which card 3870 X2 or 4850

My dad at age 65 has turned into a gamer...it's truly funny. Anyway, I just built him a sweet system but the 3870 card I installed is defective and he wants to upgrade. I am looking at an ASUS 3870 X2 or an ASUS 4850. Which one would you guys suggest?

The mobo is a P5Q PRO P45 running XP pro.

Whatever one is cheaper, but only if you have enough PSU (3870x2 will eat power).

The 3870x2 is faster than the 4850 in crossfire games, 4850 is faster in non-crossfire games and anything with AA. Your pick.

yikes raidmax?...its not always about power chansman, i've heard some terrible stories of raidmax psu's... but i guess it'll work fine

i got a 4850, not dissappointed with it, and 3870x2, like all dual gpu cards, has scaling inconsistencies, so in games that aren't designed for crossfire will work like fart

and 4850 is newer, drivers coming out now are directly improving 4850, where as they do nothing for the 3870x2

Scaling is fine, nothing wrong with x2 cards or cf/sli setups. 3870x2 significantly outperform 4850. Given similar prices, plus single pcie slot motherboard, 3870x2 is the way to go. The key is to look at a variety of games on a variety of settings and take an average performance. Single game is meaningless, as it may just happen to run better on one or the other.

Here's overall average performance.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/MSI/HD_4850/23.html

Its only 13% over the 4850 in general, yet you have to deal with the dual GPU problems that plague sli/Crossfire systems in cases I would rather have a constant 100% then a sometimes 50%, thats why I was quick to jump for the 280 GTX trade.

don't forget that that if he wants to switch quad sli will put more problems on the table then just regular sli, and I went threw both If the 280 GTX was the exact same price as the 9800 GX2, no1 would buy the GX2, A) its old tech B) you have to rely on driver updates to receive alot more potential C) heat plagues your system more.

Comon dagger!!!! you kno better, I agree with the 9800 GX2 over the 280 GTX and 4870, 260 but if the 280 was the same price, you kno it wouldn't be the same, since these cards perform the same, and cost the same....well you know the rest.

2 fans because of 2 GPUs, cancel out, dual slot because of 2 GPUs (4850 has 1 GPu running @ a lower volt)

free game means, free shipping is def not a reason, and 4 monitors....honestly do you think this is the case??? lol

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814161235

139.99 AFTER MIR, this covers the shipping

Thanks for the help guys. With my dad easier is better as he's kind of like Dennis the Menace with a computer...lol