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Upgrading from a 4870x2

T

Tatsuya

n00b
Joined
Oct 23, 2010
Messages
16
I recently started playing FFXIV on my 4870x2 and sadly, performance is poor at best, so I decided to finally upgrade to a single GPU card (never going back to dual GPU..), but I'm a bit lost on what would really be an upgrade right now...

Options include (350~$ budget):

GTX 470
HD 6870
HD 5870

Now, I sort of want to wait for the 6950 (correct? or is it the 6970? the lowest of the November launch class) and hoping the card would be around 350$ (assuming it'll be better than all the options above), but I may just cheap it and go with 6870... if it's a better card (aside from being single-GPU), so.. are the above options all better than my 4870x2? is upgrading to any worth it? (as in it's a good increase in performance overall)
 
Indeed lol, what about the 6950? isn't it supposed to be stronger than 5870? wouldn't that make it the best option? I'm not sure, this new naming scheme is confusing lol;
 
Tatsuya said:
Indeed lol, what about the 6950? isn't it supposed to be stronger than 5870? wouldn't that make it the best option? I'm not sure, this new naming scheme is confusing lol;
Click to expand...

The 6950 will be slower than the 6970 and certainly faster than then 5870, but since we are all equally in the dark about their actual performance, you will have to wait with the rest of us for morsels of information I'm afraid. :) In a month, we will all find out.
 
I guess, it's just that I can no longer tolerate the poor support for dual-GPU/CF, game after game it's one problem after another... almost as if the performance boost I paid for was virtual lol, and I'm basically willing to just convert back to a single GPU while keeping the same (expected) performance. D:
 
I too have a 4870x2 but as of now I don't see a huge Upgrade. Unless I do CFX or SLI, which I might do.

Would 6870 in CFX be much better then a 4870x2?
 
Sky15 said:
I too have a 4870x2 but as of now I don't see a huge Upgrade. Unless I do CFX or SLI, which I might do.

Would 6870 in CFX be much better then a 4870x2?
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No. It would be better, but remember that 4870 is a performance card while the new 6870 card is a mainstream part, so their actual performance gap is one generation rather than two. On the other hand, the 6970 will have a two generation improvement over the 4870, and will offer a significant boost. If you can go for two of those, the performance improvement will be jawbreaking. You could also go for the single 6990 dual-GPU card, even less is known about this currently.

I'm eyeing a single 6970 for an upgrade to my 4870 myself, so I'm waiting expectantly to see what this card will bring.
 
Nightbird said:
No. It would be better, but remember that 4870 is a performance card while the new 6870 card is a mainstream part, so their actual performance gap is one generation rather than two. On the other hand, the 6970 will have a two generation improvement over the 4870, and will offer a significant boost. If you can go for two of those, the performance improvement will be jawbreaking. You could also go for the single 6990 dual-GPU card, even less is known about this currently.

I'm eyeing a single 6970 for an upgrade to my 4870 myself, so I'm waiting expectantly to see what this card will bring.
Click to expand...

What's the release date on the 6970's?
 
Sky15 said:
What's the release date on the 6970's?
Click to expand...

I remember reading AMD committing to have them out by Thanksgiving, which is November 25 this year. They will be able to sell a lot of them on Black Friday I guess. We should start getting "leaks" starting 2 weeks before if what happened with the 6870/50 repeats.
 
I'm in a similar position and am considering the Cayman or Antilles cards if they come out prior to the holidays. The 4870x2 was rather unique in that it was actually similar to slapping together 2 4870s as its namesake, rather than the 5970 being more like 2 5950s instead.

If Antilles is like the 4870x2 in that it is actually equal to 2x Cayman XT high end and the price isn't horrid, that's what I'll do. However, from what I've been reading about the heat/power etc... this may not be likely.

