GTX 480 or XFIRE 5850s

[compulsion]

Cannot make up my mind.


I will be gaming on a 1920x1080 monitor with the following system:

- CPU: i7-930 (OC)
- Mobo: EVGA X58 LE
- RAM: 6GB 1600Mhz
- PSU: 750w Corsair TX
- SSD: Intel 80gb
- HDD: 500gb storage
- Case: Coolermaster HAF 922
- Cooling: Noctua fans


The Xfire 5850s cost ~$100 more than a single GTX 480.

The 5850s seem to perform a bit better now, but i wonder what will happen when newer drivers come out. Would the heat/noise of the 480 be a huge issue with my system?

I don't plan on SLIing 480s. It would cost a ton of money to upgrade the PSU and buy another 480. I am planning on simply buying a shiny new single card way down the road when these chips become obsolete.

Anyway, thanks!

 

[megagabobe1]

i would go for the gtx 480, you got physx, cuda, and you would be able to game with 32aa, with little performnce loss, nvidia card handle aa much better than ati cards. and one more thing, the gtx 480 handles tesselation very good compared to amd's competition

 

[megagabobe1]

and you will save $100 !!!! hehe

 

[wolfram23]

5850s in crossfire destroys any single card including 5970s. So that. But, there are other options. Like Psycho mentions SLI 465s would be good and comparable to CF 5850s.

 

[jibibull]

The single card is always the best solution in my opinion and only if you are rich you must choose the two video cards solution.The gtx 480 as well as the ati 5870 are great for single card choice.Always buy 1 good graphics card , with it you will be able to play all games without problem.Do not forget that in 1-2 years from now there will be a new card which will cost half price as gtx 480 or ati 5870 or 5859 crossfire and that card will be faster than todays top cards.So go with one good card , if you are rich go with the two.

 

[wolfram23]

Me too, Psycho. Single card is easier yes, and there can at times be issues with crossfire/sli in certain games. But some games have issues anyway regardless of set up. The key is overall performance vs cost, and 2 cards is often faster for equal or less money.

 

[sabot00]

At 1920x1080 even 1 5850 would be plenty, then dual 5850 CF would give you much better performance and are beasts at overclocking.
Whereas the GTX 470 can overclock pretty good the GTX 480 is stuck, all the overclocks are mild at best and it radiates a huge amount of heat (nothing the HAF 922 can't take care of though).

To megagabobe1 I'm going to go ahead and call both the "better" 32CSAA and better AA handling

Both the 5000 and GTX 400 series perform AA with the same performance drops, and anything above 4xAA is VERY hard to notice.
As for the 32xCSAA, CSAA, MSAA, AAA, and SSAA are very different.
CSAA, MSAA can't touch texture aliasing as they are both object-based.
AAA/TAA allows for textures to be anti-aliased too, but shader aliasing is still an untouchable, only FSAA/SSAA can do that, they are based on rendering the scene at a higher resolution and then downscaling it, in reality 4xMSAA + TAA/AAA is plenty good, so 32xCSAA is more of a checkbox feature.

 

[masterjaw]

and you will save $100 !!!! hehe

You could also go with 5870 instead and save another $100.

 

[mindless728]

i would go 2 x 5850's, as they would be faster in general than a GTX480

 

[compulsion]

Damn, so much for some kind of consensus. Thank you all for your input, you all actually have good points :O.

My gut is telling me to go with the GTX 480, so i think that is the plan for me. Weighing the pros and cons, they seem to come out about even so i find myself defaulting to Nvidia. They have never done me wrong and i have had some issues with ATI cards in the past.

This forum has been a great help with putting together my new rig. Thank you.

 

[mindless728]

well what ever you choose, good luck, and it should be pretty powerful

 

[wolfram23]

The GTX 480 will be great. Definitely crossfire 5850s will be a bit faster, but yeah there's always potential for problems with CF. I think Nvidia probably has a bit better drivers, and SLI does scale extremely well so maybe down the line you'll add a second 480 or whatever. Anyway, good luck with it!

 

[Guest]

480 is a beast, performance, powerdraw, price heat everything a beast of a card..

One 5850 will do on your resolution..

one 5870 will be ebtter on your resolution

two 5850 will be even better but Overkill the same as a 480.. how long do you want the card to last before next upgrade.

Consider that in your purchase!