upgrade my 5870?

J

jdl

Weaksauce
Joined
Jun 21, 2008
Messages
117
am currently using an e8400 oc to 4gig
8gig ram
ati 5870 gpu


will be buying an i5 2500k
z68 mb
8gig ram

should i upgrade my gpu as well? dont really want to spend $350, and it seems to xfire my 5870 it is hard to find a cheap used one.

suggestions?
 
Try your 5870 in your new rig and see what happens, then make a decision from there.
 
Upgrading your video card entirely depends on what games you'll be playing, at what resolution, and what your target IQ/FPS is. So what'll it be?
 
I would think a 5870 is pretty equivalent to a 6950 performance wise. That only leaves a 6970, GTX570, or a GTX580 to get any real performance increase (unless you are going for multiple GPU's I suppose).

Personally I wouldn't bother unless you are going to try to crossfire it. I had a 5850, and I bought another card for crossfire, but I had some problems. I ended up just getting a GTX580 because of the issues I had. No one else seems to have problems crossfiring these 5 series cards though. The performance increase is huge.

If I had a 5870, I would just wait for the new GPU's and get one of those. You might just be stuck on high settings instead of ultra for a little while, wouldn't bother me...
 
It depends on your demand. But I guess a 5870 is pretty descent. But if you insist, a better way to upgrade is to sell the the HD5870 and gets an unlockable reference HD6950 almost at the same price.
 
The 6000 series was just a streamlined 5000 series. Really a 6870 is like a 5850, and a 5870 would be like a 69xx card!

All I know is in BF3 going from one 5850 to dual in crossfire promptly doubled my framerate on my i5 2500k @ 4.5Ghz

I upgraded to the i5 from an [email protected] back when I had one card for BFBC2 and I went from medium settings and 50fps to high settings and 80fps (single 5850).

Moral of the story: i5 & crossfire pwns! (and I spend wayyy too much $$$ to play BF!)
 
jdl said:
am currently using an e8400 oc to 4gig
8gig ram
ati 5870 gpu


will be buying an i5 2500k
z68 mb
8gig ram

should i upgrade my gpu as well? dont really want to spend $350, and it seems to xfire my 5870 it is hard to find a cheap used one.

suggestions?
Click to expand...

I have 2600k 16GB RAM on a P67 board.

I would say keep your 5870. I'm using 5870s CF and I'm satisfied with the performance with 1 GPU and 2 GPUs.

Personally I would either use that single 5870 or just browse EBAY or FS/FT of the forums for a good deal on a 5870.
 
thanks for the suggestions and explanations. Looks like the best plan is to get another 5870. Yes this is mainly for BF3.

i'm picking up the i5 2500k ($179) from microcenter with MSI Z68A-GD65 (G3) ($139)
 
jdl said:
am currently using an e8400 oc to 4gig
8gig ram
ati 5870 gpu


will be buying an i5 2500k
z68 mb
8gig ram

should i upgrade my gpu as well? dont really want to spend $350, and it seems to xfire my 5870 it is hard to find a cheap used one.

suggestions?
Click to expand...

No, your fine for a good while longer.
 
Does anyone have any benchmarks for a single 5870 playing battlefield 3?
 
keep it until next gen. kinda a waste of money to upgrade right now. and like you said its hard to find a 5870 for a reasonable price.
 
aintz said:
keep it until next gen. kinda a waste of money to upgrade right now. and like you said its hard to find a 5870 for a reasonable price.
Click to expand...

Well yes, it is a waste of money until you realize it will double his framerate in BF3 for $180 or less ... if you went with a new 69xx card you would maybe get a 10-20% more max and couldn't crossfire.

I think people forget that when the 58xx series came out they were far above and beyond the previous generation. Heck the 5850 was $300+! 6 series actually reduced the amount of pipelines from the 5 series.

All I know is I can play 1920x1200 @ everything ULTRA (FXAA instead of MSAA) and I get 75-125fps no matter what on an i5 2500k in multiplayer with my 5850 XFire setup.
 
Look for a used 5970 and go Triple Crossfire. You won't find any other option that would give you performance anywhere near what 5970+5870 tri-fire would give you for the ~$350 it would cost to get a used 5970.
 
I wanted to upgrade my 5850 this fall, but without new cards coming out, it's not really worth dropping $250-300 to go to year old 6950/6970. Find a decently priced used 5870 and go xf!
 
I keep seeing similar threads recently. Why upgrade something that may give you 10%-15% more?

People seem to underestimate the 5870 a lot. Running a 5870, sometimes using asymmetrical crossfire with a 5830 (bitcoin freebie). I'd like to upgrade too, but nothing worthwhile to upgrade to yet.

CF another 5870 or 5970 is best.
 
I would agree with most of the posts above. Either find a gently used 5k series card, or save up your cash and wait for the new generation. I don't think a 6k series will do you much good.
 
In all honesty, a 5870 is still pretty quick and manhandles most things thrown at it. While it isn’t perfect, I think it probably still easily has enough legs to wait for the next generation of chips from ATI or Nvidia.
The only reason I’d upgrade right this instant would be if you plan on selling your 5870 and put some of that toward a new card. I’ve started doing that so I can upgrade more often and it does help quite a bit.
 
JermWerty said:
Well yes, it is a waste of money until you realize it will double his framerate in BF3 for $180 or less ... if you went with a new 69xx card you would maybe get a 10-20% more max and couldn't crossfire.

I think people forget that when the 58xx series came out they were far above and beyond the previous generation. Heck the 5850 was $300+! 6 series actually reduced the amount of pipelines from the 5 series.

All I know is I can play 1920x1200 @ everything ULTRA (FXAA instead of MSAA) and I get 75-125fps no matter what on an i5 2500k in multiplayer with my 5850 XFire setup.
Click to expand...

so xfire yields 100% more fps is what your saying. good one.
 
jdl said:
thanks for the suggestions and explanations. Looks like the best plan is to get another 5870.
Click to expand...

NO. crossfire/sli = balls. you just said you're playing bf3, and 5870 does well in bf3, and nobody can tell the difference between medium and ultra settings, so you can tweak the game to run perfectly for you. take your money and run man.
 
The thing that would make me wary of and multi-card setups is the sheet amount of trouble that arises. With almost every driver release there's a thread here (and elsewhere) full of SLI/Crossfire people talking about how many major games are broken.
I know it sounds easy, but it's not just like you're plugging in a new card and mysteriously getting twice the performance. Sometimes the increases aren't too big, and depending on your resolution there might not be any. That doesn't even factor in the joys of dealing with game profiles and having to wait for support on new games.
I'm always a fan of selling whatever you have on Craigslist and buying the best single card you can afford. If that card isn't much better than what you have, it's likely not time to upgrade anyway.
 
5870 is still very powerful card unless you have 2560 x 1600 resolution or up.
Not really worth upgrading right now. I would wait for 7000 series.
 
No, at 1920 x 1200 and down it´s a great card for everything today if you go easy on the AA. Metro 2033 is the only game I´d say it´s inadequate for, but then just turn down the settings a little and you are fine again.

Listen to everyone here and wait for HD7xxx or Kepler.
 
The 5870 is still one of the most powerful cards out there. There are only a few cards better than it and those only offer a small performance boost.
 
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