5870 Over Kill?

[crazyeyesreaper]

just get a 6870 off newegg and overclock it its cheaper then the 5870 performance is similar and has better tessellation performance the 1600 shaders on the 5870 are fine and dandy but if there less efficient or in future games your limited by tessellation performance those extra shaders wont do shit for your frame rate.

2 options GTX 460 1gig avoid the SE model its crap
the other option 6870.

460 overclocks better can get near 470 performance for much less also runs cooler and is a smaller card in general

6870 is on par with the 5870 in most situations and is about where an overclocked 460 would be so take what you can get as at 1366x768 your not really gonna be stressing these gpus

i mean damn at your resolution Crysis will hit around 65-70fps with a single 6870

Metro 2033 would be around 55fps Battlefield Bad Company 2 is around 80-120 fps AvP would be somewhere around 70+ fps maxed

at your resolution the 5870 and 6870 and GTX 470 all trade blows depending on the game that send they all tend to be withing 5-6fps of each other as well so take the cheapest option of the 3

 

[DarkOCean]

ur absolutely right sir, i would love a 6XXX card but the only one that beats a 5870 is the 6970 (that i can see) please specify how a 6850 / 6870 beats a 5870

another alternative would be a 6950

why dont you buy an 6950 and unlock it?

 

[sliderider]

Since the fan will be facing down in your system anyway, and the difference isn't all that much, you shouldn't really consider the Gigabyte card. XFX has the double lifetime warranty and they tend to have a higher reputation.

Just don't forget to register your card or you won't get the double lifetime warranty. Many are the complaints you will find in the tech forums about people not getting the extended warranty because they failed to register. If you don't register your card, the standard warranty is only 1 year so it's well worth the few minutes it takes to register.

Staying on topic, the OP does not have a sufficiently high resolution monitor to really take advantage of a powerful video card. A 5770 or GTS450 would be more than enough. My 22" is only 1680x1050 capable and my HD6870 is a bit overkill even for that. I only got it because my HD4850 was starting to die and I wanted something that could do DX10 faster and was still competent at handling DX11 features and I got what I thought was a good price on it.

 

[sliderider]

why dont you buy an 6950 and unlock it?

Because unless he has a 30" monitor, all that power will be wasted and it's $300.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

and XFX has a fairly shitty reputation as far as im concerned with AMD cards nivida its a bit different

 

[poohbear]

i think your 19" monitor is what really needs upgrading, seriously buying such a high end card for such a tiny monitor doesnt make any sense. 22" is the minimum i can handle with LCDs, and since most of them go for $200 its nothing. every since getting 27" now 22" feels tiny, but i can do work on em if need be. 27" isnt that much more expensive than a 22" anyways. Remember u might pay $350 but these things last for 5-10years. I'd get this badboy. Gorgeous monitor.

 

[dr emulator (madmax)]

theres one on here for 225 pretty dam cheap but i dont no bout its life time warenty or anything, kinda wiered out how some one is selling for so cheap :S

well some people just have to have the latest thing, so sometimes they sell perfectly good working parts to get the latest bragging rights, ooh look at my rig kind of thing ,
look at how much money i have
although it's wise to see stuff working before ya buy if you can do


take me for instance, ye i could afford the latest nvidia interation but my 5870 does exactly what i need it to, whereas the i7 920 just doesn't cut the mustard when it comes to my favorite pastime of emulation, so i'm thinking of getting a i7 980x, but not to have bragging rights just for the raw power of it

so my point is get yourself one if you can afford it ,overkill ?well i don't think that will be a problem
i'm not sure how much they go for nowardays but they should be a damned bit cheaper than what i paid in august last year, £319 or 497.41 US$

or you could see how much the newer 68 series go for, it seems over here in the uk a 6870 goes for about £263.24 or 410.47 US$

 

[sliderider]

well some people just have to have the latest thing, so sometimes they sell perfectly good working parts to get the latest bragging rights, ooh look at my rig kind of thing ,
look at how much money i have
although it's wise to see stuff working before ya buy if you can do


take me for instance, ye i could afford the latest nvidia interation but my 5870 does exactly what i need it to, whereas the i7 920 just doesn't cut the mustard when it comes to my favorite pastime of emulation, so i'm thinking of getting a i7 980x, but not to have bragging rights just for the raw power of it

so my point is get yourself one if you can afford it ,overkill ?well i don't think that will be a problem
i'm not sure how much they go for nowardays but they should be a damned bit cheaper than what i paid in august last year, £319 or 497.41 US$

or you could see how much the newer 68 series go for, it seems over here in the uk a 6870 goes for about £263.24 or 410.47 US$

