XFX 5850 Upgrade > EVGA GTX 660 Ti?

Have you considered just buying another 5850 and running it in crossfire.

This would give you similar performance to the 660ti at a cheaper price.
 
nicovdmer said:
Have you considered just buying another 5850 and running it in crossfire.

This would give you similar performance to the 660ti at a cheaper price.
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Or even a 5870.. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I understand it, so long as it's a 58xx, you can crossfire with it. It might be a cheaper alternative to similar power..
 
Avatar said:
Or even a 5870.. Correct me if I'm wrong, but the way I understand it, so long as it's a 58xx, you can crossfire with it. It might be a cheaper alternative to similar power..
Click to expand...

That is correct!

AMD_CrossfireX_Chart_1618W.jpg
 
@Avatar, yes. If I remember right you can crossfire any 58xx card but I think they will both perform at the level of the slower card. A 5850x5870 would perform as 5850x5850, and will only use double the RAM from the card with the least RAM. Basically with a 5850x5870 the 5870 wouldn't be used to it's full potential. Hope I'm getting my meaning across, it's nothing to really worry about though.

Remember at $300 you may be saving some cash but if the card dies and needs to be returned you could have a hard time.

5850 in crossfire is about the same as a 5970 which trades blows with a GTX660ti, so a 5850CF could be a cheaper option for that performance but has some downsides. It won't do as well with heavy tessellation, but that's not major, and some games don't like crossfire/sli (their performance stays the same as if it was only using one card), also it will use more power and need a good PSU due to having dual cards.

So it's a mixed bag either way, the risk of warranty problems if you import something or all the good and bad that comes with a crossfire/sli setup.

I think the 660ti would be preferable, but the warranty issues if you run into them, could turn out to be a pain and cost more. It's a risk you'll have to decide if you want to take.
 
Tomshardware* called the 3GB 660Ti a waste of memory. The 192 bus speed is to slow to take advantage of it.
Gooi in a few extra $$$ and get a 670.

* I think it was them, read all the reviews.
 
Uberutang said:
Tomshardware* called the 3GB 660Ti a waste of memory. The 192 bus speed is to slow to take advantage of it.
Gooi in a few extra $$$ and get a 670.

* I think it was them, read all the reviews.
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For now I'd say that extra 1GB is a waste but that doesn't mean it always will be, the memory bandwidth of the 660ti and 670 are 170GB/s vs 190GB/s, not that much of a difference. There are some games which love to store loads of textures in the cards RAM (eg: open world, sandbox games) and when you hit a game that wants to store more than 2GB in RAM while you have 3GB it could prevent horrible HDD caching and even crashes.

For example even the 6 year old Oblivion with the right texture mods will put a 2GB card to good use while almost continuously stuttering and crashing on a 1GB card. Now I haven't played Skyrim yet (waiting for all the addons to be released and most bugs to be sorted and mods to be completed) so I can't say how much Skyrim could use with the right mods, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if it's possible to already get it's RAM usage over 2GB with the right texture mods, also mods that add buildings and creatures can add a heavy does of cached textures depending on how they're done.

So it is pretty much a waste right now except in certain conditions, but those conditions will likely become more common as as new games come out. Also if the next generation of consoles come out soon they will obviously have more RAM, which means more games will be designed to take advantage of that RAM (consoles in a way being the common denominator due to their widely available static hardware). So if the next consoles come out with 3GB of graphics RAM and people are still using their graphics card with 3GB of RAM then that extra 1GB of RAM wouldn't go wasted at that point.
 
Gamy said:
@Avatar, yes. If I remember right you can crossfire any 58xx card but I think they will both perform at the level of the slower card. A 5850x5870 would perform as 5850x5850, and will only use double the RAM from the card with the least RAM. Basically with a 5850x5870 the 5870 wouldn't be used to it's full potential. Hope I'm getting my meaning across, it's nothing to really worry about though.
Click to expand...

Good to know, thanks. I never read up in enough detail to find this, but now I know! :D
 
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