I’m in the market for a new graphics card, willing to spend around £250. I have my eyes set on a ATI HD4870x2 but want to make sure I’m not missing anything.
Is there some new breakthrough on the horizon? A new range that will be more powerful and cheaper than the 4870x2?
Thank you.
Couple things to think about. You won’t really benefit from a 4870 X2 card unless you have a quick CPU and intend to run at very high resolutions (>1920 x 1080).
You might find this guide helpful:
http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/radeon-geforce-price,review-31602.html
At the same time you’ll be safe with that card for the next three years. Maybe even 4 given the current trend of developing for the consoles as well, meaning, that even optimized versions of PC games aren’t really taxing the current gen hardware.
I doubt the next gen of consoles (not the re-designing of the current gen) will come out for another 3 years or so.
The next things on the horizon are the DX11-compatible GT300/HD58xx series from Nvidia/ATI, which last I heard should be out at the same time as the release of Windows7 (October), at least in ATI’s case. Nvidia’s should be out by the end of the year.
IMHO, the 4870x2s seem like a big waste of money & power for the performance they put out (you usually have to pay through the nose for any “top-end” card, even if it’s only 10% better than the competition), the HD4890’s are in a much better sweet spot right now.
Thanks for the responses. I am currently running a Q6600 (C2Q), over-clocked to 3.0GHz. Hopefully that’s good enough or that’ll be my next upgrade. I plan to buy a new 24" monitor at the same time at the graphics card so need something capable of handling 1920x1200 without turning all the settings down.
So no new moderately-priced behemoths coming out in the next few weeks then? Heh, that’s good to know, thank you.
(EDIT: didn’t see the post above me, I’ll check out review for that card, thanks).
There seems to be a much bigger gap in performance between the HD4870x2 and HD4890 than there is between the HD4890 and my current HD4870 (512mb).
[=on&prod[2570]=on&prod[2572]=on"]Tom’s Hardware Comparison](http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/gaming-graphics-cards-charts-2009-high-quality/compare,1325.html?prod[2571)
Going from a 4870 to a 4890 wouldn’t be a good investment. My advice would be to get the monitor first, and see if your existing card can drive it at a good frame-rate.
I’ve also been looking at PC upgrades recentely, and I don’t think I’d get much benefit from anything faster than a 4870 card. Even Tom’s Hardware, in an article aimed at enthusiasts, don’t recommend anything faster than a pair of 4850 cards.
Ah, now that helps clarify things. Yeah, no real point wasting money on the marginal 4870->4890 upgrade, unless you’re able to sell your used card for a good price.
If I can ask, are there that many games that you find your 4870 struggling in to really justify an upgrade?
Also, have you considered buying another 4870 and running it in crossfire, or does your motherboard not support that?
Well I currently use a 22" monitor and find that on the very highest settings some games will occasionally drop below 20FPS. Far Cry 2, Fallout 3 and Crysis (though I don’t care much for the latter anyway). I figure with my upgrade to a 24" monitor that I could use an upgrade. 512mb RAM doesn’t seem like enough for a 1920x1200 resolution. There are a few games that I’m looking forward to coming out in Q3 and Q4 too, I’d like to play them on high settings.
My motherboard is an ASUS P5K Premium, it only has one PCIe x16 slot. Either way, I would prefer to stick to a single card, just for simplicity.