Hold off for GTX 470 replacement ?

[james.wired]

I'd say either grab another 4870, or sell your current one and grab a 5850. Either solution could hold you over more than well. That gives you a bit of funds to bank until the next refreshes release.

 

[Oreo]

With proper air management my GTX 480's in SLI stay below 70C in the Unigine DX11 Heaven Benchmark at stock settings. The heat issue is being blown out of proportion by the haters.

 

Talk about it.

65percent fan speed is perfectly tolerable even in idle, with speakers on 70percent is fine for me too, and it never got above 84. Where everyone got 96c at 80percent fan speed from i do not know.

My 4870 is hotter than that.

I'd say either grab another 4870, or sell your current one and grab a 5850. Either solution could hold you over more than well. That gives you a bit of funds to bank until the next refreshes release.

I have no SLI Mobo. Also, do games have issues with Crossfire or SLI setups ? thats whats always put me off most.

 

[Sean W.]

ive read that some games have a hard time using both cards...

i watched a video on youtube by efaco5 ( rip ). he had 2 5970's, he was playing GTA IV and in the video settings the game only recognized 2 gigs of memory, two 5970's would have a total of 4 gigs of memory. sooo yea.

 

[james.wired]

I have no SLI Mobo. Also, do games have issues with Crossfire or SLI setups ? thats whats always put me off most.

Do you mean CF? Well...maybe just keep the 4870 then. Some games do have issues with dual GPU utilization, in that some games just do not support it. But most all games coming out now do support it.

ive read that some games have a hard time using both cards...

i watched a video on youtube by efaco5 ( rip ). he had 2 5970's, he was playing GTA IV and in the video settings the game only recognized 2 gigs of memory, two 5970's would have a total of 4 gigs of memory. sooo yea.

Two 5970's in CF would still only use 2GB of VRAM. I wish it were true and possible, but when two cards go together their VRam does not add on top of another. Sapphire and XFX are releasing or have released a 5970 4GB version though...which is down right smexy.

 

[Sean W.]

hmm, so was the game using both cards or just one card?

 

[james.wired]

No clue. Had to have been there I guess.

 

[Druid]

So yeh i am probably subconsciously basing alot of my decision off that one game.

Bad idea.

 

[Oreo]

Bad idea.

Basing a card off the games you buy is a good idea, not a bad one.I buy graphics cards to play the games i like at the highest settings, and i want Mafia 2 on PC, currently play GTA4, and will get RDR on PC when it's released.

Mafia 2 uses PhysX in a really big way and the game promotes the Fermi series (a partnership with nvidia) so you can guarantee performance is higher than the 5870 on that game too. GTA4 uses stupid amounts of memory, a 5870 doesn't have enough. RDR uses GTA4's engine, so the same will apply. Rockstars RAGE engine performs better on Fermi too.

GTX 470 is also about £30 cheaper than the 5870. I've been looking at benchmarks all day, and in quite a few of the games i play the GTX 470 wins out.

That said i am still not totally decided i like the idea of Eyefinity, and prefer the power consumption and heat of the 5870. Its 1.5 inches longer than a 470 though isn't it ? i'm not sure it'll actually fit in my case.

I'll see how much money i can get from selling this stuff for my parents, hey maybe i'll even end up with GTX 480 kind of money.

 

[james.wired]

I tried Eyefinity for 3 months, didn't end up caring for it for the long run. It was fun for a while but meh...takes up too much room, takes a HUGE hit in performance, I ended up one day just switching to a single screen and thinking "Hmm...this is good for me, not worth the extra $600." So I sold two of my monitors and I am more than happy about it. I'd rather be able to turn my games up to max settings with all the eye candy on 23" than medium-high settings with no AA in Eyefinity. It's just meh after a while.

If all the games you want to play/plan to play benefit more from a 470 then you should definitely go that route, you are totally right.

 

[Oreo]

Thanks for your opinion on eyefinity

Although the above sentence "That said i am still not totally decided i like the idea of Eyefinity" reads a bit unclear. It reads much better like this:

"That said i am still not totally decided. I do like the idea of Eyefinity"

But yeh, all the extra details you can see on the extra screen may be nice like you said but i'm not to sure i'd be willing to sacrifice too much on the quality settings. I would really like it for desktop use, though. I wish i could try it for a few days of gaming with eyefinity to see.

Do you think Scan/Ebuyer would refund my money if i ordered a 5870 and another monitor and returned them within a week or two after i tried them out ? (I'm being serious here..)