What graphics card(s) for this system?

Yannic · 14 May 2010 at 19:34

Hello,

I finally joined the world of 2560x1600 and low and behold my 8800gt 512 is starting to struggle going up from 1680x1050 to this resolution in titles like L4D2 and Bad Company 2.

I bought one of the overclocked bundles from OCUK about 3 months ago. It is based on a Asus P7P55D-E LX Intel P55 (Socket 1156) DDR3 Motherboard. It uses an i5 750 at 3.6Ghz and uses 4GB of RAM.

My question is which of the current crop of ATI cards are the way forward? Ideally I would like it if I could use the card to play at native res considering I could potentially be spending over £400 on this one piece of hardware!

Can this motherboard handle 2x5830's or 2x5850's or should I just go for a single 5850/5870 or really do I need a 5970? I really am hoping a single 5850 is enough but am worried it just wont handle very well at 2560x1600?

Aedus · 14 May 2010 at 19:35

Get 1 5850, if you find it can't handle what you need it for, get another 1.

Done.

Yannic · 14 May 2010 at 19:38

Good idea

lanzarobbie · 14 May 2010 at 21:17

i would have thought a 5870 would be a better choice for that res, if you have the money otherwise as said get a 5850

Yannic · 15 May 2010 at 12:24

If I were to get a single 5870, which of the makes has the best/quietest heatsink and best warranty?

I was looking at that Powercolor PCS++ version on the site. Is their solution one of the best or should I look to Sapphire, Asus, HiS, MSI or XFX?

Aedus · 15 May 2010 at 12:43

If you want the best get an MSI lightning or an ASUS Matrix, they're also 2 of the most expensive.

coupe69 · 15 May 2010 at 13:06

The Asus P7P55D-E LX only has the one PCI-E slot, so Crossfire or SLi is out of the question.

I'd seriously consider trying to find the cash for a 5970, anything less is going to struggle with certain games at that res.

Cookeh · 15 May 2010 at 13:44

Get a 5850, if you find it can't handle what you need it for, get a HD5870 off the back of what you sold the 5850 for

cainer · 15 May 2010 at 13:53

coupe69 said:
The Asus P7P55D-E LX only has the one PCI-E slot, so Crossfire or SLi is out of the question.

I'd seriously consider trying to find the cash for a 5970, anything less is going to struggle with certain games at that res.

+1 to this or buy a new MB with more pcie slots :/

coupe69 · 15 May 2010 at 13:56

Cookeh said:
Get a 5850, if you find it can't handle what you need it for, get a HD5870 off the back of what you sold the 5850 for

What's the point in buying something that won't do the job properly, only to sell it on at a loss :confused:

a single 5850 will struggle @ 2560x1600 there's no way of getting round this fact.

To the OP, have a look round at some benchmarks running at your new res, there's plenty around.

Take this one here for example.

Now at 2560x1600 we find that almost no single graphics card can handle Battlefield: Bad Company 2. The Crossfire Radeon
HD 5870 graphics cards averaged just 74fps using the high quality preset with 2xAA/4xAF. A single Radeon HD 5870 rendered 51fps, while the Radeon HD 5850 and GeForce GTX 285 barely managed to deliver an acceptable level of performance. Everything below the GeForce GTX 285 is useless at this extreme resolution with these quality settings.

lanzarobbie · 15 May 2010 at 14:14

yeah forget about a 5850, the decision is either a 5870 or a 5970

mame · 15 May 2010 at 14:16

If I had that monitor and I was considering spending over £300 on a 1gb 5870, I would be having a serious look at the £393 1.5gb GTX 480. I think the extra VRAM will mean it will last you longer with having such a high resolution. If the 5870 was £240 then this wouldn't be the case but the fact is most of them seem to be about £330

Yannic · 15 May 2010 at 14:17

after much measuring of my case and reading about. A 5970 is out of the question as I am not ready to also replace the case on top of getting the new card.

I decided to purchase the PowerColor 5870 PCS++ as it seems to be one of the fastest cards on OCUK for £350.

Yannic · 15 May 2010 at 14:19

mame said:
If I had that monitor and I was considering spending over £300 on a 1gb 5870, I would be having a serious look at the £393 1.5gb GTX 480. I think the extra VRAM will mean it will last you longer with having such a high resolution. If the 5870 was £240 then this wouldn't be the case but the fact is most of them seem to be about £330

All i hear about those Nvidia cards is;

Very hot, very noisy, high power draw.

