He said he already had an HD 5850 1GB from a previous purchase.
I think that's a pretty awesome system, the CoolIT coolers are awesome and were developed locally here in my city. They were demoed at Fragapalooza and are pretty awesome alternatives to Corsair H50/H60/H70's. I'm in love with the 1155 processors since building the system for my friend, unlocked core multipliers are processors that aren't $1,200 alone? Hell yes!
I missed the hyperlink; the blue is so dark it almost looks black.
That said, the 5850 is looking long in the tooth now and will need replacing within a year.
The 1155 platform is powerful, but like its 1156 predecessor it is an evolutionary dead-end. They call it "i7" but it still lacks some of the features which made the original i7 desirable, like triple-channel RAM. That extra memory throughput is indispensable in demanding games. But, since it's the best right now and because 1366 is dying, I have to back it.
Last edited by Warsaw; May 30th, 2011 at 04:28 AM.
I have to also say that I'm really liking the Gigabyte board I installed today, the GA-P67A-UD3-B3 (the revised version that fixes the problems with 1155 Sandy Bridge launch motherboards that were all recalled). Lots of awesome features, but interestingly enough I thought the 3x USB power was neat. It provides triple the power to every USB port so you can power three times the devices connected to a hub!
Had never really used Gigabyte much in the past but I was REALLY impressed by this board and I'll probably feature Gigabyte if I can't get my hands on an eVGA one when Ivy Bridge comes out.
Perhaps maybe the card I chose was a bad decision, when I look at a 6950 for example I see that it beats the 5850 (however there have not been any game tests done so far, the comparisons seem to be only based on the product specs for right now) and if thats the case, the 6970 would obviously beat the 5850 as well.
The reason why I have that Sapphire card is because at the time before I bought it, I had around $150 in spare money. With the 6950 being $274.99 and the 6970 being 374.99, I was not able to buy those cards. Also at that time the 5850 cards were being sold for $184 to around $240 dollars. This Sapphire Card on the other hand was $142.98 and seemed to be exactly the same as the other cards, only less expensive. At first the card was out of stock, so I had to wait until Newegg notified me of it returned. Instantly bought it when it was available. And of course, this computer I am on now would not work with it, still unable to produce 3D effects. I knew at that moment that it was the computer at fault (because honestly I don't think three graphics cards in a row would have the same issues.) so that's why I am up for a new computer.
See what happens when you play brand favourites? Just use what has the features you want and meets your minimum review rating/number of reviews ratio.Originally Posted by Freelancer
I have to also say that I'm really liking the Gigabyte board I installed today, the GA-P67A-UD3-B3 (the revised version that fixes the problems with 1155 Sandy Bridge launch motherboards that were all recalled). Lots of awesome features, but interestingly enough I thought the 3x USB power was neat. It provides triple the power to every USB port so you can power three times the devices connected to a hub!
Had never really used Gigabyte much in the past but I was REALLY impressed by this board and I'll probably feature Gigabyte if I can't get my hands on an eVGA one when Ivy Bridge comes out.
Bad decision at the time, probably not. The HD5850 is still quite capable (lol, certainly beats my card hands down), but since we are on the edge of what I am perceiving as a generational evolution in software's graphical quality, it is going to be outclassed. Now, the 5850 and 6870 are practically the same card. Stay away from the 6800 series if you have a 5800. Only the 6900s would be worth your consideration; that or Nvidia's GTX570 or 580.
Overclocked 570's perform extremely closely to 580's from what I've been reading. So long as they don't explode and stop working like a lot do apparently... *Makes note to tell friend to not OC GPU*
eVGA motherboards usually have the best performance features I want, but we'll see what's out when early 2012 rolls around. You know, if the world doesn't end.
570s perform very well until you hit 2560x1600. Then games like Metro 2033 kill them even in SLI.
Yeah but if you're using a 2560x1600 monitor and not running a top-end card from either Nvida or ATI's latest few series of cards you're doing it wrong.
Ex: GTX 580/590 or HD 6990.
HD6970s in Crossfire > HD 6990 > GTX590.
HD6970s in Crossfire are also pretty much the same as GTX580s in SLI. Superior Crossfire scaling and all that. It becomes even more apparent if you start doing three-card setups.
Speaking of SLI: AMD and company have released the 990FX motherboard chipset. The draw? It supports both SLI and Crossfire, so now you don't have to go all AMD if you want an AMD CPU. This is good news for me, since now I can choose 580s for my build this September. Oh, these are also AM3b (also called AM3+) motherboards, so they support the full featureset of upcoming AMD FX line of CPUs (Bulldozer/Zambezi). If you are rocking an AM3 board, you can still use the new CPUs, you just don't get the power and frequency management features or the HT 3.1 capability.
Yeah, the GA-P67A-UDX series all seem to support both SLI and CrossfireX. I think Intel has allowed SLI and CrossfireX on the same boards for a few generations though, no?
And yeah, of course 6970's in Crossfire are better than a single 6990/GTX590. I was just saying that if you're running 2560x1600 you better be using the best available single card or a at least a dual-card configuration. I think GTX 460's in SLI would be better than a single HD 6990 or GTX 590 as well. I guess I should have just said that you should use at least a dual-card configuration or a top-of-the-line single card for 2560x1600.
I'm wondering what we're going to see early 2012 for Ivy Bridge and PCI-E 3.0 for graphics cards...
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