New CPU or Crossfire?

[capnspiffy1]

Right now I have an E2160 CPU OC'd from 1.8 to 2.83ghz. I also have a radeon 4850 HD 512mb video card along with 3 gig of ram and a 500w power supply. Would i benefit more from upgrading my cpu to say a E7400 or buying another 4850 and crossfiring them seeing as how the card and cpu are similar in price range. Any help is appreciated.

 

[Peaks]

The card you have is quite good so I would look into the CPU. Although what res are you playing at? The higher the res the more work that is offloaded to the GPU.

It might even suit you better to get the 4850 1GB. 2 x 512GB cards doesn't equal a 1GB card. Crossfire is always a cheaper solution to upgrades and in my opinion 1 card is always better.

 

[romulus47plus1]

I disagree with peaks's second paragraph. 2 512mb versions of the card bests one 1gb version of the card easily. 1 card always better is just your opinion, nowadays games tend to scale well with SLI/Crossfire, though capnspiffy1 your PSU might not be able to support 2 4850s.
What's your budget anyway? If you're playing at resolutions like 1600x1200 I'd recommend upgrading your CPU over upgrading you GPU.

 

[jfurterer]

I'd wait on both! The new Core i7 systems will only come down in price and AMD still has yet to introduce their new AM3+ platforms. When they do their may be a little bit of a price war involved. Upgrading your old tech won't give you much, especially with that nice OC you have.

Also GPU's are making the transition to smaller nm processes and GDDR5 ram. Your 4850 will last you until the end of this year and your OCed CPU should as well. However if your determined to upgrade something I'd ask if your mobo can support Quad-Core CPUs? If so pick up a Q6600 and enjoy over clocking that. As games and applications include more Quad-Core friendly innovations having the extra cores will scale nicely with the newer applications.

As for one card or two, I think it's all what you can afford and where the best bang for the buck in your rig is. If you've been sitting on a card for a year or more an SLI/Cross-Fire solution can be a real boon. The cost of your card will have dramatically come down in price and the drivers for SLI/Cross-Fire will have been improved and the support in games and applications for SLI/Cross-Fire will have increased.

 

[Annisman]

Just so everyone knows, I will be submitting some personal benchmarks withing a week as to help answer the question of " What will benefit me more, cpu/clock speeds or gpu/ crossfire" what is more important to upgrade to and such. I will be looking at a 4870X2 setup with a 3.0Ghz proc, the same setup with cpu overclocked to 3.9 Ghz, a tri-fire 4870X3 setup at 3.0Ghz, and a tri fire with the overclocked CPU.

 

[mactronix]

Without knowing your resolution its hard to say but just on the hardware i would say upgrade the CPU.

Mactronix