Upgrade advice

[Shaio]

So basically i got the cash, and it feels like a good time to upgrade, seeing as i want dx11.

My current rig is.
icute super18 case
msi dka790gx
coolermaster 650 watt cpu
Phemon 9950
4 gigs ocz ddr2 1066
a 4830
with 2 250 gigs in a raid, and a terabyte.

I'm thinking either a 5970 black edition, or two 5830's in crossfire, and possibly a new CPU with money left from not buying a 5970, possibly a 965 since there on supported list for my motherboard.

Currently I'm leaning towards the two 5830's, mostly becuase my current processor has one broken pin, i replaced it by just dropping a small bit of wire into the mobo's socket, its been running perfectly fine for most of a year but still sketches me out, and i sorta want a crossfire setup.

The advantage of the 5970 is quite obvious, It costs 300 dollars more then the two 5830's, but probably kicks a fair bit more ass, at the same time a 965 costs about 300 dollars. But if i get a 5970 i got the option of adding a 5870 at a later date to crossfire with it...

i can't decide, whats your guys takes?

[GasMask]

Wait Wait..... what do you mean 5830 ? what about 5850,s and 5870,s ?

Go 5870 then when things get abit choppy buy another this will make your machine future proof for quite some time.

[Shaio]

Well, both 5850 and 5870 cost to much really, i cant afford to get two of them, if I'm putting only one card in my rig, it'll be a 5970, since its practically 2 5870's strapped together.

[mrcrusty]

The HD 5970 is basically two HD 5850's sandwiched together (2x Cypress cores @ around HD 5850 clock speeds), not two HD 5870's. It's the same core, but it's underclocked like an HD 5850.

However, I'd suggest the Sapphire Vapor X HD 5870 or the Gigabyte HD 5870 OC on the site, it runs pretty much every game on the market at max without issues unless you're running something like Metro 2033 DX 11 mode w/ AA and AF @ 2500x1600 or higher.

It's not as powerful as either the HD 5970 or the HD 5830's in Crossfire, but to be honest, those two seem to be overkill in my eyes.

[Shaio]

Overkill is the point. O.o

I believe it is the two 5870's actually, look at the stream processing units, it has 3200, if it was 2 5850's it'd be something like 2880, its clocked down 5870's.

Its more about which is better overkill for the price, the two 5830's are more or less equal to a 5970's in specs, aside from having 1000 less stream processing units all up, also lower on a few other things but ill not list them all, but it will give me spare money to get a processor, I'd really like to get the graphics out of the way for now thou.

[mrcrusty]

Overkill is the point. O.o

I believe it is the two 5870's actually, look at the stream processing units, it has 3200, if it was 2 5850's it'd be something like 2880, its clocked down 5870's.

Well now that I think about it, it's more like an HD 5860x2.

It has double the processing units of the HD 5870, but has the clock speeds of the HD 5850.

What case do you have? It just occured to me that both the HD 5830 and 5970 have abnormally long PCB sizes and may not fit inside your case.

[Shaio]

I have a Icute super 18, its a full tower case so i should be sweet.

[HansDuet]

If you're going to keep rest of the rig as it is, anything over 5850 is horrible overkill. Starts to bottleneck the GPU.

At least a new CPU.

As for 5970... do not.

[Shaio]

If you're going to keep rest of the rig as it is, anything over 5850 is horrible overkill. Starts to bottleneck the GPU.

At least a new CPU.

As for 5970... do not.

I don't intend to keep rig as is, I intend to move to am3 mobo, and ddr3 ram the next time i have some spare cash.(probably around august)

And ill probably aim for a 3 way crossfire board when i do upgrade, in hopes of throwing third 5830 or 5850 in there.

I'll be quite broke if i go for 5850's, I'll have some money left over with the two 5830's, almost enough for my processor, or a 2 tb raid.

Also, has anyone clicked the link to the 5830's in the first post, the heatsink on that particular one looks damn awesome.

[GasMask]

I have a 5850 and it just breezes anything.

The good thing is if i ever start seeing choppiness etc i just crossfire a pair of the beasts !!!!.

Sorry not much advice but the 5850 is the way to do.

[The Dutch Devil]

Yeah, if I were you I'd go with 2 5850s because they're not that expensive and they've still got pretty good specifications. And you'll save yourself some 130$ (against a single 5970) not enough for a 965 though

[HansDuet]

Alrighty. Go for x amount of 5850 thats the most balanced high end card at the moment if you go for mobo capable of 3way crossfire.

