Should I upgrade my 5850?

[Demonwar]

Ok so next month looking at building my new ivy i5 3750k build and still wondering about the graphics card.
Currently I have a Sapphire 5850 toxic 1gb and a 20" monitor, I tend to play 1600x1200 resolutions unless I get some fps lag and mostly mid/high seems to not trouble it for the most part.
Play lots of differing games mainly SWTOR, but I dip into shooters quite a bit as well.

Now I am perhaps looking at upping my monitor setup to 2 22 widescreens or a single 24 and keeping the 20 depending on a few things.

Questions are : Should I upgrade?

If yes what too?

I keep comparing other cards to it and seem to be having trouble in finding a good upgrade path that doesn't cost too much. I'm not sure if I brought this card and it was really good at the time, or if cards haven't really come on that much so it's still quite relevant today.

[Rookie1986]

If you're looking to stick with 1600 x 1200 resolutions then I would just stick with the 5850, if on the other hand you do plan on upgrading the 5850 still has enough in it to give good gaming on a single 24" (I'm unsure about 2x 22") I wouldn't run the 20" alongside the 24" but that's just me....

Go for two 24" and get a 6950 or 7850 if your doing a new build

[=assassin=]

I have a 5850 myself, and run games at 1920x1080 - most run pretty well, but there are a few that are just starting to shows some signs of struggling when I put AA on. There just isn't much out that is decently priced though at the moment. At the very minimum, I'd want 7970/GTX 670/680 performance to upgrade to, but those cards are in the £300+ range. I guess you'd have to look at cards that price too, and it all comes down to whether you have the cash or not to pay that kind of price, because anything less than those cards isn't really worth it coming from a 5850. Especially if you are looking at two large screen setups. Is there any chance you could just get another 2nd hand 5850 for now and crossfire it?

[KeyboardDemon]

How will you use the second monitor? If your planning to play games in eyefinity with two screen, the centre point of the picture will be the bit where the screens meet, so I'm assuming you will play games on one screen and use the other for browsing, or one screen for images and the other for menus and palettes in Photoshop, as another example. If that's the case I don't think running different sizes would be a problem, I know someone that runs a 24" and 19" side by side and he has no issues, I run 2x23" but only game on one screen.

If you are using one screen for gaming, I think that the 5850 would be fine for most games, but maybe adding a second 5850 could be a cost effective upgrade.