Buying video cards used is kinda iffy. You don't know if the last owner overclocked the hell out of it and now it's on it's last legs and they're trying to unload it before it dies and they get stuck with it. The same with CPU's.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

well thats why a thing called HEATWARE exists because if someone screws you over tada bad feedback to warn others. therefore if buying used to the proper fucking leg work.

Ill put it this way for ever person that wont buy used another will for every person to lazy to make his own lunch someone else will gladly do so to save some money. Fact of life if you dont like used dont buy used i can personally say ill buy used any chance i get

Corsair 850HX for $100 Gigabyte 790fx UD5P $110 at the time i saved $145 going used that was nearly a year ago parts still going strong sold my 5850s both of them still going strong. So with that said hell id buy a gpu used anytime. It all comes down to home work check there feedback and trading history did they offer to help with an RMA if the card dies. etc not really that hard to find good ppl to buy hardware used from it just comes down to getting off your ass and asking the right questions when u buy something.

 

[DonInKansas]

5850 + new monitor = win.

 

[sliderider]

well thats why a thing called HEATWARE exists because if someone screws you over tada bad feedback to warn others. therefore if buying used to the proper fucking leg work.

Ill put it this way for ever person that wont buy used another will for every person to lazy to make his own lunch someone else will gladly do so to save some money. Fact of life if you dont like used dont buy used i can personally say ill buy used any chance i get

Corsair 850HX for $100 Gigabyte 790fx UD5P $110 at the time i saved $145 going used that was nearly a year ago parts still going strong sold my 5850s both of them still going strong. So with that said hell id buy a gpu used anytime. It all comes down to home work check there feedback and trading history did they offer to help with an RMA if the card dies. etc not really that hard to find good ppl to buy hardware used from it just comes down to getting off your ass and asking the right questions when u buy something.

So what happens when you ask someone if the parts have ever been overclocked and they lie? Feedback sites only mean anything if the person is a regular seller of such items. If they only have one to sell and won't be selling any ever again, what do they care if you post something bad on a feedback site? They got your money and stuck you with a bad part so telling others about them doesn't matter. And what happens if you're buying from an auction site like ebay and the parts actually work when you get them, you leave positive feedback and then the complaint period expires and then they break? Ebay won't help you because you left positive feedback already and the time for filing complaints has run out. You bad mouth them on another site they can show the positive feedback you left and you end up looking stupid. You might get lucky and have everything work for a long time or it might die a month later and then you have nobody to blame but yourself. You can't blame the seller because you knew what you might be getting into by buying used in the first place. Any judge would throw such a case out immediately, but if you go bad mouthing someone online over it then that could come back to bite you later if they decide to sue you for slander, so think about that the next time you buy something used and it stops working a short time later.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

if there not a regular seller and you dont trust them then dont buy OMG NO WAY you can back out .... i think my point is made

and oh wait thats right we have multiple instances on this site where ppl have done that had the FBI brought in and ppl were refunded and had there stuff returned and taken care of so kinda moot again if you cant get off your ass research things through and check the seller out thats your problem.

 

[Zubasa]

ur absolutely right sir, i would love a 6XXX card but the only one that beats a 5870 is the 6970 (that i can see) please specify how a 6850 / 6870 beats a 5870

another alternative would be a 6950

Actually all those cards 6870 and up beats the 5870 in tessellation performance.

 

[sliderider]

Actually all those cards 6870 and up beats the 5870 in tessellation performance.

