Upgrade from 5870 to? (ATI only)

avrc · 20 Dec 2011 at 22:31

System specs:

i5 760
GA-P55-USB3
8GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3
XFX 5870
X-Fi Xtreme Gamer
Corsair F60 (OS/Apps)
WD Caviar Black 500GB (Games)
Hitachi Deskstar 160GB (Other)
PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750w
HAF 932

For playing modern games such as Skyrim, MW3, BF3 what would be a good graphics upgrade choice? I'm not interested in Nvidia cards, they lost my custom after the 460 fiasco.

cainer · 20 Dec 2011 at 22:35

7970, thats what il be upgrading to from a 5870 in the next few weeks

mickyflinn · 20 Dec 2011 at 22:40

You could crossfire , whats your budget ?

theforce · 20 Dec 2011 at 23:28

Depends on your screen resolution and amount of money you are willing to spend.

lay-z-boy · 20 Dec 2011 at 23:36

7970/7950 if you can wait

6970/6950 if you need it now

Don't bother with crossfire, always get the best single gpu you can afford before you start doubling up.

MOOGLEYS · 21 Dec 2011 at 01:00

The card you have is more than capable of playing those games. You may need to run BF3 in high rather than ultra but its not that different or not £200 of GPU different. Anything else I doubt you will struggle unless you game at high res or multi screen.

I would wait until the next set of cards have come out and the prices have settled down.

gurusan · 21 Dec 2011 at 01:31

What 460 fiasco? :confused:

tommybhoy · 21 Dec 2011 at 02:14

Maybe the W7 login problem or tdr?

Defunkt · 21 Dec 2011 at 07:52

I'm looking forward to getting my hands on a 7970 after bypassing the 6XXX series (where they really needed?) and keeping to the 5870. This is will be a "proper" upgrade. can't wait.

avrc · 21 Dec 2011 at 08:12

Sorry I should have said budget would be around the £200 mark. My screen is a 24" 1920x1080.

The 460 fiasco included them crapping out on a range of motherboards usually during gaming. There was and probably still is a very long thread on the nvidia forum about it. Manufacturer of my card knew nothing of it, OC checked the card, found it fine, gave me a bill and that was the end of that. Tried that card in 3 different machines with completely different boards and other components and all experienced the same problems. It became a very expensive paperweight as I couldn't do anything with it. Couldn't sell it on as didn't want the come back if the buyer had the same problems. So I gave nvidia the finger after many years of only buying nvidia cards and I bought my current ATI 5870 and never had a problem since.

zoomee · 21 Dec 2011 at 08:26

Whoever says crossfire isn't worth it at this moment in time is talking rubbish tbh. You could pickup another 5870 second hand for about £100 - That will give you more performance than any single card can currently deliver with a hell of allot of saving of zee notes.

Otherwise I'd recommned hanging fire for the 7xxx series of ATI cards (due to be announced tommorow-ish I believe!)

lay-z-boy · 21 Dec 2011 at 13:20

zoomee said:
Whoever says crossfire isn't worth it at this moment in time is talking rubbish tbh.

I've no idea who said that in this thread, that but I did say that I wouldn't bother with crossfire if a faster single gpu option is available.
Given how I've had a pair of 5870's since launch, sold them for 480's and picked up a pair of 5870 eyefinity edition cards for next to nothing as well,
I think I have the right to pass judgement. I ran into ms + vram limitations on the 1gig cards driving games at max and occasional ms + poor/no crossfire scaling on the 2gb.

If you want to boil it down to savings then spending nothing save you even more. The 5870 is hardly slow, It's just the latest games on ultra that cause the hit.

mickyflinn · 21 Dec 2011 at 13:26

5870CF V 6950

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/300?vs=293

zoomee · 21 Dec 2011 at 19:23

lay-z-boy said:
Don't bother with crossfire, always get the best single gpu you can afford before you start doubling up.

Thats who said it

lay-z-boy said:
I've no idea who said that in this thread, that but I did say that I wouldn't bother with crossfire if a faster single gpu option is available.

There is no single gpu option unless you look at the 6990, but then that maybe debatable too compared to 2 x 5870's (I'm not sure). but hey that's only £400 for a card lol

mickyflinn said:
5870CF V 6950

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/300?vs=293

Think this proves my point. OP can buy a second hand 5870 (or maybe even new!) for about £100. Gets allot more performance for buck. OR he can sell his 5870 (for about £100) - put in the extra £200 and get a 580 1.5Gb (I think thats about how much they are new) - to get 'slightly' better performance than 1 5870.

