Recommendations for New 1920x1080 Build (Barts or Cayman?)

[ragingmercenary]

As seen from the release of the HD 6870 and the HD 6850 and the subsequent benchmarks, the Barts cards have an excellent price/performance ratio and are able to compete with both Nvidia's current mid- and higher-end offerings as well as ATI's 5800 series. With that in mind, what can we expect from AMD's upcoming Cayman cards?

I am currently building a rig for my dorm around a mATX form factor (like a LAN build) and the case I have, a Lian Li A05N, has plenty of depth to fit even the longest cards. I game at 1920x1080 and I prefer to turn up all the eye candy in games, so at least 16x AF and 4x or 8x AA. For best performance, should I Crossfire either the 6850 or 6870, or should I wait and see in a single 6900 series card can deliver similar performance. By the way, my budget is ~$1700 and the longest I can wait for Cayman is late-December; will they be out by then?

System so far (all prices from Newegg):

Lian Li A05N ($90)
Core i7 930 ($200 at Microcenter)
EVGA 121-BL-E756-TR ($210)
Corsair AX850 ($200)
Muskin 3x2GB DDR3 1600 ($160)
G.Skill Phoenix 100GB SSD ($210)
WD Caviar Black 1TB ($80)
Corsair H50 ($80)

Thats about $1250 for the system without the video card(s) so that leaves $450 for graphics.

 

[rolli59]

For your budget couple of HD6850 in crossfire, there is some crossfire benches in here http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/amds-radeon-6870-6850-renewing-competition-in-the-midrange-market

 

[aznshinobi]

^ Best deal to look at. But... I'd wait a little. Get the price wars to even out a bit. But not only that, wait till the Cayman's release. Until they release, their performance is all speculation. But if it is anything like how the Barts came out. It should be VERY good. It's expected to beat a single 480 by 20%. So... Maybe wait? But currently the 6850 hold a very good standing in single and CF performance. Power consumption should also be less than that of the 480 (meaning the cayman)

 

[ragingmercenary]

^ Best deal to look at. But... I'd wait a little. Get the price wars to even out a bit. But not only that, wait till the Cayman's release. Until they release, their performance is all speculation. But if it is anything like how the Barts came out. It should be VERY good. It's expected to beat a single 480 by 20%. So... Maybe wait? But currently the 6850 hold a very good standing in single and CF performance. Power consumption should also be less than that of the 480 (meaning the cayman)

I'm very anxious about seeing how Cayman performs (hopefully it'll blow us away!). But yeah, my decision is between 2 x 6850s or one of the 6900s, it just depends on how well they turn out. Right now I'm hoping that the high end Cayman offering will be just as good as two 6850s so that I can get one of those and then crossfire it in the future.

 

[jyjjy]

The Caymans should be out in about a month. If tradition holds overclocking an HD6950 will likely end up being the way to go. Best to save a dual card setup for an upgrade when the time comes.

 

[ragingmercenary]

Best answer selected by ragingmercenary.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey