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Not sure whether to upgrade rig - 2 x HD4870 crossfire

doopydug

doopydug

doopydug

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Currently have 2 x HD4870 512mb in crossfire in my ASUS P5W Deluxe / E8400 rig.

It's water cooled and I haven't really used it for gaming for about a year as I have been so busy with work. However, I want to get in to the gaming scene again and wondered if it was worth upgrading.

A year ago, there was nothing this couldn't handle but how much have things moved on - will I see any advantage in upgrading and, if so, can anyone suggest a value for money upgrade that will boost performance? Not really want to pay for the cutting edge as I usually find that it is overkill for my likes anyway.

I like Supreme Commander / Civilisation type games as well as FPS
 
I would recommend getting a 6950 and unlocking it to a 6970, there's one going for 200 quid on today only ;).

What are your other specs?
 
Tbh thats a tough one, but those cards dont support DX11, are you looking to go ATi and Crossfire again or would you take the Nvidia route?

I have an Nvidia ASUS 480 GTX (only one not SLI) and this card is a beast! but i must say you need some decent airflow through the case to keep it cool!

It handles Metro 2033 on Very High at around 45fps on 1680x1050 but BFBC2 and games like that it is at 60fps at 1920x1080!

Plus a lot of games are supporting Nvidias PhysX now, and i didnt think it but it makes a noticable difference especiialy in games like BFBC2 and Metro 2033.

I would recommend this card aslong as you can fit it in your case!
 
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I have a moster lian li case with plenty of spare room - running Win 7 64 bit with 4gb RAM

My monitor is set at 1920 x 1080

Would prefer just a single card solution that is fairly quiet
 
Some people have said that the 480 is loud whenh on load, i admit the fan noise is a bit higher than a lot of other fans BUT and this is a big BUT the performance of this card in my opinion ways out this little niggle. But your card will only be on load when doing demanding calculations e.g. editing and gaming, and if you use this card for gaming then your game sound will definately drown out the sound, but there isnt a lot to hear anyway! it is just a tad more noticable than other cards but not a lot!
 
GTX460 1GB or GTX470 would probably meet your needs as you say you don't need bleeding-edge performance. Or a HD5850. The 460 is very quiet, and some of the 470s and 5850s on OcUK have the quieter Twin Frozr MSI coolers on, so they should be quite quiet, too.

You might be able to pick up some good deals on at least one of these cards second-hand especially... ;)
 
thing is, realistically you are looking at a sideways step in performance unless you go with a highly OCed GTX580 or 5970 or wait for the GTX595/ 6990.
 
^^ Wow, actually you're right. Having checked the charts, I'm quite surprised. I really thought the 512MB RAM on those 4870s would limit the performance at 1920x1080, but it seems they perform about on a par with a stock 460 and not that far behind a stock 470...

So it may be that there's not actually an upgrade for less than the £200 a 6950 (flashed to 6970) or 480 would cost that would actually give you a big improvement.
 
How does your rig handle current titles, in your own opinion? If it's satisfactory then fair enough, otherwise something from the AMD 5/6000 or nVidia 4/500 series would be an excellent starting point.
 
[timko];18419642 said:
Thanks for that link, I hadn't heard of it before and it makes a nice change to looking at Tomshardware's chart's with advert filled pages :)
Click to expand...

No problem :)

You have probably seen they also do CPU and hard Drive charts :D
 
arc@css said:
How does your rig handle current titles, in your own opinion? If it's satisfactory then fair enough, otherwise something from the AMD 5/6000 or nVidia 4/500 series would be an excellent starting point.
Click to expand...

I haven't been playing anything for a year but, back then, it handled everything with ease.

You guys have actually helped a lot - helped me keep my money in my pocket which is a good thing - looks like I have no need to upgrade at all.
 
doopydug said:
I haven't been playing anything for a year but, back then, it handled everything with ease.

You guys have actually helped a lot - helped me keep my money in my pocket which is a good thing - looks like I have no need to upgrade at all.
Click to expand...

Glad we could help. :) I am as keen as the next gamer and salivate at the thought of an upgrade but my advice is, (perhaps because I am a little older now), upgrade when you need to rather than when you want to, even if money is not an issue. Of course a little extreme excess on occasion doesn't hurt either. :D Ultimately though it's your money and there is no right or wrong.
 
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That's just the voice of wisdom I could have used before I press "buy" on the GTX480 deal despite the fact that I had only just bought and heavily overclocked a GTX460 1GB that worked absolutely fine in all my games...

Where were you then, huh?! :)
 
strumpusplunket said:
That's just the voice of wisdom I could have used before I press "buy" on the GTX480 deal despite the fact that I had only just bought and heavily overclocked a GTX460 1GB that worked absolutely fine in all my games...

Where were you then, huh?! :)
Click to expand...

:D

Btw - don't suppose you'd mind just mentioning whether or not you find your cpu a bottleneck (I'm not suggesting it is), it's just that I have the same cpu and at some point hopefully in the not too terribly distant future I'll be upgrading most of my rig. However, I was wondering if it would be worth me adding the video card first before getting the case, mobo, sandy / ivy bridge etc? :) This stand in card I'm using is barely enough for windows! :D
 
Unless you just fancy a new toy I would say stick with the 4870CF. It's about the same speed as 5870 but lacks some DX11 features.

The DX11 features are nice but there are so few of them and some games run so poorly you can't enable them anyway, even on a GTX580.


Give it another 6/12 months and upgrade the whole machine including the next gen ATI 7870 or Nvidia GTX680
 
arc@css said:
:D

Btw - don't suppose you'd mind just mentioning whether or not you find your cpu a bottleneck (I'm not suggesting it is), it's just that I have the same cpu and at some point hopefully in the not too terribly distant future I'll be upgrading most of my rig. However, I was wondering if it would be worth me adding the video card first before getting the case, mobo, sandy / ivy bridge etc? :) This stand in card I'm using is barely enough for windows! :D
Click to expand...

Interesting you say that, because when I first started benching and clocking my GTX480, I was a bit surprised that it didn't show as much of a jump from my GTX460 as I was expecting.

I started a thread about it, actually - here

The consensus seemed to be by the end of the thread that the Q6600 was bottlenecking the 480 to some degree, and certainly stopping it from posting the types of results it's capable of.

Pretty happy with it now considering my fears about it being hot and noisy were unfounded (in my experience anyway), but in all honesty it was a pretty pointless upgrade when my clocked GTX460 was performing so well anyway. Still, I guess this will stand my rig in better stead for upcoming games until I upgrade to Bulldozer, Ivy Bridge or Sandy Bridge...
 
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