So to conclude - Spend £100 for performance (allot!) better than a 580 1.5Gb or sell existing for £100 and spend £300 in total for meh performance.......

Karateyid · 21 Dec 2011 at 19:28

Hmm wonder if I shud buy another 5850 and psu....

ALXAndy · 21 Dec 2011 at 19:28

zoomee said:
Whoever says crossfire isn't worth it at this moment in time is talking rubbish tbh. You could pickup another 5870 second hand for about £100 - That will give you more performance than any single card can currently deliver with a hell of allot of saving of zee notes.

Otherwise I'd recommned hanging fire for the 7xxx series of ATI cards (due to be announced tommorow-ish I believe!)

Not once mentioning of course the crap that you bring onto yourself with any multiple GPU set up, let alone Crossfire.

You know I really truly can't stand it when people hand out advice without at least being honest and saying that you should expect at least some issues with Crossfire.

Do you work for AMD or something?

http://www.google.co.uk/#sclient=ps....,cf.osb&fp=f9ef8465024f9e21&biw=1920&bih=955

Once glance down the list is quite revealing.

Skyrim issues.
BF3 issues

repeat ad nauseum.

lay-z-boy · 21 Dec 2011 at 19:39

zoomee said:
Thats who said it

What you suggested I said is not what I said.

zoomee said:
There is no single gpu option unless you look at the 6990, but then that maybe debatable too compared to 2 x 5870's (I'm not sure). but hey that's only £400 for a card lol

There is no single gpu option? The 6930, 6950 and 6970 are all single gpu options that are faster than a 5870. *edit* You mention the 6990, which is a dual gpu card. LOL

zoomee said:
So to conclude - Spend £100 for performance (allot!) better than a 580 1.5Gb or sell existing for £100 and spend £300 in total for meh performance.......

So to conclude - Soon to be 2 generation old hardware, microstuttering, running into a vram limitation if OP plans to play games like BF3, having to deal with crossfire profiles and waiting till ati release profiles for new games (that's if they work)
All that for only £100. What a deal. I'd rather the 580 at that point.

zoomee · 21 Dec 2011 at 20:24

lol - let the OP make up his own mind. Personally other than when crysis 2 was originally launched I havn't had any issues with 2 5850's in crossfire.

What you guys are recommending though is clearly wrong - Spend £200 now when the next generation of cards are literally JUST around the corner.

ALXAndy - You work for nvidia or something? All I've seen so far is you go from thread to thread bashing AMD - personally I don't care, I'll go with whoever gives the best performance for the buck (Hence why I now have an Intel 2700k as opposed to a BD chip)

Warbie · 21 Dec 2011 at 20:43

lay-z-boy said:
I've no idea who said that in this thread, that but I did say that I wouldn't bother with crossfire if a faster single gpu option is available.

I got a second 5850 2 or 3 months ago and have ended up using it a grand total of zero times with the 3 or 4 games I 've bought since as performance has been either worse or no better with crossfire enabled (although on some older games it does show a nice boost - it's just a shame I have no interest in playing them again!). So, for me at least, crossfire is a big no no. But hey, I can get GTX 580 performance on games I don't play! woo.

ALXAndy · 21 Dec 2011 at 21:10

zoomee said:
lol - let the OP make up his own mind. Personally other than when crysis 2 was originally launched I havn't had any issues with 2 5850's in crossfire.

What you guys are recommending though is clearly wrong - Spend £200 now when the next generation of cards are literally JUST around the corner.

ALXAndy - You work for nvidia or something? All I've seen so far is you go from thread to thread bashing AMD - personally I don't care, I'll go with whoever gives the best performance for the buck (Hence why I now have an Intel 2700k as opposed to a BD chip)

Yes I work for Nvidia.

Just replaced my GTX 470 with a 6970, hope my boss doesn't find out !

Actually no. I hate both GPU makers equally right now because they are not moving us in the right direction, only interested in convincing us that the card we paid them £300 for 6 months ago is now a load of old crap we should throw away (even though it has performed nothing notable for that £300) and get a new one as it's so much better.

And in 6 months time we will be told that our £300 card is now a load of old crap and we need to QUICKLY RUSH OUT and buy another £300 card.

And then when we actually sit down and think about it a £300 Xbox 360 has progressed more in five years than the £1500 worth of crappy stupid graphics cards we have been sold.

But never mind me, I just talk sense. And in times like these sensible people are actually the stupid ones.