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5870 or 5970 for my setup?

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Hey guys, I'm sure this question has been asked 500 million times already, but I'm just wondering what you guys think I should do for my specific situation. My thoughts were mostly leaning towards the 5970, however, I don't want to shell out so much extra money if I won't be making the most out of the card's power. I will be running a single monitor setup at 1920x1200 on a Samsung 2443BW monitor. Obviously this will be mostly for gaming, and the games I currently play are Titan Quest, Torchlight, Dragon Age: Origins and Dawn of Discovery. I will also be playing Diablo 3 and Starcraft 2 when they come out, but if Blizzard sticks to the usual, the games will run on a large variety of systems and will not require DX11, nor something as powerful as the 5970 to run at max settings (at least I hope). With my specific resolution/monitor setup, will the 5970 pretty much be overkill?


Relevant system specs:

Core i7 920 @ 4 GHz
6 GB (3x2) Corsair Dominator 1600 MHz @ manufacturer settings
CoolerMaster HAF 932 case
Corsair 850W PSU

I'm guessing the case would provide enough airflow for either card. I guess in the future if it's really necessary, I could Crossfire either a 5870 or a 5970 to a 5870 if I ever decide to go that route. I've heard that 4 GPU Crossfire is pretty terrible right now, so dual 5970s probably won't happen for me. Thanks for any input!

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Even if you buy 5870 you are secure for at least next 2-3 years...A 5970 will surely be an overkill and waste of money....Better wait for the new technologies and save money to upgrade your card in future...

sayantan said:
Even if you buy 5870 you are secure for at least next 2-3 years...A 5970 will surely be an overkill and waste of money....Better wait for the new technologies and save money to upgrade your card in future...


Yeah, as much as I'd love a 5970, I don't think it's for me at this point. Also, have you guys seen the new Sapphire 5870 with the VaporX technology? Apparently it runs 18C cooler under load than the reference models! This should give LOTS of headroom for overclocking and further closing the gap with the 5970.
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hello

definitely go with the 5870 for now,even the 5850 would probably be fine,then you could crossfire that with another which these 2 combined seem to be faster than a 5970 anyway and also cheaper i might add.

microterf said:
ACtually, if you get the 5870, and wait for the price of the 5970 to go down (in a couple months the G3XXX cards come out) later you should be able to run trifire fi you would choose.


That is currently the plan! :) 

oh yeh

ive got a 295 GTX ,they dont EVER seem to drop in value?this contradicts a previous statement,which is ok.


you can be an early adopter or just buy the one you can afford to live with,on a single lcd screen,really a
5850 would be great,a 5870 better,and the BADBOY 5970,youll be the talk of the block/lanparty....

and you can crossfire the 5850 and the 5870 as well together
ive got one of the quad slot crossfire x motherboards,do you
think its possible to have a 5850,a 5870 and a 5970 or not?

just haven't Googled it yet or read into it,sounds like expensive fun!!

crossfirekid said:
oh yeh,and shubham1401?

ive got a 295 GTX ,they dont EVER seem to drop in value?this contradicts your previous statement,which is ok.the specs of your pc show you don't upgrade too frequently anyway.i upgraded from 2 8800 gt oc cards 3 upgrades ago,time to
step up a little or don't you actually play games at all?wow,i couldnt handle that!!

get off the forum for a few minutes and go buy a game or two,your talking more than your playing,use some of this awesome hardware thats available and maybe even learn to overclock,just for fun..

its all in fun,dont be upset,im new i have to cause ripples


What his point was is that when going from, say, a 5870 to a 5970, at current prices, you're paying nearly double the price for MAYBE a 25-33% increase in performance. The scaling is pretty terrible because the PCI-E bus is a huge bottleneck for the really powerful cards. This is why you don't see the 5970 getting double the scores on Furmark as compared to the 5870. At least, I think that's what his point was.

crossfirekid said:
and you can crossfire the 5850 and the 5870 as well together
ive got one of the quad slot crossfire x motherboards,do you
think its possible to have a 5850,a 5870 and a 5970 or not?

just haven't Googled it yet or read into it,sounds like expensive fun!!


