Gaming Graphics Card Help...

[Lee79]

ATI have been working hard to improve Crossfire drivers since the 5000 series was released and it is a lot better now and 2x5770 are more powerful then a 5850 card. I tried out crossfire with my next-door neighbours 5770 when I got it for him and had good gains in FPS for most games.

 

[Santee]

ATI have been working hard to improve Crossfire drivers since the 5000 series was released and it is a lot better now and 2x5770 are more powerful then a 5850 card. I tried out crossfire with my next-door neighbours 5770 when I got it for him and had good gains in FPS for most games.

He is right there was an article that showed that a 3 5770 in crossfire outperform a 5870 and a gtx 480 with the cost of more power consumption. And I also recommend a 5770 mine can run bad company 2 on the highest settings on my 1280x1024 crt.

 

[exangel]

ATI have been working hard to improve Crossfire drivers since the 5000 series was released and it is a lot better now and 2x5770 are more powerful then a 5850 card. I tried out crossfire with my next-door neighbours 5770 when I got it for him and had good gains in FPS for most games.

He is right there was an article that showed that a 3 5770 in crossfire outperform a 5870 and a gtx 480 with the cost of more power consumption. And I also recommend a 5770 mine can run bad company 2 on the highest settings on my 1280x1024 crt.

he may not be spending his own money on this, but i think buying more graphics cards is serious overkill even if it's an option for him.

 

[Splych]

yeah, i got that processor. and the mobo

. i did my share of research on this processor on unlocking the cores, but i am still thinking whether or not i should. my computer performs as expected and overclocking hasn't been necessary yet. in the future, maybe i might unlock or just o/c the CPU, but for now, i just did some slight O/Cing with the auto O/C feature (just went up to 3.4GHz)

as for the graphics card, yeah, i am the one paying for it. my dad has his computer, i have mine. i guess as a starter, he gave me an old dell optiplex gx280. then i finally decided to assemble my own and bought the parts with my own money.

can someone explain the difference between a 512MB and a 1GB? i am putting my thought into just buying a single 5770. it should be able to last me for a a LONG time. at the moment, i am using a single monitor. wouldn't i receive a higher FPS with 1 screen rather than 2?

the 4870 is more expensive than the 5770 x]. so i might just stick with the 5770 since the only difference is DX11 and 128bit memory and it is cheaper. my mobo can't even support tri-graphics cards xD. max is 2 and after reading the comments, i might just get a single graphics card which is the 5770. if necessary, i might switch my wide-screen monitor (acer x223w 22") for my old LCD Monitor (BenQ FP93G X' 19") since it can support a higher refresh rate.

thanks for the help though, it has been really helpful ^^. maybe after i do a little more research, i WILL have decided

 

[Santee]

Just in case your still unclear http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/graphi...eon,2646-3.html on which graphic card to pick

 

[Infinite Zero]

not to be off topic but exangel you are so great when it comes to computers!

 

[exangel]

can someone explain the difference between a 512MB and a 1GB? i am putting my thought into just buying a single 5770. it should be able to last me for a a LONG time. at the moment, i am using a single monitor. wouldn't i receive a higher FPS with 1 screen rather than 2?
(Wiki Video Memory Entry)
It doesn't describe why 256-bit is better than 128-bit, but that has to do with the speeds of the data transfer between the video memory and the GPU.
1GB will support higher resolutions with higher performance than 512MB will. If you don't yet have a 1080i monitor, but think you might get one at some point, you'd regret settling for a 512MB card because it won't have enough memory to process the textures and such as efficiently as a 1GB would. If your monitor is 1680x1050 or smaller, and you're not planning to upgrade it, or use a second monitor, 512MB could be okay for most things -- I just can't say one way or another out of personal experience because when I had a 512 card in my system it also had a much older dual core and older GPU as well.

QUOTE(Infinite Zero @ Jun 22 2010, 04:25 AM) not to be off topic but exangel you are so great when it comes to computers!

how embarassing

there's only a couple particular things about computers i'm actually good at, and that includes building AMD desktops with ATI video cards (which I used to do several times a year, until clients ran dry)
throw an intel system or an nvidia card at me and i would know what i was working with unless it was clearly labeled..

 

[Splych]

@IchigoSJ - i used that before, but there are still good cards out there that can perform slightly slower and are worth the money. stuff like the 4xxx series from ATI might still be useful, but after reading the things in this thread, i am feeling like going towards a 5770.

@Infinite Zero - True! Cleared up and gave me some more info about computers i never knew about which is great!

@exangel - oh i see ... so for future prep, 1GB is recommended. i've read before that 1GB is better than 512MB for widescreen or anything larger than 1280x1024.

--

mhmk. well, it feels that the 5770 is decided for me. my local computer store has it for $170 right now. i calculated tax and it is just $2 more expensive then NewEgg (Shipping + Tax). and i can return it whenever so it will be more convenient then having to ship it back to NewEgg.

thanks for the help !

 

[Joe88]

the 4870 is more expensive than the 5770 x]. so i might just stick with the 5770 since the only difference is DX11 and 128bit memory and it is cheaper. my mobo can't even support tri-graphics cards xD. max is 2 and after reading the comments

there are probably a few 4870's you can find cheaper
used to be that the 5770 were about $180
since the 4870 performs a little better then the 5770

 

[Cermage]

128 vs 256 is just the size of the memory bus width. the best explanation for bus width i've come across is this, you've got a bus that says it'll go so fast (freq. of the vram) and the bus will carry only so many people (128 people or 256 people). its pretty much how much data can fit through the connection between the memory (1gb/512mbe.t.c on the card) and the actual core. though its not the be all and end all in performance. ideally you want both higher (GDDR5 + high bus), as it should mean its performance will scale better through resolutions. but like i said, higher doesn't mean it'll perform better, fermi cards for example, GTX480 has a 448-bit bus and GDDR5 from memory. and its not exactly on top of the game.