Xfire or not to Xfire.... What should i do?? Help!

[Malakei]

Hey guys,

recently put a rig together and am fairly happy with it. Ive run all the games ive tried at pretty high res and high details aa/af settings with no real issues. However some games such as crysis and i believe GTA4 test the card at my native 1920x1200 res [dell 2407wfp]
My question is, what is my best course of action for these games. Should I:

A: OC my pc which I haven't done yet then decide
B: Buy another 4870 512 from a local guy for 180CAD and xfire it with my current 4870?
C: Sell the current 512 4870 and buy a 1gb or a x2?
D: Buy an nvidia card since crysis seems to run better with them and many other games?
E: Be happy with what i got for now and wait till the 5870 or whatever the next gen card rolls around and buy that after selling my 4870?

The rig im running is a e8300 [at stock 3.0ghz for now but has e0 stepping hopping for at least a nice cool OC to 3.6 or better without haggling voltages etc], 4gb of 1066 gskill, corsair tx750, asus p5q-e board. bla bla bla antec900 etcetc.

Sigh, i cant believe i just got this thing and im alreayd thinking of upgrading. I swear to god it never ends.

 

[UtopiA]

I don't think adding another 4870 to your system will boost your GTA4 fps very much, unfortunately.

edit;
Anyway to answer your question.

A -> Try this first.
B -> Easiest solution, will help Crysis a lot.
C -> Same as B, but you're going to suffer a loss ($).
D -> Will benefit Crysis and GTA4 but at a loss ($).

 

[snowysnowcones]

Simple,
If you're happy with overall performance, leave your system as be. There's no real reason to spend another $200 for one or two games, right?

But if you're not happy, and have an extra $200, feel free to upgrade to whatever your budget will allow.

 

[nissanztt90]

Do nothing for now since your happy with overall performance and see what the 4890 brings to the table, or the nV GT212 or whatever it is.

FWIW, i use a controller for GTA4 so fewer FPS isnt a huge problem, but with a Q9650 and GTX260 i can nearly max GTA4 at 1920x1200...everything up except for textures, they are on medium and i think i get around 55fps in the in game benchmark. In GTA youd see a bigger increase going to a quad core. My friend had an 8800GT and an e4300...couldnt really run GTA4 all that well at all...upgraded to a Q6600, non OCed...and hes more than happy with it now. Anyway point is GTA4 would probably benefit from a quad core more so than a more powerful video card than the 4870. The 1gb might let you turn more settings up with out performance decreasing though. I cant see it increasing a whole lot though.

 

[Blacklash]

Never mind. Someone else already answered it.

 

[Valset]

well OC your cpu will help in GTA but the best bang for the buck will come from a second 4870. and nvidia is not really faster anymore in crysis after the last couple of driver releases. (last time H reviewed it the 4870X2 did a lot better in warhead then the GTX285, where before it only matched the performance)

http://www.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTYxMiwzLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

Not sure that it matter much anymore though.

 

[Beasy89]

sell 4870 and get a 4850x2.

 

[evilsofa]

However some games such as crysis and i believe GTA4 test the card at my native 1920x1200 res

Crysis will test any card at 1920x1200:

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTU2NCwzLCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

GTA4 is massively CPU limited. GTX 295 QuadSLI and 4870X2 CrossfireX can't max it out:

http://enthusiast.hardocp.com/article.html?art=MTYyMyw4LCxoZW50aHVzaWFzdA==

In both of these cases, you can throw all the money you want at your video cards and still not be satisfied.