Help me pick 4870 512mb 4850 or 4870 1gb?

[morairtym]

Ok right now i have a 7900 GTX which in know way is a bad card, but if it cant keep up with me and my games its time to go i have been waiting for the 4800 series cards for 3 months now and i am sure glad i did. Any how i will be playing at 1920x1080 resolution most of the time on my 50" samsung.

My current pc consists of

AMD Phenom 9500 (Replacing with 45nm ASAP)
ASUS M3A32-MVP Deluxe/WiFi
8GB (4x2GB) 1000 MHz OCZ
EVGA 7900 GTX
2x Western Digital Raptor 36GB (Raid 0) OS
2x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 320GB (Raid 0) Storage
CoolMax CTG-750 PSU

I like a verity of games Age of Conan is my current MMORPG ( the resign its time for an over do upgrade) if im not on FFXI. As far as other games i Enjoy Supreme Commander, Starcraft, Oblivion, Black & White 2, I enjoy playing Crysis just not at 20 FPS on low, (Plan on getting Starcfat 2, Spores, Sins of a Solar Empire, And any other Game that I like)

So i like Strategy Games, RPG's, and FPS.

I want to max out the Res and then go Right to the AA Max that and still get 30+ FPS. I know that a 4850 will get me there with 512MB of Ram But at that Res im tinking that the 4870 with DDR5 would be better then should i wait for a 1GB card or just get the 512MB one. I plan o CF in the future but for now one card will do. When i do pick up a 2nd card im trading in my 19" LCD for a 28" LCD and doing Dual monitors with my Samsung that way i have one for School work and a Molble Gaming monitor, Plus a second screen to pull up a webpage or use in games that support Dual Screens Like Supreme Commander.


Thank You for the help
Michael

 

[compy386]

With the 4850 going for half the price of the 4870 I'd say the 4850 is a good buy.

 

[robertito]

At that res I'd get a 4870 or 4870 1gb, whichever fits your budget best. Then of course with a 50" samsung, money doesn't seem to be too much of a problem.

 

[quantumsheep]

I'd wait a month or two for prices to settle - at the moment Demand is outstripping supply, and basic economics tells us this will push the price up. Once supply of the new HD4850/70 cards has increased slightly then i'd take the plunge as i can see the price falling by a little.

 

[sailer]

I concur with quantumsheep. Wait a bit before buying. That's what I'm doing. I almost bought one the first morning the 4870s came out, but then I hesitated and they've pretty much been sold out since. I've also seen a number of people and publications complaining about the high temperatures the cards have, along with loud noise from the fan. Thus I'm hoping that some company comes out with a better cooling solution, one that actually cools the card and doesn't sound like a jet airplane landing in the living room. I suffered enough from jets when I was in the Air Force.

But yes, I think a 4870 or two would be the good choice. Indeed, make that two for that 50" Samsung.

 

[grieve]

The production of GDDR5 is limited to samsung only which suggest one day the prices on the 4870 may in fact increase.

get the 4870 1 gig.... you deserve it !

 

[SpinachEater]

In addition to quantum sheep's & grieve's reply....

Pretend that you have 1GB of GDDR5 in your pocket. People are jumping on these cards like hobos on ham sandwiches and no one can make them fast enough.

Would you:

A. Use your 1GB of precious GDDR5 to make a single card and sell it for $400?

or

B. Use your 1GB of precious GDDR5 to make TWO cards and pocket $600?

 

[Guest]

what? ^

I don't understand what your trying to say... he doesn't have gddr 5... i know you say pretend but... make a 1 GB card and sell it for 400... and then pocket 400....

or use it to crossfire 2 300 dollar cards and spend 600... wtf? you don't just make cards...

 

[SpinachEater]

Yeah I guess I could explain WTF I was talking about huh? 1GB 4870s probably won't be out for a while since demand is so high and GDDR5 is in short supply. It is more profitable to sell two 512MB cards than one 1GB card since ALL of the 512MB stock is moving.

The production of GDDR5 is limited to samsung only which suggest one day the prices on the 4870 may in fact increase.

That would be a horrible thing. If stock doesn't pick up next week we might see some price gouging. On google checkout there are already 4870s for $349

Edit: No it isn't. If you actually go to FX it is under 300. My bad...shows 349 through google checkout.

http://fxvideocards.com/Sapphire-Radeon-HD-ATI-4870-p-16395.html (10 units!!)

 

[morairtym]

Thanks for the help im going to wait a few more weeks and in the mean time take care of my BlueScreening issue. Im sure its my CPU thats giving me problems im goingto get ahold of AMD about the problem imjust hope that the 45nm ones come out soon or im just going to end up buying a 9850 Black Edition.

 

[harmattan]

When you say "max out the res" how high do you mean? 1900x1200? 2560x1600?

If you're only going up to 1900x1200, I'd think 512mb will do you fine. Heck, even at 2560x1600 almost all reviews show 4850/70 512mb maintaining consistant FPS decrease versus GTX 200s (that have more available mem). Even the 9800gtx with "only" 512mb maintain a constant decrease in FPS at high res. If the frame buffer was too small, the gains would go down drastically.

http://firingsquad.com/hardware/ati_radeon_4850_4870_performance/page14.asp

I can't claim to understand every bit and piece of the technical write-ups, but it seems ATI has both increased memory bandwidth significantly and allowed some AA to be processed through shaders -- this effectively lessens the risk of running into a mem limit.

To be on the safe side though, I might wait on the 1gb version. Like others have mentioned however, you might be waiting a long time.

 

[fps_dean]

At that resolution you will start to see slight benefits of 1gb over 512 with AA cranked up to at least 8x. Even at 2560x1600, 4870 512 crossfire matches or slightly outperforms the 2gb 4870x2 until AA hits 8x for the most part from most of the reviews I read.

However, if it costs more than $10 more, the difference is still minimal. And as overclocksclubs review showed the Visiontek and Sapphire cards 7 or 8 frames ahead of Powercolors at 1920x1200 resolution in the exact same machine, I am inclined to think that a Visiontek 4870 512mb is most likely to still be faster than Powercolors 1gb as for whatever reason, Powercolors 4870 is a little slower than other 4870s.

Here is that article that plots Powercolor against Visiontek (they reviewed a Sapphire card that keeps up with the Visiontek card after this too).
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/visiontek4870/

I have not seen the 1gb cards in US dollars yet, but from the price differences in UK dollars it looks like it will be from $380-450 and it's not worth it. For $550 (after a rebate most likely) you can buy TWO 4870s or a 4870x2 for $500ish (which should have 2gb RAM, but there might be a 1gb model too, we won't know for sure until they come out because of all the conflicting sources on this).

Myself, I am waiting for the HIS Iceq 4870 as these cards do run HOT!