Source
r/gaming•
mcdeviant

ATI cards- 4870's Crossfired, or 5770?

Hey all!

I'm working on my new PC and have been receiving conflicting info from various self proclaimed experts.

The one I trus the most is an electrical engineer/gamer geek who spends all day doing R&D on radio frequency equipment and motherboards for devices.

He reckons go for the ATI 5770 because of DX11 support, rather than two older cards with less support that will be crap in a year.

My boss is a hardcore gamer and says the 5XXX series is overproced, and still too buggy (engineer friend agrees with this) so I should grab two 4870's which will be faster, and who cares about DX11.

Other friends say DX10 has been pretty shit, and DX11 is the fixed version, much like Windows 7 vs Vista. They also prefer NVidia which I've never used, but I hear lots about them having bugs or about ATI always "one upping them" with drivers.

Anyway, I'm sick of reading up for hours on end and still not having any idea which is better. The Crossfire will cost more, a lot more, and take me time to get the $ to do it. Paying more and not getting DX11 support sounds a bit dumb to me, so your opinion would be appreciated.

Poll here for easy answering, or feel free to offer detailed wisdom below :) Thanks in advance for all posts or votes!

Oh, and for comparisons of the prices I'm likely to pay- see below. *Prices are in $NZ and will require 12.5% tax added

http://pricespy.co.nz/#rparams=ss=5770

http://pricespy.co.nz/#rparams=ss=4870

http://www.99polls.com/poll_128819

Posted Mar 28, 2010, 1:08 AM UTC

120
chive_machine•

What size is your monitor? I have a 2560x1600 primary screen, so ended up going with a 5850. The price wasn't bad (about $200 - far cheaper than two 4870s after a nice MIR and combo deal), and it's been fantastic. After initial configuration and driver installation on a clean system, it has run well, so I haven't experienced any bugginess or whatnot. Runs Arkham Asylum at full resolution with AA and everything with 60FPS in the benchmarker.

If your screen is smaller than mine, you should be fine with a 5770. I don't think that two 4870s in Crossfire would be worthwhile for the price.

4
mcdeviantOP•

Just bought this 24" 1920x1080:

http://pricespy.co.nz/product.php?p=383251

It's really nice, but I need the hardware to back it up now!

3
SomeKindOfOctopus•

I'd go for a single card.

I don't have experience with the 5xxx series to say if it's buggy or not though.

If you get a faster single card now, you can buy another one to match it later when you want to upgrade (and you inevitably will, eventually), and at that time the card you need will be pretty cheap.

If you get two slower cards in crossfire, you'll have to spend more later to upgrade.

3
doidydoidy•

Have you actually succeeded in doing that? That was my intent a few years ago when I had a 7800GTX, but by the time that card wasn't good enough, I didn't have a hope in hell of buying a second 7800GTX anywhere.

2
SomeKindOfOctopus•

I did with my nvidia gts250s.
I got the second one at the local pc store for a decent price.

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mcdeviantOP•

Glad to see someone actually did this- it's one of those ideas that soudns good but nobody seems to have ever done it yet.

What sort of improvement did you get in performance?

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SomeKindOfOctopus•

in synthetic benchmarks I got almost double the performance

in real world gaming, the increase in performance was significant, but I'd be hard pressed to say how much, but if I had to guess I'd say 80% increase

2
mcdeviantOP•

Yeah a lot of people say that- either you wont find one to match or it will be $100 in my money for that card to give x amount of power, or the same money to buy a NEW card in a new series with the same power and support for the latest DX or whatever. I think xfire from the start is the better way to go now.

2
xvst•

How big is your monitor? What kind of games do you play?

Dual 4870's will probably be faster than a single 5770 in games that are supported in crossfire. But that's a big caveat. A single 5770 is equivalent at a 4890 and should handle 1920x1200 just fine in most current gen games.

Personally, I just bought a 5850 when it was on sale for ~$230 US even though I have a 24" monitor that does 1920x1200 max. I wanted a little bit of future proofing from the performance overhead.

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mcdeviantOP•

http://pricespy.co.nz/product.php?e=383251

That's my monitor I picked up yesterday- 24" 1920x1080 HD.

