Help - new build for a friend

[Snake64_009]

Hmm, I'll try to get him to save his money for the 6850. I see your point though, I have 2 GTX260 highly overclocked in SLi and some cutscenes in Dragon age 2 lag on high.

 

[Snake64_009]

Double posted accidently

 

[Snake64_009]

Well, he is thinking of taking the AMD route which will allow him to get the 6850

CASE: Scan.co.uk: Coolermaster Elite 430 Black Mid Tower Computer Case - RC-430-KWN1
MOBO: Scan.co.uk: Asus M4A87TD EVO AMD 870 AM3 Motherboard
RAM: Scan.co.uk: Corsair Memory Vengeance 4GB DDR3 1600 MHz CAS 9 XMP Dual Channel Desktop - CMZ4GX3M2A1600C9
CPU: Scan.co.uk: AMD CPU Phenom II 955 Black Edition Quad Core Processor - HDZ955FBGMBOX
GPU: Scan.co.uk: XFX HD 6850 Dual Fan ATI - AMD Radeon Graphics Card - 1GB - HD-685X-ZDFC
ODD: Scan.co.uk: Samsung SH-S223C/RSMS
HDD: Scan.co.uk: Samsung 1Tb Spinpoint F3 Hard Drive - HDD - HD103SJ

£462.29 is the total

HE could even go for:

6870: Scan.co.uk: XFX HD 6870 Dual Fan ATI - AMD Radeon Graphics Card - 1GB - HD-687A-ZDFC

to total: £483.46

Though how much better the 6870 is over the 8850 I'm not sure, though it does seem to be a bit better.

 

[Jaysin]

can't speak for the 6870, but my 6850 rocks! It isn't the best, but far from the worst. I can play Rift and FO3 on ultra. I went into CCC and OC'd it to 850/1100 and not a hic-up yet. 7.8 in WIE. just putting that out there for you.

 

[GhOsT1321]

Also, if you don't mind overclocking, then the 6850 can perform a little better than the 6870(non overclocked).
AMD Radeon HD 6850 Overclocking Roundup: Asus, XFX, & MSI - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

 

[Peter.Cort]

yeah you can flash a 6850 to 6870 bios, but the memory they use is different so all things being equal you can overclock the 6870 higher and it will out perform the 6850. I think it's worth the extra 20 euro if your buddy can pull it in the budget. I was thinking about going with a 6850 and flashing the bios and overclocking to get 6870 speeds, but I just shelled out for the 6870. I was waffling with an AMD build over an Intel build to save some cash, but you really do notice the speed of the i5 2500k. Plus overclocking is a breeze, I've got mine at 4.5ghz on stock cooling, and was able to take it up to 5.1 without much difficulty. And even if you're not going to overclock yourself, they have 'turbo boost' which takes it up to like 4ghz or 4.2ghz under load depending on how many cores are active and all that jazz which is a noticeable speed increase.

I bought this 6870 Scan.co.uk: MSI HD 6870 Twin Frozr II ATI - AMD Radeon Graphics Card - 1GB - MSI R6870 Twin Frozr II and it's running at 40C under 100% load in an NZXT tempest case, with pretty standard air flow configuration. I'm not sure how the other 6870's deal with heat, (they are a more efficient version of the 5870 series) but if heat might be a factor, definitely shell out a couple more bucks and you could even get some more overclocking out of it if he notices that he's getting FPS lag and doesn't want to turn down the settings

 

[Snake64_009]

Thanks for all the help guys! I'll recommend an i5 but I doubt he will go for it unfortunately. The AMD can't be that bad can it? The 6870 is what we'll get either way.