Buying New Computer Help

**Dragonknight30** · December 06, 2010, 01:58 PM

Tomorrow I am going to purchase a new computer from Cyberpowerpc.com. Yet just today, I discovered I have enough money to upgrade some more things on the computer I have picked out. So I decided to go with a better keyboard than the one that comes with it, and either a second hard drive or a second video card.

Now, the main hard drive is already 1 TB, which I am fairly sure is more than enough for the games that I have.

The computer that I picked also comes with an ATI Radeon HD 5870 for a main video card, yet I believe I have enough money to also purchase an HD 5670 along with it as a second video card, and thus (I think) run Crossfire.

So My question is: which should I go with? The video card or the hard drive? Or neither and upgrade some other aspects of the computer?

**Sevasti** · December 06, 2010, 02:03 PM

Correct me if I'm wrong but I think that running crossfire on two different models will set the bar to the lowest performing one, should it work at all.

EDIT: A second monitor is always nice.

**Dragonknight30** · December 06, 2010, 02:05 PM

Oh really? Well I suppose I will have to go with the second hard drive.

And yes a second monitor would be nice, but alas, I have not the money for two.

EDIT: Is the second hard drive even worth it, because my main hard drive is 1 TB, and I don't play a huge amount of games.

**Sevasti** · December 06, 2010, 02:14 PM

Keep the leftover money instead or buy yourself some nice games to go along with your brand new toy.

**Dragonknight30** · December 06, 2010, 02:16 PM

Actually, I decided to upgrade the mouse and keyboard.

Well thank you for your help sir.

**Ishan** · December 06, 2010, 03:06 PM

Crossfire doesn't works like that you can't put a HD 5670 with HD 5870. For 5870 you can put only a card belonging to the HD 5800 series.
So you have to either put another HD5870 or a HD5850.

And HD5870+5850 is a good combination and it doesn't lowers the performance in anyway only increases it significantly.

But you have decided to buy keyboard and mouse to good luck with that.

**Sevasti** · December 06, 2010, 03:16 PM

Well yes, but is it really optimal? As I said, I'm no expert on this but wouldn't a 5870 in a 5850+5870 combo revert to the 5850's limits? A significant increase none the less but at the same time (slightly) gimping the 5870? On the other hand, I guess the gain outweighs the loss if that's the case.

**Ishan** · December 06, 2010, 03:37 PM

Originally Posted by Sevasti

Well yes, but is it really optimal? As I said, I'm no expert on this but wouldn't a 5870 in a 5850+5870 combo revert to the 5850's limits? A significant increase none the less but at the same time (slightly) gimping the 5870? On the other hand, I guess the gain outweighs the loss if that's the case.

You are right on some account but a user can't throw his 5870 and the the combo 5870+5850 is same as combo of 2 HD 5850. But the fact is the guy doesn't owns a 5850 in the first place.

Check some pics and you get the idea.

Spoiler Alert, click show to read:

As you can see an approx 25% gain by using a 5850 in Xfire with 5870. While 2 5870 gives a 42% gain in performance. Shame the HD5800 sucks in scaling normally a user would expect atleast 70% or so but scaling has improved on the HD6000 series though.