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Was my 6870 a bad decision?

Lunatic Dreyfus said:
There's always buyers regret somewhere along the line. It's the nature of buying expensive PC hardware. A few more pounds here, a few more there... just think what I could have had. Before you know it you've got a pair of 580's and a terrible feeling of "WTF have I done!". :D
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Too right. Am now downgrading from two GTX480s and watercooling to a single 6950 (well, 6970 ;))... GTX480 SLI was only slightly unnecessary with a single 23" monitor...
 
I know how you feel.

I bought a HIS 6870 for £170 odd and now I feel like I should've just paid the extra for the 6950. Saying that, I haven't even tried my HIS 6870 yet due to my motherboard being lame at the moment, but it's certainly given me time to think about my purchase (while it sits in the box!).
 
i really, really, really want to sell my 6870 but i dont really trust ebay and the warranty wont transfer or anything so if they break it somehow, i will have to deal with it. I really do regret buying the 6870 so much. I wish i bought the 6950..
 
Why ?

Overclock the 6870. The 6950 isn't that much quicker.

Ok, so the 6950 might unlock, but it isn't 100% guarenteed.

You're currently £40-£50 better off. Buy some beer, cheap women, etc... :)

What res do you game at ?
 
1440 x 900 atm but hopefully i will be getting 1920 x 1080 in a few months time. I was planning on crossfiring in June on my Birthday with a second 6870 anyway but they're dying out, OcUK only sells 4 of them now, when i bought mine they were the best thing of the moment :S so yeah.. looks like ill be keeping my 6870 and crossfiring eventually.. :(
 
Your card will eat anything at the res you're gaming at. Even at 1920x1080 it's going to have no problems maxing everything.

However if I were you I'd probably sell it and either buy:

a 5850. You'll get a couple less fps but you can buy them 100 quid second hand and 130 new.

or

a 470. You can get one second hand for the same price you'll be able to sell your card at, so will break even but it's a better card and you'll gain 5 or so fps generally in games.
 
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But the problem is XFX's warranty is not transferable, and it is between the original buyer and the reseller (I'm talking about big online shops, not some random "shops" on the auction site) as far as I know.

Realistically, I think you would struggle to sell the 6870 for even £150, especially with the GTX560 at just around the corner...

Even if you manage to get £150 for selling the 6870, 6950's current price is on average £230...so it means you would have to pay £80 extra to get one. Even with the flash to 6970 considered, you have to ask yourself if that little performance increase over your 6870 is really worth spending extra £80 for (I doubt you can even notice the real world improvement for most games).

And to be honest, I think a 6870 would be plenty fast enough for your res...hell, even my 5850 (which is around same speed as 6870) can easily handle most games in general on stock clock 725MHz, and I don't even need use my 975MHz overclock profile (which would consume more power and run hotter comparing to stock) for most games I play on 1920x1080.
 
straxusii said:
Yes it was, awful card compared to a 6950 flashed to 6970
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I think the main problem was that the OP bought an overpriced 6870. If it was a 6870 at £175, it would had been a good £50-£60 cheaper then a 6950, and wouldn't had been a bad purchase

Even with the flash considered, the extra speed of the flashed 6950 would worth nothing more than the extra £50-£60 being paid, as even 6970 is not really THAT MUCH faster than the 6870 (only around 15% faster but at the cost of around 30% extra).

What's done is done, and personally I think it is a bad move to try to sell the 6870 (unless able to get good amount of money back, which I doubt) and get a 6950 now. By the time he upgrade to 1920 res, next gen card (the 28nm process cards!) would be around the corner, and then he will be regretting again over his move of selling his 6870 and spending £80 extra on getting the high power consumption, hot running (flashed) 6950 when the 7000 series and GTX600 series turn out great, and it will never ends.

Also, the OP bought the 6870 and have good use out of it since before the 6950 was even launched, so I don't know if it's really worth get upsetted about it.
 