You might want to take a look at SSD drives too.

[Shaio]

So i seem to be getting the message that i should stay away from the 5830's and go for 5850's, id really rather not as the 5830's fit my budget so well, if there some reason everyone's so set against them, other then being note quite a 5850?

A solid state drive is well out of the question, atm volume of storage space is more important to me then speed.

Also 2 of the cheapest available 5850's equals the price of the cheapest 5970, give or take about 40 dollars.

Wen't to newegg.com with a currency converter, a nice 5850 is 427 nzd(normally 500nzd), which sounds good to me as that's only 10 dollars more then i was going to spend on my 5830, but they don't ship to nz alas

5830 was something like 370 nzd(as oppsoed to 410-460)... Damn O.o

I suppose i could try amazon in search of lower prices, I'm dubious weather or not it'd be worth it after shipping, anyone know any good stores that ship worldwide? O.o

[GasMask]

Yes you should go ATI 5850 I would recommend XFX.

I have had my card for atleast 7 months in this case it has stayed exactly the same since i bought it its got even cooler from when i first had it ATI keep updating its drivers im yet to see any problems infact i think i seem to remember this latest 10.4 has some increase of upto 13% in games.

If you where to ask me truthfully what card to get my words would be 5850 Its the best card on the market for price cooling and stopping power .

I am yet to fault anything buy one.

[mrcrusty]

Probably the most important question that I forgot to ask: What resolution are you going to be playing on?

[mrmouth]

The main issue with the 5830 is that it performs more closely to the 5770, than the 5850. and costs roughly $60 more. (And completely off topic, but that 5830 you linked to, looks really sexy, but that cooling solution is complete overkill, just kind of funny).

You can get something shipped from Newegg, but you would have to use something like ishopUSA, and yeah, it might not make much sense in the end due to shipping costs.

Why isn't Australia an option?

[Freddie]

The HD5830 is by far the worst card ATI have released it really is a dog turd amongst a collection of gems and you want to buy two of them!?! It beggars believe!

As other people have mentioned consider the HD5850 or HD5870 1Gb's, they are fantastic cards and can handle any game you throw at them, and with the money you have by not getting a HD5970 you should invest in the CPU's you pointed out PII 965 or 955 Black editions (and maybe look at overclocking), the original Phenom's are rubbish CPU's and all of them suffer from inherent manufacturing fault where the translation lookaside buffer which can cause your PC to lock up. The Phenom II's are much better CPU's are perfect for gamers.

If you just want to take one piece of advice please, please, please don't get the HD5830's, get two HD5770's if want to save money just don't get the HD5830's.

[Shaio]

^ I naturally would like to aim for the better cards, why does everyone specify the 1gb versions? As far as I'm aware there are only 1gb 5850's, and the eyefinity 6 2 gb 5870's, which came into consideration but were only about 100 dollars cheaper then a 5970.

>.> id probably aim for 2gb 5850's if they existed, the whole concept of having as much video ram as i do regular sounds very cool to me.

I've still got a week or two till i next get paid, so hopefully prices drop and i can grab the better parts, i mean since yesterday i found a site selling 5850's for 470 nzd, which is about 50 dollars cheaper then any i could find yesterday.(also puts it just within my price range if i still want the cpu.
There also about 30-60 dollars difference between any of the cards and there black editions, how much better are the black editions? is it worth that little extra? From my understanding there the ones designed to be overclocked.

Umm, My preference is to play with high resolutions, preferably as high as possible, atm i use 1280 by 720, but when i get bored of this 30 inch HDtv and go back to a real monitor I'll be playing stuff at 1980 by 1050, or 1680 by 1050 more likely.

I half wish i had some pretext under which to return my HDtv, it'd happily get me the money i need.

[karamazovmm]

basically you just need one 5850, and a serious update on your processor, all in all getting 2 5850 or 3 is just for bragging rights

[Shaio]

^ My processor currently meets all my needs, 2.6 per core isn't very impressive but it does the job(i cant think of any instance where my cpu has been bottleneck this far, save games without dual core support.), I want a kickass graphics solution, so i can do all that insane , like play 1000 man mount n blade battles, or turn unit numbers to up like 1300 in etw, and fight battles of like 20k troops, and stuff.