That's what I'm thinking (futureproofing), but I read a really good guide somewhere (Reddit I think) that said "Futureproofing means paying 2x more today than you will in 3 months" or something like that. I definitely now WANT the 58XX series, but... will see how the budget goes. After all, I'm building a whole new PC- monitor, case, CPU, mobo, RAM, PSU and speakers included.

The money isn't really the issue, but when I look at the overall cost- I can't really justify spending up to double my original plan for a card and can't really cut back anywhere else.

3
xvst•

How long do you expect the video card to last you?

My last video card purchase was three years ago. I bought an 8800GTS 640MB for about $300. It handled every game with near maximum AA and AF settings at 1920x1200 when it came out. And it still manages 19200x1200, with reduced settings, on most games today. So I'm pretty happy with the value I got, and I'd still be using it if I hadn't made an impulse purchase on the 5850 when it was on sale. Had I bought anything cheaper than the 8800GTS, I would have wanted to buy a new video card a year ago.

Also, if you have the option, I'd rather get one of the 58XX series cards over 4870's in crossfire. Much less hassle.

You can also take a look at the 5830 if the 5850 is too steep for you. Prices should be dropping soon now that Nvidia's new cards are coming out.

2
baggytheo•

Don't get a 5830. The benchmarks show that it only gets 1-2 frames on a 5770 for $60-$80 more cost.

2
xvst•

What benchmarks are you looking at? It's not a great deal at MSRP, but it is unquestionably much faster than a 5770.

2
Picklebiscuits•

First off, Crossfire does not give you the full power of two cards. It's equivalent to around 140%-190% of the one card.

But if price is an issue, why not just buy a single 4870 and wait 4 months till you have more money and the 5770 has dropped significantly, then upgrade and sell the 4870. That makes the most sense to me.

2
mcdeviantOP•

From what I've seen on benchmark tests at Tom's Hardware, you don't actually get much power at all from the Crossfire. And the 5770 was looking good for a while there when I only found psitive reviews, but now I found one that compares it to a lof of other cards. It doesn't look so great right now.

Also, did you mean to say "and the 5870 has dropped significantly"? There's not much difference between the 4870 and 5770, so I assume you meant 5870. The 5870 is almost double the price of the 5770 and more than double the 4870.

It's not that I don't have the money, I just don't want to pay $700 in my currency for a video card- especially when I know it'll be $300 in 6 months time for the same card.

I need it now, as I'm rebuilding the WHOLE computer, but the smart choice of a 5850/70 is overpriced right now.

2
doidydoidy•

With my recent upgrade I was considering a 5870 but the damn things were rarer than hen's teeth at the time, and since I'd already been putting off the upgrade for too long -- I'd actually given up trying to find a local shop stocking either a 4870 or 4890 months before the launch of the 5xxx series was announced -- I went with a pair of 5770s instead (for about two thirds of what the 5870 would have cost if I'd been able to find one).

As for buggy, I haven't had any problems with the games I've had time to play in the last couple of months (TF2, Mass Effect 2, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Fallout 3, Oblivion; I also reinstalled Bioshock and Assassin's Creed because they'd been particularly crappy on the old card, though I only played both enough to see that both had improved markedly).

Am I missing something in those prices, or does even one 4870 cost almost as much as a 5770 from most of those vendors? Not sure why you'd buy two of them at those prices when that much money gets you close to a 5850.

2
mcdeviantOP•

Yeah, looking at it, I might just bite the bullet and go for the 5850... but it's a lot. I guess I'll get good use out of it though.

Yep going for it!

3
moush•

I built my pc a couple months ago and I went with the 5770. It was during the time when 5850s were $300 dollars and there wasn't much else to choose from. I decided against crossfire because it just didn't seem worth the hassle and extra heat. I'd say go ahead and get a 5770 if you can find a decent deal online, I haven't had any problems so far running High settings on every game on a 1920x1200 monitor.

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mcdeviantOP•

Sounds good, but as I've been posting on other posts just now (as in just this past minute), I've come into some extra disposable cash above my obligations and savings, so I'm splashing it on a 5850, which is about $390USD here- about normal - oh damn.. just went to look it up and I found a 5870 for $425USD... it just keeps creeping up!

 Gigabyte ATI HD5870 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E

http://www.computerlounge.co.nz/components/componentview.asp?partid=10571

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