• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Best 5870 Upgrade

T

TekRok

2[H]4U
Joined
Dec 9, 2005
Messages
2,279
What would be the best upgrade for a 5870? I am not a fan of either brand, i just go for whats best for the money. Owned all brands in the past and ATI always seemed lacking with driver support and Flash issues with screen switching to standard mode and etc.

I guess my budget is around 350ish give or take. I am going to sell my XFX 5870 and pay the rest with cash. Are the new ATI cards/Nvidia cars worth switching to? I game mainly on 1920x1200 everything from BC2 to Starcraft 2.

Any suggestions?
 
Well the 6970 is only like 20% faster and the 2GB's of ram with not really benefit you at 1920x1200. I used a 5870 quite briefly at the same res, playing those exact games with the same specs as you and I was getting a constant 60+fps. Are you sure you need a upgrade?
 
Why not just add another 5870? Looks like your motherboard should do crossfire fine.

Otherwise I'd suggest holding out until the 6990.
 
Well sometimes I get a flash issue where my screen turns to basic mode and says there isnt enought memory. Its not a card issue since it hasnt been happening lately, but driver issue. To me it just seems the 5870 and the rest of the cards are still not 100% good since drivers are poor. I never had issues with nvidia drivers. I also want to get as much as I can for my parts and get new ones, longer I wait the most value is lost.

I am too somewhat leaning towards GTX570, seeing some tests done it stays at same speeds as ATI 6000 series if not faster. Thoughts?
 
I game at 19x12 as well...it sounds like you are leaning away from a 2 card setup and I do get it...just my 2 cents as someone running crossfire 5870's...I am heavy into similar games as you and am completely satisfied with the power and stability of this configuration. I considered upgrading to 580 sli just to be [H] but really cannot justify it...I think I will skip a generation.
 
Well the thing is is that I want to get a new SSD with 6gb support, which means I need a new mobo, so might as well upgrade the rest and sell the old while I can. How are ATI drivers this time around on 6k series cards?
 
I wouldn't bother upgrading personally unless you want bragging rights since even my current gpu which is considerably slower than yours runs all those games at max 1200p settings with all the eye candy.
 
For your needs, I dont think there is such a card that would be a viable upgrade.
 
I had an SSD...it never impressed me and so I am back to raptors...can't tell the difference in daily use/gaming for me.
 
NKD said:
For your needs, I dont think there is such a card that would be a viable upgrade.
Click to expand...

I agree with this. The GTX580 would be the next card that I would consider an upgrade and its way out of your price range. The GTX570 is faster but not by a whole lot and definitely not $350 worth. My opinion would be either save up for a 5970 or GTX580 or sit tight with your 5870 for a while longer.

That is still a pretty stout card. I would think it could handle anything at 1920x1200.
 
I agree with you guys but my thinking is this. I want to sell my CPU/Mobo/RAM and get a 2500K CPU for overclocking potential. I dont use HT, dont photoshop or encode. Another thing is I wanted to get a faster SSD which is the Crucial drive. 6GB transfer, 385mb Read speed. My current motherboard doesn't support 6gb so I am stuck with what I have. Video car is fine for what I do with it, I can max out all my games but was thiking of selling it while I could still get some cash for it. I might just stick with the card and upgrade everything else
 
schoenda said:
I had an SSD...it never impressed me and so I am back to raptors...can't tell the difference in daily use/gaming for me.
Click to expand...

You MUST be doing it wrong. lol no seriously though, SSD should boot/shutdown substantially faster, transfer substantially faster, not to mention open programs and make the computer feel overall more snappy. No hard drive will ever compare to .1ms access time.
 
I think some of you just start upgrade threads when you get bored, lol. there is no reason to upgrade anything in your pc so go play your games and dont worry about it. wait and upgrade when Sandy Bridge 2011 or Ivy Bridge comes out and get you a new card then too.
 
iGrooCk said:
I agree with you guys but my thinking is this. I want to sell my CPU/Mobo/RAM and get a 2500K CPU for overclocking potential. I dont use HT, dont photoshop or encode. Another thing is I wanted to get a faster SSD which is the Crucial drive. 6GB transfer, 385mb Read speed. My current motherboard doesn't support 6gb so I am stuck with what I have. Video car is fine for what I do with it, I can max out all my games but was thiking of selling it while I could still get some cash for it. I might just stick with the card and upgrade everything else
Click to expand...

If I were you I would wait for LGA 2011 as well. Unless you really need a new SSD now.
 
iGrooCk said:
I agree with you guys but my thinking is this. I want to sell my CPU/Mobo/RAM and get a 2500K CPU for overclocking potential. I dont use HT, dont photoshop or encode. Another thing is I wanted to get a faster SSD which is the Crucial drive. 6GB transfer, 385mb Read speed. My current motherboard doesn't support 6gb so I am stuck with what I have. Video car is fine for what I do with it, I can max out all my games but was thiking of selling it while I could still get some cash for it. I might just stick with the card and upgrade everything else
Click to expand...
That's what I would do. Upgrade everything else but keep the GPU.
 