It might be possible, who knows. I know that you can xfire a 5850 and 5970.

jareklajkosz said:
What his point was is that when going from, say, a 5870 to a 5970, at current prices, you're paying nearly double the price for MAYBE a 25-33% increase in performance. The scaling is pretty terrible because the PCI-E bus is a huge bottleneck for the really powerful cards. This is why you don't see the 5970 getting double the scores on Furmark as compared to the 5870. At least, I think that's what his point was.


With the x58 boards, you should have x16 for both slots. You're not going to have that bottleneck.

However, if your considering getting a 5870 now, and a 5970 after the prices drop (if they do), I'd suggest just getting the 5970 now. You obviously want the extra power, and getting in the 5970 will likely not cost you any extra over getting a 5870 now, and a 5870 later, as it's only 50% more expensive than the 5870 now and it's not likely the 5870 will drop to half cost any time in the reasonable future.

And you do bring up a decent point, the scaling on tri-fire is questionable. Just get what you want now, and it does give you the option to tri or quad fire later if you feel the need which I doubt you will.

bystander said:
With the x58 boards, you should have x16 for both slots. You're not going to have that bottleneck.

However, if your considering getting a 5870 now, and a 5970 after the prices drop (if they do), I'd suggest just getting the 5970 now. You obviously want the extra power, and getting in the 5970 will likely not cost you any extra over getting a 5870 now, and a 5870 later, as it's only 50% more expensive than the 5870 now and it's not likely the 5870 will drop to half cost any time in the reasonable future.

And you do bring up a decent point, the scaling on tri-fire is questionable. Just get what you want now, and it does give you the option to tri or quad fire later if you feel the need which I doubt you will.


You bring up a good point about the pricing, but another thing came to my mind when I heard about the Vapor-X Sapphire 5870 - if I wait to get a 5970 later (if I even bother doing that), I can get a 5970 with a better aftermarket cooler as well.

i would check the forums out on the vapor x 5870 cards before jumping on the bandwagon,are there issues with the stock heatsink?i almost bought a 4870 sapphire with the vapor x cooling buy it had issues blowing hot air back into the case,it was too loud and all around not a great idea,so i didnt bother with it.

you seem to research everything very well anyways,so its your baby,just grab the darn 5970 and be done with it.i love the hell outta my 295 gtx,and this 5970 is the next great beast,the killer of mighty nvidia 295 gtx's everywere.its a mean card and you wont be needing an upgrade any time soon,thats for sure.

i7 920 with a 5970 is an insane piece of equipment,i wish i still worked,lol!!!!

crossfirekid said:
i would check the forums out on the vapor x 5870 cards before jumping on the bandwagon,are there issues with the stock heatsink?i almost bought a 4870 sapphire with the vapor x cooling buy it had issues blowing hot air back into the case,it was too loud and all around not a great idea,so i didnt bother with it.

you seem to research everything very well anyways,so its your baby,just grab the darn 5970 and be done with it.i love the hell outta my 295 gtx,and this 5970 is the next great beast,the killer of mighty nvidia 295 gtx's everywere.its a mean card and you wont be needing an upgrade any time soon,thats for sure.

i7 920 with a 5970 is an insane piece of equipment,i wish i still worked,lol!!!!


The air being blown back into the case on the Vapor-X wouldn't be an issue with my case. The thing with the Vapor-X system is that it runs around a whopping 18C cooler under load in stress tests. There aren't issues with the stock cooler, but the Vapor-X system is just better. My ONLY concern is that one review site had issues with OC'ing the Sapphire card any higher than it already was, but they probably didn't use tools to overvolt it either. Anyways, I already purchased the Vapor card, if I don't like it, there's always the RMA button. :D  I suppose I'll keep this thread updated once I get the card in around a week (damn thing being shipped outta Cali... :(  ).

crossfirekid said:
oh yeh

ive got a 295 GTX ,they dont EVER seem to drop in value?this contradicts a previous statement,which is ok.


you can be an early adopter or just buy the one you can afford to live with,on a single lcd screen,really a
5850 would be great,a 5870 better,and the BADBOY 5970,youll be the talk of the block/lanparty....



I meant to say that buying two 300$ cards in 4 years is better than using one 600$ cards for 4 years.

That way you can play at high resolution for a longer time.

Chances are the 5870 will last me until my next video card purchase, a 6000 series or maybe even the 7000 series if we're up to that by then. :D 

I don't intend to play any FPS games at all, I have no interest in them, and they seem to be the most graphically intensive games for the most part. I'm an RPG guy.
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