GTX295 vs 5870 For Crysis, All I Care About Is Crysis.

well, tbh...

if you care about Crysis, then I imagine you will also care about the upcoming Crysis 2

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and so will ultimately want to get the most modern hardware ready to support it in all its glory and not waste money on yesterdays gear.....

295 GTX vs 5870 - The 295 GTX is the clear winner if you don't mind the drops in min FPS. The 5870 offers smoother gameplay.

295 GTX SLI vs 5970. The 5970 is better here because of the poor quad SLI scaling (since the 295 is already SLI on a stick) as opposed to simple X-fire.

See, i have read mixed reports about this, take for example this benchmark test between a GTX295 and a 5970:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LptlSw4ypeY

The 5970 seems less able to deal with the explosions and at the end of the test it is revealed that it dropped to a maximum lower fps than the GTX, while the 5970 did maintain a higher average FPS.

Smooth gameplay is what i am after, no periods of uber low FPS that get me killed.

I have read elsewhere that Crysis is in someway optimised for Nvidia tech which gives the GTX 295 a distinct advantage with that particular game.

I don't think crytek will put that much development time into DX11 features personally. I also don't think Crysis 2 will be as anymore impressive or resource hungry as Crysis, i'm suspicious it will be less so in both these areas.

Regardless, i'm focused on now and right now i want to play crysis.

In a thread yesterday i illustrated that i'm not a pc gamer, i have grown up with consoles and so have always had one, but discovering the graphical quality of games like Crysis (well actually only Crysis) hae made me want to invest in a machine that can handle it well.

Yes, Crysis is optimized for nVidia GPUs, but I would still opt for the 5970 because of the poor quad SLI scaling. Also have you thought what will you do when you finish Crysis? To buy hardware in the high hundreds for a particular game is not a good investment, especially when the hardware you buy is already a generation old.
My suggestion is to check for more benchmarks in more games and after that make a decision.
In the mean time think about one thing: with 2 SLI 295 you can't go any further (quad SLI is the max). With one 5970 you have the option in the future to buy another one for maximum fun  

There was a pretty long thread about that yesterday, basically i don't want to have to overhaul my whole pc if i can get away with just a GPU upgrade, but if that's not enough i will build a new computer.

GTX295 = £300

5970 = £450

Does a 5970 represent a 50% improvement over a GTX295 on Crysis?

Ofcourse i'd also have t replace Mobo and some say my Q6600 won't overclock enough and will bottleneck the 5970...

I'm not really into games that much that i want a machine that can run them all.

I just bought an Xbox 360 last Xmas because a friend brought COD4 over one time and i wanted to play MW2 and now i like Crysis for PC, so i'm upgrading my computer.

The COD4 and Crysis series of games might be the only series of games i play in my life.

Except halo, but i suspect Halo reach will pale in comparison to MW2 and Crysis.

It seems to me like Fermi is going to be a bust, so when Crysis 2 is released later this year, it's still going to be optimised for the last generation, i don't think crytek are going to push the envelope again, just going to keep it open.

I'm just want whats best for crysis, without being ridiculous and pissing money away.

So all in all it seems that there is no consensus on what would be best, i will probably try either a 5870 or GTX295 first, then decide whether to spring for GTX295 SLI or 5970.

Thanks again.