I may be building a new system for the wrong reason, but without....

[ndonato]

reviews I'm a little lost.

So here's my story:

I'm building a new computer system for two reasons; A. I want DX10, and B. To make my uncle extremely jealous.

The specs that I've planned for it are as follows:

Case: Antec 900 (Already bought)
CPU: Core 2 Duo E4600
Mobo: ASUS P5K-E (Already bought)
Ram: 4GB OCZ
PSU: PC Power & Cooling Silencer 750, Crossfire certified (Already bought)
Sound: X-Fi (duh )
HDD: 2 Seagates, 500GB each.
Video Cards: 2 ASUS Radeon EAH 3870
OS: Vista Ultimate
Optical Drives: Looking into Blu-Ray...

So far, the only thing on the list I've changed is the CPU to an E8500 which was just bought today. My next buy will be the video cards. I do plan on running Crossfire (being Canadian I have to support AMD/ATI) but with the new Radeon 4870s out, I'm wondering if I should save my pennies and switch to two of those, or stick to my original plan and budget and run two EAH3870s. I usually get all my information and research from Maximum PC or CPU magazine but as far as I know, they haven't reviewed the 4870s. I don't know if the 4870s will be worth the buy (they're currently retailing at $336.99 CAN) and I don't want to get burned again like I was when I bought an X800XL for $400. The EAH3870s are going for $175.99 CAN. So would it be worth the $340 for the 4870s or should I stick with my original plan and go with the 3870s? What do you guys think? From your own personal experience, how is the performance on the 4870s? Are these new cards good enough to compete with Nvidia's best?

 

[auscanzukus]

LMAO at the 2nd reason. Not much different from me and a friend.

Supporting ATI is good, but not for being a particular nationality. For me, it's to support competition. The HD4800's series is stealing some market share from nvidia so much that nvidia had to cut prices on their GTX200s, and may have to push out a DX10.1 gpu.

There are TONS of reviews on the HD4800s online. Tom's got it. Anandtech got it covered. The HD4850 is the best bang right now. It can be had for $180 or less. The HD4870 is faster, but is about $100 more. Should be $300-ish. Look for deals. 4870 is a bit behind 280. Look at the prices. I see a winner.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4870,1964-9.html

 

[ndonato]

Hey thanks for the response. I did read the read the review from Tom's and I do admit it didn't seem like enough solid proof that it would be worth the switch from the 3870. Don't forget I'll be running Crossfire so this of course begs the question of is it necessary. I know that Infonec.ca has the 4870 for $295 for ASUS' offering of the card. So $600 for two of them isn't all that bad but I'd need to see both the 3870 and 4870 benchmarked in Crossfire to really decide if it's worth it. If there's a gain of only 10-15fps then I don't really think that would be a noticeable difference to make the switch but if there's a 20+fps difference then hands down I'll drop the money on the 4870s. I've been searching around for the kind of review that I really need but I think Maximum PC will provide a good review once they test the cards.