Actually, the tesselation advantage isn't an across the board advantage. At the highest tessalation factors the 6870 performs about the same as a 5870. It's at the lowest tesselation factors where the tesselators in the 6870 are optimized to deliver the best performance and can be up to 2X faster. So if you have a game that cranks up the tessalation to the max, you won't see much advantage over a 5870.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

problem is no game jumps to the max

tessellation that gives proper detail and tessellation to the extreme are 2 different things. Then again someone that dosent do 3d modeling or work with game models probably wont understand the difference

8x tesselation is example Oblvion at 3million polygons per scene if u tessellate that by a factor of 8 it gives 24million polygons and in essence thats actually wrong its higher then that but thats a moot point because guess what no GPU on the planet can render that in real time with textures etc so OMG guess what 6870 still superior

even if you break it down to a factor of 8 on 15 npcs at the industry avg of 12k polygons on a character your still looking at 14+million for just the characters no GPU can render that in real time.

sorry my math is wrong since tessellation is pretty much subdividing a mesh in real time and then allowing it to be displaced by a displacment map to show real detail

every time a mesh is subdivided the polygon count increases by 4 so 7800 becomes 31,000 but due to how tessellation works thats not quite right either but in general at a factor of 8 no gpu on the market today or a year from now will offer playable performance in real time if done to an entire scene and when it comes to characters there becomes a point where more polygons are useless.

 

[joeyck]

your guys are pretty awesome (i will be giving every one a thank you afterwards)

going off of what crazy said the cheapest of the three (gtx460 5870 and 6870) is the XFX 6870 $209 after mail in rebate.

these are the 3 i am looking at!

1Gig EVGA GTX460 :
EVGA 01G-P3-1373-AR GeForce GTX 460 (Fermi) Superc...

1GIG 5870 :
XFX HD-587X-ZNFC Radeon HD 5870 1GB 256-bit DDR5 P...

1Gig 6870 :
XFX HD-687A-ZNFC Radeon HD 6870 1GB 256-bit DDR5 P...

like most of u said the 6870 would be the smartest (and cheapest route)


edit : I saw it wrong, the gtx460 is 10$ cheaper lol i still think the 6870 takes the cake here?

 

[MT Alex]

So what happens when you ask someone if the parts have ever been overclocked and they lie? ...on...and on...and on....

That post is not reflective of this site at all. Total hogwash, while looking at the world through crap colored glasses. This isn't flea bay, it is a community of enthusiast who happen to swap parts around to fill out thier systems.

 

[joeyck]

okay guys after going on to another forum i decided to go for a 6870, th 5870 is better i no but 5 fps doesnt account for price of a 5870 and plus its a 6 series xD 6870 sounds newer and useless energy. does any one here no anything bout the voltage controls of the 6870? i wouldnt mind oc'ing a tad bit...

every one has been thanked also this is what i will be buying unless some one has another model that can oc / better for a decent price!

XFX HD-687A-ZNFC Radeon HD 6870 1GB 256-bit DDR5 P...

 

[erocker]

Why not upgrade your monitor? 6870 is a good choice though.

 

[joeyck]

i hate upgrading monitors... as long as the monitor works, and it looks good i am happy, idc bout resolution and size. have u heard of any driver difficulties with the 6870?

 

[erocker]

i hate upgrading monitors... as long as the monitor works, and it looks good i am happy, idc bout resolution and size. have u heard of any driver difficulties with the 6870?

You'd care with 30" of high-res goodness in front of your face! No driver difficulties with the 6870.

 

[DonInKansas]

The 6870 is going to get bored with a 19" monitor; it'll probably play all of your games while idling.

There's really no reason to even upgrade the card without a new monitor.

 

[joeyck]

good then overkill is always nice ^_^ i want something to rape all my games. my friends 5870 at 1920x something (lol) all maxxed BC2 is around 50 fps average. i got a smaller screen and a 3% weaker card lol (4 fps difference big woop) guys thanks a million. also why do i see a gtx460 on some reviews beat a 6870? :S look at this vid i if u can

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NXnsMjMlHAM&feature=channel


skip 2 minutes and 38 seconds 2 see what i mean...

 

[Cratzky]

Why dont you just get a gtx470? it supports 32xQCSAA (something like that) without sacrificing alot of performance.... which is really good to have when using a smaller screen like i do, then you dont need high resolutions to soften out those edges.

And besides, its really cheap now (i got my zotac gtx470 brand new in store for 219euro) and thats not the cheapest out there.

And performance wise, its about the same level as the 5870 (and obviously alot better in dx11 tesselation), it can easily be overclocked to stock gtx480 performance with no bump in voltage

 

[joeyck]

they pretty much run the same performance wise however the 470 gets really hot, and uses alot of more energy then the 6870...