4870 (and crossfire) A Worthwhile Upgrade?

I've really wanted to grab a 5850 since it's come out, but the lack of pricing movement and the low supply have been a bit frustrating, as well as the fact that it's a fairly big investment at over £200.

Today, I've seen that eBuyer have dropped the price on the XFX (I know, I know) 4870 512MB to just £75! At that price, I could buy two for very close to 4870 X2 performance which could therefore match the 5870 - £300 worth of performance for just £150!

I'm extremely tempted to just go for it and upgrade from my current 8800GTS 320 - I'm only playing at 1440x900 at the moment, but I want to move up to 1920x1200 in the next few months so I'll definitely need some more graphics horsepower to use AA and AF and so on (I've never really had that luxury ever before).

What do you reckon?

Tough call. A 5770 may even be a better purchase......yes it is a bit slower then a 4870 but not by much and the drivers haven't had their full 5 series tweaks added yet....so I would exxpect to see the 5770 draw level at least with the 4870 within a few months.

Add in DX11 support, lower power consuption and less heat........

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Originally Posted by shaithis

Tough call. A 5770 may even be a better purchase......yes it is a bit slower then a 4870 but not by much and the drivers haven't had their full 5 series tweaks added yet....so I would exxpect to see the 5770 draw level at least with the 4870 within a few months.

Add in DX11 support, lower power consuption and less heat........

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True, but we're talking £120 at the moment versus £75 for the 4870, which is £45 of difference - do you think it's still worth going for the 5770 at the higher price then?

TBH, I have not upgraded my HD4830 to a better card since I want to be able to use DX11 features in newer games released over the next year or so.

The HD4870 also consumes a lot of power and I would be looking at getting the 1GB version if you are getting one too.

I also want to see what Nvidia is releasing too in the sub £250 price bracket.

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Originally Posted by snootyjim

True, but we're talking £120 at the moment versus £75 for the 4870, which is £45 of difference - do you think it's still worth going for the 5770 at the higher price then?

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I would get an HD5770 when it has stabilised to around £100 as it has risen a bit in price since it was launched. I am not a fan of high power consumption cards and my last three - the HD3870 GDDR4,8800GTS 512MB and HD4830 have been quite decent in this respect.

I don't think I want to wait any longer to upgrade, so (probably against my better judgment) I'm going to grab a pair of them for crossfire purposes... in the reviews I've looked at so far I haven't seen any major penalty to having only 512mb of RAM so hopefully it'll be okay.

Whatever happens, it'll be a massive upgrade over the 8800 GTS I've got at the moment :D

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Originally Posted by snootyjim

I don't think I want to wait any longer to upgrade, so (probably against my better judgment) I'm going to grab a pair of them for crossfire purposes... in the reviews I've looked at so far I haven't seen any major penalty to having only 512mb of RAM so hopefully it'll be okay.

Whatever happens, it'll be a massive upgrade over the 8800 GTS I've got at the moment :D

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I would probably get a single HD4870 512MB card to tide your over until next year. Keep the £75 you saved on a second card to put towards another graphics card perhaps in 12 months time as the second generation DX11 parts or at least the generation and a half DX11 parts will be out by then.

Remember that the 8600GT had very similar performance to the 7900GS in many games at launch but did better in newer games. Then the 9600GT game out and was a faster card.

Technologies like tessellation look really exciting TBH!!

Look at this article:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/...1_tessellation

Hmmm, it's tricky. You're always balancing cost, performance, and time - and the fact that my girlfriend bursts into tears every time I mention the word "upgrade".

My big hope is that this rig will be a lot more balanced after the upgrade, which should allow me to hold the entire thing together for at least 2-3 more years and then just sell the lot and build a brand new machine from scratch - I imagine it'll take a long while before the Q9550 becomes too slow for gaming. That tesselation stuff does look fantastic though, I think maybe I'll look at the situation again after the 3xx range has fully matured and see if there are any bargains to be had around the 5950 level, although I suspect that by that time I'll have no money as my student-ness will have restarted ;)

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Originally Posted by snootyjim

Hmmm, it's tricky. You're always balancing cost, performance, and time - and the fact that my girlfriend bursts into tears every time I mention the word "upgrade".

My big hope is that this rig will be a lot more balanced after the upgrade, which should allow me to hold the entire thing together for at least 2-3 more years and then just sell the lot and build a brand new machine from scratch - I imagine it'll take a long while before the Q9550 becomes too slow for gaming. That tesselation stuff does look fantastic though, I think maybe I'll look at the situation again after the 3xx range has fully matured and see if there are any bargains to be had around the 5950 level, although I suspect that by that time I'll have no money as my student-ness will have restarted ;)

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Open up another savings account and put £200 in there and leave it until you need to get a new DX11 graphics card.

If you do intend to keep your graphics cards for at least 2 years I would be looking at DX11 cards.

I too am looking at getting one of those XFX 4870's just to tide me over till the DX11 nVidia stuff comes out. Will be a pretty hefty performance boost over my 8800gts 512 I imagine.