Pc parts, Just wondering if this should be fine

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

I plan to get the following things for my computer, with my current rig, and I'm wondering if it should be sufficient

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182087

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820211281
and
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102825

Just wanted to make sure with you guys, if those are decent parts that I should get, also, My motherboard has two PCIE 16x 2.0 slots, (p45t-a by ECS) how would I be able to tell if it runs at 8x when in crossfire or 16x?

Also, which would be better
2 Hd 4870's (a 1gb and a 512mb) At 16x (or at 8x if I cannot run at dual 16x)

Or a single Hd5870 when/if it comes out by October 8?

I'm also willing to bend a little on costs, so If there is something better for not much more, I would get that.

E: Also, in crossfire (only 2 cards) do I need a single bridge, or two?

[BobtheGreatII]

In crossfire I'm pretty sure you only need a single bridge, could be wrong though.

http://iax-tech.com/video/3850/setup.jpg

I think it's two if this is set up right.

[Amit]

Dude, what's up with the VGA port on that HD 4870? I didn't even know they included such ports on HD 4800 series cards. Reviews seem to be mixed. I would never buy a video card that has great performance but loud output. I could probably deal with the high temperatures, but relative noiseless is what I need.

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

There is an adapter.
Also, isn't that a 3870?
E: Two bridges makes the card a little bit faster, by about 2 fps in HL2

[Amit]

"SAPPHIRE Vapor-X Radeon HD4870."

[Pyong Kawaguchi]

Oh, I thought you where talking about the one in the above pic, that is odd though, Maybe to give room for the hdmi port?

[Warsaw]

Two 4870s in Crossfire is likely to still be better than one HD5870 unless there is some massive improvement in architecture and drivers. What you have picked out in there is fine, though I'd suggest a slightly bigger PSU to allow for more overhead.

[Amit]

Oh, I thought you where talking about the one in the above pic, that is odd though, Maybe to give room for the hdmi port?

Yeah, maybe bout the HDMI. Those are HD 3850s, btw; single-slot heatsink/fan.


Two 4870s in Crossfire is likely to still be better than one HD5870 unless there is some massive improvement in architecture and drivers. What you have picked out in there is fine, though I'd suggest a slightly bigger PSU to allow for more overhead.

I think the point of creating a new GPU is to massively improve the architecture. Well, by looking at past trends, that's the case for ATi. Not so much nVidia. nVidia likes to repackage old GPUs and raise the price.

[BobtheGreatII]

Lol, sorry about the confusion. I was just showing off the cross fire. Cause I've never had several graphics cards running in my computer before. lol

[Amit]

Lol, sorry about the confusion. I was just showing off the cross fire. Cause I've never had several graphics cards running in my computer before. lol

LOL, that's because you can't have several graphics cards running in your computer. The most I've seen is this:

http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/Additional/44386A_AR-CFMoboQuadmd.jpg

[sdavis117]

The cooling must be horrible for that card just left of center.

[Amit]

The cooling must be horrible for that card just left of center.

lol, probably. Those 4850s run standard at 60 to 90 degrees. Drivers can fix that problem though.

[NullZero]

All you need is catalyst control centre or rivatuner, and just crank up the fan speed.

[Rook]

This is what my 4850 sits at from just browsing in firefox, got home a bit ago and haven't played games yet.

http://img269.imageshack.us/img269/61/tempsj.png

Seems a little high for idle but it doesn't jump up alot in game so it's ok

[Warsaw]

Yeah, maybe bout the HDMI. Those are HD 3850s, btw; single-slot heatsink/fan.



I think the point of creating a new GPU is to massively improve the architecture. Well, by looking at past trends, that's the case for ATi. Not so much nVidia. nVidia likes to repackage old GPUs and raise the price.

They improve it, yes, but when was the last time you saw a new card perform literally 200% better than the best card of the last generation? Common sense here man. Two 4870s is still likely to perform better than a single 5870. The biggest difference between HD4 and HD5 is that HD5 is supposedly going to have 1200 SPs on a single die versus the current 800, and last time I checked, 1600 SPs was more powerful than 1200, and we can make that comparison because we are comparing two ATi cards.

=|

[Amit]

Lol, you thought I was saying that a single 5870 could outright beat a Crossfired monster? Come on man, that's ridiculous. I meant that the performance will be similar so the 5870 will probably compete with it or be lower.

[343guiltymc]

Are you guys just getting these stats from rumored specs?

[Amit]

Are you guys just getting these stats from rumored specs?

LOL, no. We're extrapolating on past trends. Meaning that we have no real statistics to go on. We're making estimations.

[=sw=warlord]

They improve it, yes, but when was the last time you saw a new card perform literally 200% better than the best card of the last generation? Common sense here man.
My current 8800GTS runs better than the two 7800GT's i ran in sli a while back so...i dont know thats possibly the only example i can give.

[Amit]

My current 8800GTS runs better than the two 7800GT's i ran in sli a while back so...i dont know thats possibly the only example i can give.

Well that's one of the rare cases where improvement was massive. For over a year nothing could come close to touching the 8800GTX and that was a great improvement on nVidia's part. But in recent releases, performance gains are not so high with the exception of the HD 4800 series from ATi.

[343guiltymc]

Is 2 3870 in Xfire better than one 4870?

[Amit]

The HD4870 will be faster than the HD3870s in Crossfire. Those are more inline with the HD4850.

[Warsaw]

Yeah, the HD4 series was a massive improvement over the HD3 series (which was basically a test bed for HD4 tech). The HD3800s really suffer when you start enabling post-processing effects, and for that reason the HD4800s beat it at the settings you would want to play at with such a powerful card. That, and the HD3870 doesn't even have as many stream processors as its successor, so I'd rate it more in line with an HD4670 than an HD4850 (800 vs. 320 o_O).