Building new system, Need best videocard

HD 5850 for good FPS or a HD 5870 for grate FPS

or if u wanna overkill it:5970  

Kari's suggestion of 5970 isn't overkill if you're aiming for 2 years of use.

HD5850, it OCs extremely well, past the performance of an HD5870.
Get another in crossfire when necessary.
Of course if you are rolling in money you can just get an HD5970.

Apparently you can flash the 5830's bios to 5870. Maybe a 5830 wouldn't be out of the question?

Frankly none of those would seriously challange even a HD5770 unless you're looking at 8XAA-and at that resolution that would just be silly;)
But, for a new, gaming build the HD5850 seems like a better choice, especially if you can OC it.

All the flashing of the BIOS does is set the default clock speeds equal to an HD5870s. It does not actually enable the missing ROPs and shaders to make it an HD5870. Seems kind of pointless to me as you can just OC it with Rivatuner and the like anyway.

Seems like its a unanimous ATI.... No one likes the GeForce SLI Setups?

^not really, nvidias cards are like 2 year old tech by now...
and all the new stuff isnt fast enough, and fermi isnt here yet.

Because Radeon CrossFire will pwn it all the same.  

Personally I believe its better to Crossfire 2 lower cards that equal to a higher card for lesser price, but that's just me. 2x5770 in crossfire is a pretty good setup, O'Ced=5870 in performance and sometimes my rig beats the 5870 in some games. However, if you are looking to spend ~300 on your gaming card the only 58 series that is below that price is the 5830, which currently has sporadic availability and isn't but 10-15% faster then the 5770. Personally if I were you and being you I didn't mind 2 cards instead of one (which I actually currently have lol), I would go 2x5770 They cost the same as a 5850, and rival a 5870 which costs $400+. BUT if your a single card man all those games you listed will play on the $250-$270 5830. But again if you bought 2x5770 it would only be around $30 more than the 5830, out performs the 5850, and rivals a 5870. Not to mention dual card setups need updating less regularly. You could get the 2x5770 and potential wait a generation or two and trade those in for a single of the 68XX or 78XX series.

Iwould agree except that Crossfire introduces latencies and it isn't even a 100% boost, more like 80%. And this probably not something a microATX dude could do, or a LGA 1156 guy would have even less of a boost.

nrnx, my mindset i think would be going a single higher end card (aslong as its not too much overpriced vs 2 lower end cards that put out better performance) because in a few months or so downthe line when they get cheaper... CrossFire those 2 cards. to get a little pick me up  


I honestly have no problem if buying 1 $350 card right now sill serve all my purposes at the moment, and 6 months down the road buy a 2nd at like $200 to Crossfire to improve a bit.


It all depends on performance.

Advanced Maxed settings? with 8x 16x?


May i also ask your full PC Specs? I'm going to be doing a whole new machine also.

I would recommend 2 HD5770s but the HD5850 is better buy. They are essentially the same price and the HD5850 with the voltage bumped can simply OC a HUGE amount(1ghz+), well past the stock HD5870 performance. On top of that it fits in one slot, uses less power and has no crossfire compatibility/scaling issues. Also crossfired HD5770s are actually limited somewhat by their 128 bit memory bus. The average frame rates are high and on par with the HD5870 but the minimum frame rates(important for smooth play) suffer in comparison because of the low memory bandwidth. You can read more about it here;
http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-h...
The general rule is don't start off with a crossfire/sli setup. Get the fastest single card you can afford and leave crossfire/sli as an upgrade path. While crossfired HD5770s are nice for the money the HD5850 is also too good of a value to the point that breaking that rule doesn't really make sense.