Resolution

[Murdin999]

Odd question, but what is the best card for gaming at 1680x1050, cause surely if i brought like a 480/5970 it's just wasted as i would never use the sheer power at such a resolution.

Games i play are: WoW, Starcraft 2, MW2
Futures games I'd like to play: Black ops, Crysis 2, etc

I'm thinking of a 5870, but maybe that's "too" powerful? Whats a good card to run games at highest settings (i don't mind AA), cause if i can save money, well it would be nice

 

[thecomputerguy]

hd4890 or a hd5770 would be perfect at that res

 

[reflux]

You're right, there is a concept of overkill when you run very fast cards at lower resolutions. It's not worth buying a 5970 if you're running 1280x720 for example

Tbh I think a 5850 would probably do you nicely. The 5770 is a good choice too, but may not have quite enough muscle for all the effects turned to 11.

 

[arc@css]

Better to have too much power imo than too little. I remember having an ATI 4870 512mb and playing Clear Sky (which runs better on ATI hardware) when it first came out. It was fine until I tried to apply AA and have everything else on high or maximum, and play at my highest resolution, which was the same as your res. Maybe it was the 512mb of memory and nothing else in the equation, I'll never know.

So I don't think a 5970 or 480gtx is completely wasted at that resolution but ideally, 1920 and over is better. Xfire or sli at 16xx resolutions or higher is the minimum imo.

In your case I'd aim for at least a 1gb 5850 / 460 for current and future titles.

 

[Nocky24]

A 5850 or 470 would be the sweet spot for that res with good performance in future games imo. However it depends on your budget, etc as well. I know raven on these forums runs a 480 at that res so it's entirely upto you how far you want to go in terms of performance if you want to play crysis 2 though, not worried about high temps and power consumption then I'd get a 470.