Changing Video Cards, Poor Experience with 4870x2...

I've had nothing but problems with my 4870x2 since I bought it back in August. Constant lockups, BSOD, terrible drivers, overall a very unpleasant experience. It was entirely unplayable during my brief stint in WoW (terribly addictive game, quit after a few months) and I can't get more than a few hours at best and most of the times I get 10 minutes. Basically I ended up putting in a 4870 instead and haven't had any problems to date.

Now I find I'm missing some serious performance. Playing through fallout I was forced to turn down my setting which is not cool on a PC that was SUPPOSED to be top of the line.

Currently I'm on an Asus P5E3 Premium X48 with a Q9550 (OC to 3.4 GHz) and 4GB of DDR3 1600 ram.

I'm going to move those components along with my 4870 to an HTPC and frame the 4870x2 as a constant reminder of how I got wasted 600 bucks!

Now I'm getting an i7 920 and an X58 mobo which I haven't decided on yet.

What are the BEST graphics options? I'm up for dual card, single card, anything! Play TF2 regularly, also Fallout 3, Mass Effect, and many more games.

Obviously the 4870x2 isn't an option...

Thanks for the help!

Well sad that u has so many problems wit the X2...though heard they were very good...

But as of nw try these

EVGA 896-P3-1255-AR GeForce GTX 260 Core 216 896MB 448-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail $229.99
($199.99 after $30.00 Mail-In
Rebate
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814130434

If money aint a problem ...then go for tis
2 of them in SLI and later a 3rd for triple sli

or
this one

BFG Tech BFGEGTX2951792E GeForce GTX 295 1792MB 896 (448 x 2)-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Supported Video Card - Retail $499.99
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6814143167

Well just a suggestion for the mobo ...Asus P6T Deluxe ..u cant go wrong wit tat...

to you it might be a dumb upgrade, but benchmarks show it can match the QX9770, and is a good over clocker. There is less bottlenecking with the CPU as well.

Though its not something I would upgrade to, I would only go for a i7 965 if I was ever going to go through the hassle of taking apart my computer and then cashing in my mortgage.

But I mean he should get some respectable extra performance, and remember that this might not be just for gaming extras, the CPU is better all around.

It would be a much better trade off for myself to grab a whole system for the same price a QX9770 costs.

Absolutely... if I were paying for it I'd never do it. Luckily I don't pay for my PC's so money is not an issue (within reason)

Also, how would you propose that I do SLI on my X48 Mobo? I'm pretty burned by ATi right now and I want the BEST possible graphics solution. At the time it was the 4870x2, unfortunately it never worked out for me.

I'm going Nvidia this time because frankly while I've had the Ati my brother put together a PC at the same time with a 9800 GTX+ and has had ZERO driver issues and not a single PC crash, that's just awesome.

So now the question is what do I do... maybe like L1qu1d and tri-sli some sweet GTX285? Actually I might just go Quad SLI...

Tri-Sli has the unfortunate downfall of leaving me NO empty slot for my sound card.

quad sli 285 is probably the most powerful you can get at the moment but otherwise the GTX 295 will still do pretty good in sli and will be cheaper, just not as good as the quad sli 285

What would YOU do? Are there any Mobos where I can Tri-SLI and still have a slot for my sound card?

cokenbeer, I sent you a PM. Sorry to hear about your difficulties with the card.

I'm interested in your most recent question - it seems as though most motherboard manufacturers don't care about expansion cards that don't fit in a PCI-E slot and have everything set up so you can't do much if you go all out on graphics cards.

Price for upgrade with 3 x GTX 285 = $2,543.94 CAD

Price for upgrade with 2 x GTX 295 = $2,453.95 CAD

Less than $100 difference.

Mobo:

ASUS Rampage II Extreme

CPU:

i7 920

Ram:

G.SKILL F3-12800CL9T-6GBNQ 6GB DDR3 3X2GB DDR3-1600

So with a 1920 x 1200 monitor and I'm in the market for a 30 inch monitor you think I'll be highly satisfied with the CTX285 SLI option?

You should be, I mean nothing is written in stone, but from what I've seen, yes More statisfied than any other dual GPU setup