Hmm you all make valid points. Ill have to think about this, but at this moment I am too thinking I should wait for LGA 2011 and let 500/6k cards to mature, as well as SSD price drops.
 
schoenda said:
I had an SSD...it never impressed me and so I am back to raptors...can't tell the difference in daily use/gaming for me.
Click to expand...

You really must have had something wrong with yours...EVERYTHING is much quicker since I installed an SSD, its by far the best upgrade you can do if the rest of your stuff is current gen/previous generation hardware. Worth every penny.

6xxx series drivers are immature still....I get CTDs in MOH and BFBC2 with an occasional BSOD...though they are still running on initial release drivers so im sure the next few releases will improve all that.

Other then moving away from a mechanical HDD, I would say your good to go where your at. I moved from 5870CF to 6970CF only because the x2 5870s werent cutting it in eyefinity mode....the 6970s most def. do a better job though.
 
Really glad I read this thread. I've got a 2x 5870 Crossfire and game at 2560x1600. I've been looking for reasons to upgrade to a 6970 CF; even have a pair of them backordered from Amazon. I thought 4GB of VRAM would give me a nice performance boost at this higher resolution. Maybe I'm better off just sticking with what I have for now.
 
Mr. Wolf said:
Really glad I read this thread. I've got a 2x 5870 Crossfire and game at 2560x1600. I've been looking for reasons to upgrade to a 6970 CF; even have a pair of them backordered from Amazon. I thought 4GB of VRAM would give me a nice performance boost at this higher resolution. Maybe I'm better off just sticking with what I have for now.
Click to expand...

Yes sir, those 5870s should keep your chugging along quite well with a single monitor for some time. The 6xxx series IS better then the 5xxx but it really shines up at the higher resolutions in eyefinity territory.

FYI, in SLI/CF the ram of both cards is not utilized, only the GPU computing power, so your 5870s are only using 1GB of ram and the 6970s only use 2...unfortunately.
 
The GTX570's are really a sideways step. If you really want to upgrade look at 2xGTX580 in SLI. But is it worth it? No - not at 1900x1200. I'd wait or go multi-monitor before upgrading the GPU, but that might blow your budget. Or just go for the SSD. You'll see a real performance improvement there.

schoenda said:
I had an SSD...it never impressed me and so I am back to raptors...can't tell the difference in daily use/gaming for me.
Click to expand...
I'll agree with everyone else - you must be doing something wrong; perhaps your ninja system (on paper) has O/C performance issues. Or you just had a crap SSD. Raptors are just plain slow compared to modern SSD's so considering how much normal system activity is disk intensive, if you can't see the difference, there's a problem.
 
Guys I already have an Intel SSD, I also wanted to upgrade that to the 6GB speed, 385 Read speeds from Crucial. But the price doesnt really warrant the upgrade since I have to get all new parts. I ll just wait for new revisions down the line, hate to be an early adopter again. Thanks for all the suggestions
 
One thing, if you do have a 1st gen Intel X-25M without trim, but don't have a M/B to support Sata 6GB, then you could either mess around with sata3 pci cards or consider a new gen sandforce drive which is almost as fast (and cheaper as well). I went with the sandforce option and it's a minor but reasonable upgrade from the Intel, but probably more worthwhile than upgrading my 5870...

But yes, probably best to save the cash and wait...
 
Hmm... if you really need Sata3, buy a PMI card, otherwise an SSD on SATA2 doing 250 reads is plenty fast, maybe benchmarks can see a difference in speed, otherwise not sure you'll feel any difference.

Upgrade a 5870? If you're not doing a 3+ multi-monitor setup, it'll be a sidegrade at best at 19x12.


Y.
 
USMCGrunt said:
Yes sir, those 5870s should keep your chugging along quite well with a single monitor for some time. The 6xxx series IS better then the 5xxx but it really shines up at the higher resolutions in eyefinity territory.

FYI, in SLI/CF the ram of both cards is not utilized, only the GPU computing power, so your 5870s are only using 1GB of ram and the 6970s only use 2...unfortunately.
Click to expand...
Damn, I didn't know that about the RAM. CF/SLI seems even less worthwhile to me, now. :(
 
Cheap X25-V rocked my world. Infinitely better than the appalling 32GB OCZ Solid [JMicron] I had, and miles better than either the 37GB Raptor and the 1TB Caviar Black. One of the best upgrades I've made for a while.
 
Mr. Wolf said:
Damn, I didn't know that about the RAM. CF/SLI seems even less worthwhile to me, now. :(
Click to expand...

Well, its still much better, the 6 series from AMD (and the 5x0 from Nvidia for that matter) has really good scaling compared to previous generations and if you are going to do eyefinity gaming and play FPS games like BFBC2, the 6 series' additional GB of ram is well worth the price.

/end Thread-jack


This OCZ SSD im running is fantastic...seems like OCZ has the edge on SSD performance/dollar....at least last time I checked. Intel's were much faster but damn are they expensive...regardless, even the slowest of the SSDs are lightyears faster then their mechnical counterparts.
 
Typical scaling's about 85% for newer geforces (460,570,580 etc) and 95% for the new radeons (6850/6870/6950/6970). To get the benefits of 2GB on a GPU with crossfire you obviously need multiple 2GB cards, but that's not difficult with the HD6950 at $300 (set to rise however, due to modifications)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top