5850 or 4870x2

johny dolan · 23 Sep 2009 at 19:58

Enjoy your card m8 its a cracker.

Rambo2683 · 23 Sep 2009 at 20:11

Will do, thanks

miker1 · 23 Sep 2009 at 20:40

Rambo2683 said:
Call me a fool but I just ordered it
£220 delivered.

Sold my xbox yesterday for £120, hoping to sell my 8800gt for £40-50...so overall money out of my wallet isn't bad at all for what I'm getting!

Robbing Peter to pay Paul, huh?

marley82 · 23 Sep 2009 at 20:43

5850 will be the better option IMO, no stuttering, and better performance on games that'll only use the 1 core.

Rambo2683 · 23 Sep 2009 at 20:50

Is there a list of games that are unsupported?
What do you mean by stuttering?

I'm sure all new games will support it?

Cheers

StevenRaith · 23 Sep 2009 at 20:54

What did you buy? The 4870x2? Hope you like a nice, warm room and chunky leccy bills; check out the power usage :eek:

And that's just the GPU, never mind the rest of the system....

Rambo2683 · 23 Sep 2009 at 21:08

The room is huge and always cold, and I play games maybe a couple of hours tops every couple of days.
I did mention power wasn't a concern. I just want the best performance for as little cash as possible

Just bought a q9550 for £140, hoping this suffices to back up the GPU.

Obviously if someone can prove it is a really poor decision I am a consumer and I have my rights, so I will cancel/ send back if necessary

johny dolan · 23 Sep 2009 at 21:20

To beat the 4870 x2 the op will need a 5870 x2 that will run just as hot and use as much electric but cost £600.He got a good card for a very good price that makes it better vfm than the new 5 series.Its winter so the extra heat will save on his heating bill so any amount more the card draws will save on the amount his heating uses.Anyway who cares about electric when talking high performance pc kit.Most members here have water cooled quads and multi gpu systems.The OP got £300 performance for £200.He made the right choice jeez why do you put the damper on his purchase.

wakayoda · 23 Sep 2009 at 21:37

You might want to consider upgrading your mother board to avoid bottlenecked performance..

johny dolan · 23 Sep 2009 at 21:45

wakayoda said:
You might want to consider upgrading your mother board to avoid bottlenecked performance..

The OP said he has a 1 pci-e slot so why do you say that ?.

StevenRaith · 23 Sep 2009 at 22:03

Rambo2683 said:
The room is huge and always cold, and I play games maybe a couple of hours tops every couple of days.
I did mention power wasn't a concern. I just want the best performance for as little cash as possible

Just bought a q9550 for £140, hoping this suffices to back up the GPU.

Obviously if someone can prove it is a really poor decision I am a consumer and I have my rights, so I will cancel/ send back if necessary

I wouldn't say it's a bad decision per se - I just think that the 5850 would have been a better purchase overall IMHO. I worry about power usage, heat buildup, complexity and that sort of thing, I like my kit to be as cool, quiet and straightforward as possible.

If that's geneuinely not a concern [and it appears not] then fair play, and enjoy - it still has massive grunt for the money. :cool:

Magnum_Force · 23 Sep 2009 at 23:17

The only thing to be concerned about with a X2 style card or any dual GPU set-up is the minimum framerates.

Changed from a HD 4870X2 to a GTX 280 just for this reason (mainly for Crysis).

Sure the X2 gets better frames in most sections, but performance nosedives sometimes and it's just not fun to deal with - the GTX280 give a steady 30fps in crysis at High settings/no AA without the nosedives in fps.

I wonder what the mins fps are like on the HD 5800 series...hmmm...

Rambo2683 · 24 Sep 2009 at 16:32

You can see the min frame rates for the 5870 in the review @
http://www.hardwarecanucks.com/foru...sapphire-radeon-hd-5870-1gb-gddr5-review.html

I scouted through it, the min frame rates aren't hideous by any means for the 4870x2.

I'm pretty happy for £198.

Magnum_Force · 24 Sep 2009 at 17:54

Hmmm, I'm rather cautious to believe the numbers for DX9 Crysis Warhead, mind you they do have a more powerful base system for the X2 card. The DX10 numbers look more real.

reygjabla · 25 Sep 2009 at 09:05

Rambo2683 said:
The room is huge and always cold, and I play games maybe a couple of hours tops every couple of days.
I did mention power wasn't a concern. I just want the best performance for as little cash as possible

Just bought a q9550 for £140, hoping this suffices to back up the GPU.

Obviously if someone can prove it is a really poor decision I am a consumer and I have my rights, so I will cancel/ send back if necessary

Hope your board is up to it. Otherwise, you might need a new board as well.

Rambo2683 · 25 Sep 2009 at 12:31

The CPU is fully supported by my board if that's what you're asking? Or does a 4870x2 complicate things?

reygjabla · 25 Sep 2009 at 17:27

Rambo2683 said:
The CPU is fully supported by my board if that's what you're asking?

Thats fine. Can it maximize the potential of the CPU and the GPU? :rolleyes:

P45's are on the cheap now anyways.

arc@css · 25 Sep 2009 at 20:50

Enjoy your card m8, I can vouch for how good it is

zooooooooooooooooooooooooom!!

neithcat · 21 Oct 2009 at 21:37

I've had a 4870X2 for a year now and I've had a good experience.

It is however frustrating when certain games you want to play don't properly utilize crossfire and you get poor performance. I can't tolerate it so I end up not playing the game, sometimes ones I really want...

besides that infrequent issue, it destroys games.

rixx · 22 Oct 2009 at 00:18

Rambo2683 said:
Little update, the price actually dropped to £198 delivered.
I had to cancel my original order and re-order at the new price.

I'm happy with the choice i made

Rambo hi - I posted a question very similar to yours recently and I am also looking to buy the 4870x2

£198 is a fantastic price! Do you mind letting me know where you were able to buy this from?

Cheers
Rixx