ATI 5870 upgrade for gaming on 1920x1200

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almalino

[H]ard|Gawd
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I currently own ATI 5870 on i5-2500k/8GB/120GB SDD PC and it works great for the resolution 1920x1200 and plays most of the games on High settings:

BF3
Borderlands 2
Deus Ex

Now, I see Borderlands 2 has Physx that looks so great that I started to think to upgrade to NVidia. What is the best for the money Nvidia card that worth to upgrade to at the moment?

Actualy, does it make sence to upgrade at al if al games are working fine except the Physx in BL2 that I still want to try to activate on Medium setting on CPU this weekend.
 
Depends on how much you want the PhysX. A card that will run the game at maximum settings will cost you quite a bit. For high end cards I think the 670 seems to be your best bet. Or 680 if you have the extra money to spend. However, if your playing all the games you want at the settings you want. You should probably hold out for the 700 series.
 
almalino said:
I currently own ATI 5870 on i5-2500k/8GB/120GB SDD PC and it works great for the resolution 1920x1200 and plays most of the games on High settings:

BF3
Borderlands 2
Deus Ex

Now, I see Borderlands 2 has Physx that looks so great that I started to think to upgrade to NVidia. What is the best for the money Nvidia card that worth to upgrade to at the moment?

Actualy, does it make sence to upgrade at al if al games are working fine except the Physx in BL2 that I still want to try to activate on Medium setting on CPU this weekend.
Click to expand...

http://physxinfo.com/news/9425/borderlands-2-is-cpu-capable-of-handling-the-physx-effects/

Your CPU and GPU should be more than capable of handling BL2 with PhysX turned up to medium.
 
I looked at the link... I have basically the same setup as the OP, but those benchmarks aren't very promising, IMO. In an area that doesn't use much in the way of Physx, the framerate is halved. With the 5870, I'm getting 60-80FPS most of the time, and I wouldn't want to play it at 30-40 FPS.

The FPS in a more intense area drops all the way down to 19 FPS, with a minimum of 11 FPS... That's basically unplayable for a FPS.
 
gsilver said:
I looked at the link... I have basically the same setup as the OP, but those benchmarks aren't very promising, IMO. In an area that doesn't use much in the way of Physx, the framerate is halved. With the 5870, I'm getting 60-80FPS most of the time, and I wouldn't want to play it at 30-40 FPS.

The FPS in a more intense area drops all the way down to 19 FPS, with a minimum of 11 FPS... That's basically unplayable for a FPS.
Click to expand...

gsilver,
Do you play singleplayer or multiplayer? Does Physx make you consider the upgrade from 5870? :)
 
I just switched from 5870 to 6950..and..This is kinda weird..
The fps is higher..playing is smoother..but..
The texture doesn't seem as rich..idk..It also scores lower in Cinebench.
 
I say upgrade. I have a 5870 and think its time to move on. I can get frame rates in the low 40's in Crysis 2 (DX11), Batman AC (DX11) and in the low 30's in BF3 on Ultra. Its playable on all games at near max settings I want to play AT max settings so I'm looking to move up to something better like a GTX670 or 7950.
 
almalino said:
gsilver,
Do you play singleplayer or multiplayer? Does Physx make you consider the upgrade from 5870? :)
Click to expand...
Singleplayer mostly. I played the first one multiplayer mostly. It's mostly a question of pace, and I'm having fun going through all of the side missions.

I don't particularly care about Physx effects, and I'm holding off on upgrading so long as everything I want to run works well. If I encounter a game that I can't run well at 1920x1200, then it'll be time to upgrade.
 
I will try CPU PhysX today and report back my experiences. I might postpone upgrading because I need to spend at least 200 Euro to get reasonable card for BL2 PhysX and I think it makes little sense.
 
+1 for GTX670. I upgraded from 5870 1GB to a GTX670 2GB in May, and now can run all of my modern games (Metro 2033, Crysis 2, BF3, etc) at max settings 1920x1200 no problem. Generally don't dip below 50FPS in anything with 4x-8x MSAA enabled.
 
Tried BL2 with PhysX on Medium on CPU with 5870 on 1920x1200 with High settings. Plays very well fro last 6 hours. No slowdowns. Processor is overclocked to 4.2 GHz.

No reason to upgrade yet.
 
Try BF3 on max settings. ~30 fps. Youll be wanting an upgrade just like me. ;)
 
Ok, on water levels I needed to disable PhysX. It is possible to play but not fun because frames are dropping.
 
FOR BL2 at 1920x1200 a 660ti would give you a solid 60 fps with everything maxxed ( when bl2 isn't crashing due to the myriad of bugs it has but hey that's another issue)
 
The 660 ti seems to be a popular choice lately. I upgraded from a 5870 to the 7970, but got a great deal on the card.
 
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