This leave me with Cayman XT (6970), which hopefully won't be the kind of "regular, 2gb, Eyefinity 6 w/2gb" that the 5000 series had. I don't want to wait for a few months for the "Good version" with 2gb or more to show up. I assume that at least 1 Cayman XT 2gb+ will be more powerful than my 4870x2 in raw power as well as the newer tech (like the new Morph AA which seems to lack performance degradation more or less), but if the price is good I'll buy 2 and CrossFireX them. I really, really hope that the Cayman XT (and Antilles, for that matter) will be priced like they were for the 4000 series instead of the huge hike of the 5000 series. I bought this current 4870x2 for around $400 brand new, at release, which was admittedly a find, but there were $500 and $600 versions around standard, instead of 800+. Give me a Caymant XT with the "best" specs (aside from pre-overclocking) for 400 or lower and they will fly off the shelves crushing Nvidia.
 
I'm really looking forward to the 6970, I'd like to replace my GTX 480 SLI with a single 6970.

Hopefully the 6970 is 2Gb by default, or they release an official 2Gb model with the normal one. I can see the price being around $450-550, but that might not be unreasonable depending on how it performs.
 
@Abit667: Why would you go with a single 6970? That'll be a downgrade. Unless that's a typo and you actually meant 6990 (Antilles)...
 
Get the fastest possible. Crossfired 4870s is still pretty fast. I would wait until the 6990.
 
Well, looking at the FF14 forums, I get the impression that Crossfire is scaling very very poorly in the game right now. So while a 6870 is normally a downgrade to a 4870 X2 in games with normal Crossfire scaling, it might just be an upgrade for a game like FF14 with poor Crossfire scaling.

So I guess are you willing to make a sacrifice to other game's performance for FF14?

The 4870 X2 seems to be more or less around the 5870 performance level. So I'm guessing a 6950 and 6970 should be upgrades (even with games with good Crossfire scaling). Though I'm sure the 6970 will be way above the $350 price tag. But if you don't want to sacrifice performance in other games by getting the 6870, then waiting for the 6950 might be worth the upgrade.
 
I pretty much only play FFXIV on my PC anyways, and thats why I'm looking at a single GPU now, aside from that my 4870x2 is still beast, which makes it really sad having to sell it for 100-150$ lol...

I guess the 6950 would be my best bet. :D
 
Tatsuya said:
I pretty much only play FFXIV on my PC anyways, and thats why I'm looking at a single GPU now, aside from that my 4870x2 is still beast, which makes it really sad having to sell it for 100-150$ lol...

I guess the 6950 would be my best bet. :D
Click to expand...

I wouldn't be surprised to see a hotfix or Application Profile fix this problem at some point. (the Scaling for FFXIV), when that happens your 6950 will provide marginal performance increase, if that. Doesn't seem like a good way to spend the money.

Personally I am going to wait for more info on the 6970(cf)/6990 to replace my 4870 X2.
 
just stay with your 2x 4870 they are still solid cards and can still slice thru the most demanding games!
 
A pair of 4870s still do very well in games. But I agree they are starting to show their age with some games when running at the highest res on 30" Monitors. Even at the more standard res of a 24" of 1920x1200 they do slow down a little with newer games.

A while back I dropped a pair of 5770s and was very under impressed. Bumped it to a pair of 5850 and noticed improvement but not enough to warrant the cost.

SO if you want to go to single card (and there is nothing wrong with that) I think I would wait for the 6970 card to come out and call it a day. But I think waiting till all the cards are on the table from both camps come Dec might be the best bet.
 
Yea I might just do that, I just don't get why AMD hasn't released a proper profile for the game yet... (they released one for the benchmark lol, and it barely did anything)
 
I think that chart just saved me $400 :) well unless I crossfire 2 6850's which seriously thinking about. The computer store is 5 mins away and I'm biting my nails :)
 
if there is anything that the release of the 68xx series did for enthusiast is making us wait more eagerly for the 69xx series.. which sucks cuz I hate waiting. I was so close to buying the 470gtx, but I guess I should be a little glad that AMD is bringing it to take the crown again and hopefully at a better price point.
 
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