it changed Arma 2 and Operation Arrowhead performance over my Q6600 @3.2Ghz. I have identified many instances in the game that are purely CPU bottlenecked (with GPU making a relatively minor contribution) on the settings I play using my overclocked 5850. I couldn't possibly justify upgrading my graphics card to any single card at the moment but the rest of the system I could. :)
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I'm well awared that ArmaII is a VERY CPU demanding game, but it is also equally graphic demand...which you don't seem to realise...
 
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PCM2 said:
Arma 2 is actually much more CPU dependent if you already have a decent GPU (like the 5850). I will be building a Sandy Bridge system this afternoon (hopefully) and will, at some point, be doing a mini-review focussing on how it changed Arma 2 and Operation Arrowhead performance over my Q6600 @3.2Ghz. I have identified many instances in the game that are purely CPU bottlenecked (with GPU making a relatively minor contribution) on the settings I play using my overclocked 5850. I couldn't possibly justify upgrading my graphics card to any single card at the moment but the rest of the system I could. :)
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I would be very interested in reading the review as well, I am on a q6600 running at about 3.1Ghz, so your impressions will be very helpful to me. What cpu and mobo did you get?
 
Marine-RX179 said:
I'm well awared that ArmII is a VERY CPU demanding game, but it is also equally graphic demand...which you don't seem to realise...
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Of course I realise... And I don't doubt that I could set things higher if I had a better graphics card or two. The point I was making is that at the settings I like to play at my frame rate would be very similar even if I had 2 GTX 580s powering my system. The CPU was the bottleneck, for me, not the GPU. It just seems that people get a bit hung up on the whole "need the best GPU possible for Arma 2" thing when they are stuck with a CPU several generations old and it won't help them. You implied that your 5850 wasn't 'enough' for a decent Arma 2 experience when actually your processor is probably holding you back more.

melmac said:
I would be very interested in reading the review as well, I am on a q6600 running at about 3.1Ghz, so your impressions will be very helpful to me. What cpu and mobo did you get?
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I ended up going for the 'standard' new ASUS motherboard as I don't like multi-GPU setups and the Intel i5 2500k. I am not going to overclock it too heavily initially but will use this opportunity to test out the 'auto overclock' features of the motherboard. The cooler is also pretty decent but obviously not the best (due to various restrictions in my case) - Arctic Cooler 7 Pro Rev. 2.
 
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PCM2 said:
Of course I realise... And I don't doubt that I could set things higher if I had a better graphics card or two. The point I was making is that at the settings I like to play at my frame rate would be very similar even if I had 2 GTX 580s powering my system.
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I'm not talking about GTX580 vs GTX580SLI (which 'may' be bottlenecked by the CPU in that game) though. According to bit-tech's Arma II: Operation Arrowhead bench, GTX580 deliver average 41fps, GTX480/5870 deliver average 31fps, and 5850 deliver average 26fps at 1920x1200 4xAA 16xAF with a Intel Core i7-965 3.2GHz. Clearing in this scenerio the bottleneck of the graphic card is in before the CPU bottleneck.

But yes, people should have i5/i7 if they want decent frame rate in that game, as Core2Quad/Phenom II X4 at 4.0GHz is only around as fast as i5/i7 at around 3.0GHz~ in terms of frame rate for gaming.
 
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Well absolutely. I'm sure the GPU will be my next upgrade, of that I have no doubt. I was contemplating getting a GTX 580 but then figured it would be wasted on my system. Think I'll see how it goes with my Arma 2 settings and the new Sandy Bridge build today. I was also thinking about slotting in another 5850 and running it in Crossfire. Apparently, though, Arma 2 doesn't like crossfire setups very much (that's what I was told over on the forums, anyway). Besides I have an affinity with single GPU setups so I'll probably wait for the next generation single uber GPU if I can.
 
Amazing how close those cards are when comparing gaming results and not just benchmarks. Would have liked to have seen a 470\480 included to make it more balanced. Think I would feel a little conned if I'd bought one of the new tech cards.:)
 
PCM2 said:
Well absolutely. I'm sure the GPU will be my next upgrade, of that I have no doubt. I was contemplating getting a GTX 580 but then figured it would be wasted on my system. Think I'll see how it goes with my Arma 2 settings and the new Sandy Bridge build today. I was also thinking about slotting in another 5850 and running it in Crossfire. Apparently, though, Arma 2 doesn't like crossfire setups very much (that's what I was told over on the forums, anyway). Besides I have an affinity with single GPU setups so I'll probably wait for the next generation single uber GPU if I can.
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Another thing you have to bare in mind is that while 25-30fps is still "playable" for single GPU card, 25-30fps for dual-GPU would not come close to delivering the same smoothness despite the same frame rate, due to stuttering. IMO, dual-GPU set-up would need at the very least minimum frame rate of 35fps (vs 25fps of single GPU) to be considered borderline playable.
 
I think the 6900 series comes as a major disappointment primarily to those with 5800 series card. However, why are they even thinking of upgrading when the 5800 series came out only just over a year ago.

A lot of us in the forums have this pathological upgrade itch, I think OCUK need to have a section in the forums to treat it!
 
The 5870s are coming down in price

im just going back to water cooling now i can get 5870s cheap and there water blocks I might as well just add another.
 
58x0 series stuff is still more than capable, and unless more games with tessellation come out, or/and drivers vastly improve for 6xxx series stuff I don't really see the need to spend the money, except for the use of less power in the 68x0 range.

Crossfire scaling is the one area that seems to have vastly improved however, and would definately be wise to consider. Bang for buck terms, the 58x0 stuff is very good value for money on the 2nd hand market right now, and the MSI deal from OcUK.

However, if I had the money, it would be on a 6950 rather than any similar priced 5870. I was seriously considering the 6950, but decided I'd be stretching myself too much, almost went for a very nice 470 but in the end settled for the 5850 knowing it would overclock well and had warranty.
 
rolypolyman said:
Think I would feel a little conned if I'd bought one of the new tech cards.:)
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Why?

The 5870 was £300 on release. My 6950 flashed to 6970 cost just over £200 and is faster. And faster by quite some margin.

Add superior Xfire scaling into the mix, D.P 1.2 superior tessellation perfromance and other features make the 6950 one of the best value cards for quite some time.
 
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