From what I gather, the entire line seems to be sub-standard when compared to the 5xxx series. This is just from reading reviews though, so I cant confirm it.

lanzarobbie · 15 May 2010 at 14:28

Yannic said:
All i hear about those Nvidia cards is;

Very hot, very noisy, high power draw.

From what I gather, the entire line seems to be sub-standard when compared to the 5xxx series. This is just from reading reviews though, so I cant confirm it.

+1

Aedus · 15 May 2010 at 14:39

Yannic said:
All i hear about those Nvidia cards is;

Very hot, very noisy, high power draw.

From what I gather, the entire line seems to be sub-standard when compared to the 5xxx series. This is just from reading reviews though, so I cant confirm it.

Not really sub-standard as such, just over priced for what they are.

coupe69 · 15 May 2010 at 14:55

Yannic said:
All i hear about those Nvidia cards is;

Very hot, very noisy, high power draw.

From what I gather, the entire line seems to be sub-standard when compared to the 5xxx series. This is just from reading reviews though, so I cant confirm it.

That's because you're reading the ATi based forums that are overclockers

You'll rarely get a non biased review around here that's for sure.
I have a 480 and yes they run quite warm although no hotter than an 8800GT, remember them? uber budget card from a couple of years ago.
In fact they run only run a few degrees hotter than a 4870, it's funny how nobody seems to mention that fact though?

Yes they have a high power draw, but a good quality 600 watt psu will be more than enough.

Concerning noise, well that's obviously very subjective, but if you have a good case with good airflow like I have (Silverstone TJ09), then they stay cool enough to not ramp up the fan so much.
Put it this way I can't hear mine at idle, of course the noise levels go up when you're playing games but I rarely see the fan exceed 80% which is more than acceptable.

As for being sub standard, I'm not sure what you really mean by this?
At the end of the day the 480 is widely regarded as the fastest single GPU card.
Add to this all the little extras you get ie PhysX, Cuda, 3D etc and you have yourself a complete package.

Having said all this, at the res you're wanting to play at, looking at the benchmarks even the 480 will struggle with some games. This is why I have suggested the rather good 5970,
this will give you that little bit of extra oomph that you'll need to push those extra pixels.

lanzarobbie · 15 May 2010 at 15:04

coupe69 said:
That's because you're reading the ATi based forums that are overclockers You'll rarely get a non biased review around here that's for sure.
I have a 480 and yes they run quite warm although no hotter than an 8800GT, remember them? uber budget card from a couple of years ago.
In fact they run only run a few degrees hotter than a 4870, it's funny how nobody seems to mention that fact though?

Yes they have a high power draw, but a good quality 600 watt psu will be more than enough.

Concerning noise, well that's obviously very subjective, but if you have a good case with good airflow like I have (Silverstone TJ09), then they stay cool enough to not ramp up the fan so much.
Put it this way I can't hear mine at idle, of course the noise levels go up when you're playing games but I rarely see the fan exceed 80% which is more than acceptable.

As for being sub standard, I'm not sure what you really mean by this?
At the end of the day the 480 is widely regarded as the fastest single GPU card.
Add to this all the little extras you get ie PhysX, Cuda, 3D etc and you have yourself a complete package.

Having said all this, at the res you're wanting to play at, looking at the benchmarks even the 480 will struggle with some games. This is why I have suggested the rather good 5970,
this will give you that little bit of extra oomph that you'll need to push those extra pixels.

no it was custom pc

"Add to this mediocre game performance the noise of the cooler, which is greater than that of the HD 5870, and the much higher power consumption and GPU temperature, and it’s difficult to see any reason to opt for a GeForce GTX 470 over a Radeon HD 5870"

coupe69 · 15 May 2010 at 15:52

lanzarobbie said:
and it’s difficult to see any reason to opt for a GeForce GTX 470 over a Radeon HD 5870"

I haven't seen anyone in this thread even mention the 470 :confused:

lanzarobbie · 15 May 2010 at 16:02

coupe69 said:
I haven't seen anyone in this thread even mention the 470

okay 480 review from custom pc

Yes, the GTX 480 offers great performance in our test games, especially in Dirt 2 and Bad Company 2, but compared to the competition, it doesn't make a strong enough case for itself, especially when you consider that there are just so many caveats involved with buying this card. The higher price, the 100W of extra power consumption, scorchingly hot temperatures and a much noisier stock cooler are all extremely detrimental to its desirability. The HD 5870 remains a far better choice if you're a gamer; while we've yet to see how the GTX 480 performs with CUDA apps and Folding, at this stage Fermi looks like a flop.