[Solved] Radeon HD 5770 vs 5850??

Well ive got a 5850 on backorder, as you all know the availability isnt very good. I know i should get mine in december. My question now is...if i should wait for the 5850 at $275 or buy 2x 5770's and run crossfirex with them. I know most of my problem here is waiting, i just put togther my new i7 system and its killing me just sitting there without me being able to use it. Here are my pros and cons.

Pros-
-I like the idea of crossfirex
-ive seen where 2x 5770s outperform a 5850
-no wait time

Cons-
-a little more expensive for 2x 5770s
-even though the 2x 5770s outperform the 5850, i can always save up and buy another in a few months which would dominate 2x5770s
-im more of an enthusiast/ oc'er i play games but none that really require a whole bunch of cpu poewr (then again ive never had a pc worth going and buying the higher end games)
- 1 to 2 month wait time for one 5850

My new monitors res. is 2048 x 1152, i dont know if the 2x 5770s can handle that high of a res well. Ive seen reviews where the 2x5770s were decent fps in different games, but 3x5770s were really good. The problem with 3x is the cost and the fact that usually the cpu will be the bottleneck and they wont perform like they should. Any ideas?

2x HD 5770s would outperform an HD 5850, but I'd choose a single GPU solution, over two. In the future, if you need more power, just buy another HD 5850. Just be patient, there's a lot of us waiting for the HD 5850. It'll be worth it, though

At this point, there's hardly any difference at all between them(of course, I read somewhere that Sapphire was releasing a Vapor-X model. It's also listed on their site).

Edit: The only real differences are the warranties and bundles.

I ordered one today on back-order on another site. The wait doesn't bother me, it would take two weeks to ship to where I live anyways .

Anyone else think i should just go for the 5870 at a rest of 2048 x 1152?

Lol niklas, nice Air Force analogy with that Really put it into perspective for me. My delimma is, pay the $100 more (which ive already went wayy over what i was wanting to) or have some more fun and o/c the hell out of my (future) 5850 to match if not beat the 5870.

I know, i wonder if its worth it to just go for the 5870s now? :S I hate delimmas.

That's exactly right. To add to that thought. XFX will even allow you to replace the stock heat-sink with an aftermarket heat-sink and it'll still be under warranty. So, for what it's worth, I think you've made the right choice by choosing XFX.

anyone think I'll bottleneck 2 hd4890's in crossfire with a amd 965x4

Well by all means, if waiting isn't your thing, get the sapphire. Because, like mentioned before by Lolzololz, the only difference between sub-vendors is basically warranties and bundles (I'm going to add aesthetics to that list).

^Niklas, i had to read that twice and once i did i laughed and my wife looked at me like i was crazy.

Rock, thank you, i just decided to quit being a baby and wait it out. I cant afford to pay anymore or else i would(Niklas) so waiting on my 5850 is about the best i can do. And i know i can get my 5850 oc'ed to 5870 speeds

These are undoubtedly nice cards, but they are not capable of DX11.

An interesting question.

I've got a new PC on order, but it's being delayed because of the 5850 shortage. I'm debating on just downgrading to a 5770 and saving the $125 bucks.

I'm not an enthusiast per say and I'm only running games at 1600x1200.

I'm thinking that I get the 5770 now and it will do more than enough for me for 2 years and I can upgrade to a 5850 for real cheap or whatever else is the next big thing is in 2 years.

The concern I have is if the 128 bit bus is a real drawback and worth the possible extra month wait to get a 256 bus 5850.

I spend most of my time playing WoW, but I'm getting back into FPS's like CoD:Modern Warfare and I've got Bioware's latest: Dragon Age: Origin.

I want these games to be beautiful, near max settings. But since I'm not an enthusiast, I honestly don't care if shadows are maxed and I know shadows kill WoW graphical settings. At least, on my current GForce 7800 GTX 256MB. Would it be nice to have beautiful shadows? Sure, but it's not noticeable for me. I'd rather see far off into the distance than have super accurate shadows (I'm rather happy with the round blob under my WoW characters feet).

So, for you far more informed and experienced enthusiasts, would you recommend to me that the 5770 will be more than satisfying for me or do you suggest just sitting tight and waiting?

My other concern is that I want to try and resell my current PC in the Holiday season. Waiting could put me at the end of the shopping period.

I am going from a:

WinXP,
Pentium D 3 GHZ,
2 GB DDR2 RAM
256 GeForce 7800 GTX

to a

Win7,
Core i7 920,
4 GB DDR3 1333
[Video card]

I'm sure the CPU and RAM upgrades alone will show a nice improvement and having DX10 and DX11 capabilities.

I know a 5850 will be top notch, but I'm starting to wonder if the 5770 won't be just as good for me?

Advice?

I have a 5770 and can run the COD modern warfare demo at max settings smoothly. I also play DDO (pretty comparable to WoW in graphics reqs) at ultra high with 4xAA (at 8xAA it got choppy sometimes). Im doing this with a mediochre dual core Athlon 64x2 at 3.2GHz, Vista 64 ultimate, 4GB DDR2-800 RAM computer and a 22inch 1380x1050 monitor.

+1 ^

Yes, this is what I was thinking and debating.

If the 5770 is (give or take a couple frames) on par with a 4870, was the 4870 considered "med quality" for graphics cards when it came out?

It really is just too bad ATI's 40nm chips are having the yield problems where they're not getting the production going.

The 5770 is an attractive offer with the really low power consumption and price point. I'm just really turned off by it's 128bit bus.

I do appreciate the advice!

I play crysis warhead sometimes @ 1680x1050 DX9 mode on high not very high with 2x AA 40 - 60 FPS this is with the HD 5850