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I initially bought an MSI 5850 Twin Frozr II for £ 120 ex VAT but it was faulty so I returned it for a refund and bought a 6850 for £ 121.35 ex VAT instead of a 6870, once overclocked its as fast as a 6870 and 5850 at stock. Slightly regret that I did not either wait for a 5850 replacement or order the XFX 5850 which was only £ 10 more.

So now I have to overclock my card to get 6870/5850 performance which adds more heat and power consumption and may shorten its life. Could have bought a GTX 460 1GB for £ 10 less and overclocked that instead for similar performance.

I am keeping my card as its fast enough for my needs when overclocked.
 
Marine-RX179 said:
Even with the flash considered, the extra speed of the flashed 6950 would worth nothing more than the extra £50-£60 being paid, as even 6970 is not really THAT MUCH faster than the 6870 (only around 15% faster but at the cost of around 30% extra).
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It's not all about being that much faster, smoother gameplay counts just as much too. A flashed 6950 certainly achieves quite well on some more demanding games. I was of the opinion of sticking with my 5870 and waiting out for the next gen, but after the flashing news broke out and the price of the 5870 was dropping by the day, I decided to get myself the 6950. It cost me £75 to upgrade and it has been worth every penny.

Marine-RX179 said:
Also, the OP bought the 6870 and have good use out of it since before the 6950 was even launched, so I don't know if it's really worth get upsetted about it.
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Agree with you there. When ever a new card comes out, some of us start getting upgraditus though.
 
tommybhoy said:
It's not all about being that much faster, smoother gameplay counts just as much too. A flashed 6950 certainly achieves quite well on some more demanding games. I was of the opinion of sticking with my 5870 and waiting out for the next gen, but after the flashing news broke out and the price of the 5870 was dropping by the day, I decided to get myself the 6950. It cost me £75 to upgrade and it has been worth every penny.
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Yea? But the point is that the OP is only on 1440 x 900 res, so I doubt he can tell the difference between the 6870 and (flashed) 6950 in 98% of the games. The real world difference he would notice would be next to none, and the only thing he would clearly see is higher benchmark results, and £80 less in his wallet :p

He's not going to upgrade his monitor at least for another 4 months or so, and by then it would be only a few months to go until next gen 28nm process cards launch.

No offense, as great as a card as the 6950/6970/GTX570, they are just a stop-gap generation cards because of the 32nm process was skipped, and design wise they are hardly perfect, particular in terms of high power consumption and heat output.

The new 28nm process cards should hopefully be the answer to the current imperfections, and not turning the cards into a miniature size sauna.
 
Was your 6870 a bad decision? - NO

You based your decision on the imformation you had available to you at the time - IT'S JUST that a little later you found out that such did not give you the full picture!

It may not be true in your case but I for one have been down the path of assuming that the 'new' higher numbered model MUST be better than the 'old' (9800 from 8800) to find that this is not always the case.

Write off to experience and move on was my answer. ( In my case it did involve getting rid and buying the card I should have bought in the first place which was a tad expensive ; but was the only way I could move on. Did try to forget but until I got rid could not!).

If your more paitent/forgiving than me keep it - it's still a good card
if not move on (£90 or more looks to be about what you would get without using the bay or mm - bit of a bath I'm afraid UNLESS you can find a .... person with more money than sense)and then enjoy the new , faster, model.

Sorry - logically if your gaming @ 1440x900 then it's a good card - keep it
 
Thanks for all of the post guys. I've spent some good time reading all of your posts in great detail and I will keep my 6870. Afterall it is still a good card and It can max all of my games at my 1440 x 900 res :). Eventually i will crossfire to a second 6870 when i get my new 1920 x 1080 monitor in about June time, along with a SSD :D. And then probably in about 1-2 years (maybe longer) take a next big upgrade step to some more powerful gpus, higher psu, and maybe even a new cpu (depending if AMD release the 8 and 12 core opterons on AM3 socket).

Thanks for posts everybody.
 
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