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One Card is Not Better Than Two

Martini1991 said:
This is flawed...

Sell the old 4870 for 60 quid, 240 more for a 5870.

spend another 100 on a 4870, you've saved, 140 quid.. Um no wait you haven't..

Power draw, the 5870 will pay for itself.

OP = Owned.

Medal pl0x
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That doesn't make sense at all.


You had to buy the 4870 in the first place. Say you bought it at 150 pounds, then sold it for 60, and put 240 for a 5870 like you said - in total you've spent 390 pounds for 5870 performance.


Instead you originally bought 4870 for 150 pounds, then buy a second hand 4870 for 60 pounds instead of selling yours, and you've got competative 5870 performance for just 210 pounds.

A saving of 180 pounds.


You just make yourself look ridiculous.
 
Alternatively, people can buy what they want. If they want more performance, they can go ahead and get it. I can agree with the "Unjustifiable Purchase" argument, but if they want it, who's to stop them?

It's like denying a child of his toys :)
 
Just thought i'd point out a Powercolor HD 4870 is £91.99. A HD 5870 is £300. I agree with OP, £180 for two 4870s is better value than £300 for a 5870.
 
I myself have been wondering about GPU choices.

I currently run one card, I also want to build a new PC. I have a single Sapphire 1Gb 4870 Toxic with the vapour cooling thingy and it is now a lot cheaper than when I bought it.

I am wondering if I would see much improvement if I built my new PC with a second 4870 in mind?
 
arctine said:
Hence why i said better value not better performance. That's like saying a Ferrari is better than an Impreza. Yes it is but do you get more for your money? No.
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The thing is its not all about performance. With the 5870 you get features that you don't get with the 4870 and you also get the benefit of having a single gpu setup which comes with its own benefits. Give me a ferrari any day over an impreza if i could afford it which tbh is one of the points here. If you can afford a 5870 then its a better solution than 2 4870 for the reasons above so why not spend the extra money.
 
sastusbulbas said:
I myself have been wondering about GPU choices.

I currently run one card, I also want to build a new PC. I have a single Sapphire 1Gb 4870 Toxic with the vapour cooling thingy and it is now a lot cheaper than when I bought it.

I am wondering if I would see much improvement if I built my new PC with a second 4870 in mind?
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Crossfire on average gives around 60% more performance sometimes more sometimes less depending on how good crossfire is optimised. Thats the main reason a 5870 is sometimes faster and then sometimes slower than 4870 crossfire. I think with driver improvements the 5870 will be faster in the majority of games.
 
^

To sum up on those points - in the end it really is down to whether you care for the extra features new gen cards bring, and whether they matter enough to you to shell out the extra. If you aren't bothered and just want solid gaming performance dual set-up is the way to go. If on the other hand you really want the new tech thats out - even if it wont start being utilised for 6+ months - then by all means go for the single card. However keep in mind that by the time that new tech is being properly used, your new card wont be so new anymore and will be far cheaper.
 
Deific said:
That doesn't make sense at all.


You had to buy the 4870 in the first place. Say you bought it at 150 pounds, then sold it for 60, and put 240 for a 5870 like you said - in total you've spent 390 pounds for 5870 performance.


Instead you originally bought 4870 for 150 pounds, then buy a second hand 4870 for 60 pounds instead of selling yours, and you've got competative 5870 performance for just 210 pounds.

A saving of 180 pounds.


You just make yourself look ridiculous.
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by the time you account for the amount of power the 2 cards will use then you're not really saving a lot over a year or so, not everybodys motherboard is capable of crossfire either
 
uh oook... I thought people had gotten over that myth by now.

25-30fps with motion blur fools you when your watching a movie... it doesn't work so well when the player has control over the view point and is pretty nasty when the player is trying to aim and shoot at a moving object...
 
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arctine said:
Just thought i'd point out a Powercolor HD 4870 is £91.99. A HD 5870 is £300. I agree with OP, £180 for two 4870s is better value than £300 for a 5870.
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Yes it's cheaper but bare in mind Crossfire technology is far from perfect, which is why I would sooner sell the 4870 and buy a 5850/5870.

Title should be "One card is not cheaper than two" because you do indeed pay a premium for the fastest single-GPU, that's not to say there aren't lots of other benefits though.
 
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Rroff said:
uh oook... I thought people had gotten over that myth by now.

25-30fps with motion blur fools you when your watching a movie... it doesn't work so well when the player has control over the view point and is pretty nasty when the player is trying to aim and shoot at a moving object...
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Also a lot of motion blur algorithms in used in today's games are really crap and over the top, they look really unnatural and not film-like at all.
 
Have to say I'm sorry I didn't wait ~2 weeks and get an 8800GTX originally... instead I got bored of waiting and bought a 7950GX2... the GTX would have seen me through until very recently... instead went 7950GX2->8800GT->8800GT SLI->260GTX->260GTX SLI.
 
As above it would have struggled at 2048x res that I use with AA on... which is why I added a second 260GTX for SLI.
 
So to safely sum up in this thread, I think we can say that a) its cheaper to buy second hand than new, and b) you need more umpf than the average Joe at 2000+x res.

Unfortunately, every time I look at the ridiculous prices people want for their second hand cards on the auction site I come back here and buy new. Liking my 5850. Originally intended to buy a second 4850, but 512k doesnt cut it these days. Back 15 months ago, 1mb cards were hugely overpriced - about £200 iirc. So I can safely say for me the 2 cards better than 1 theory doesnt really work in all scenarios.
 
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