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New vs Old: Need help deciding on a $300 graphics card

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So I know that the new 6870 just came out and that the 69xx series is due for release soon (Mid november? around $400 price point?) Since I am finishing up the final parts build for my first pc i am wondering with the plethora of cards available now which way I should go?

I really like the vastly improved 6870 crossfire scalability for a second card in the future, and at $250 its got great value. But... with the impending release of the 69xx series I am assuming a drop in 5870 to around $300 area even for things like the vapor-x 5870 (365 with rebate on newegg). Then as always there is the Nvidia cards like the msi frozor 470 for $300 already.

I will be adding a second card in the future, and intend to do a mild bit of overclocking (first computer build not going to go crazy :non:  ).

What does everyone think? Does the lack of non-reference card models hurt the 6870? What about the "bad" crossfire scalability of the 58xx series? How about the extra power and heat of the 470?

Thanks in advance for your help.

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Graphics card Master

I would wait for some reviews of consumer available cards before buying the 6870 if you want to overclock. At this stage they dont look to be very overclockable. As for stock performance, it looks to be very good along with lower power consumption to comparable models. This means you may be able to get away with a lower watt PSU.
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Well I plan on using it for a few purposes. First is gaming, second my wife is a an artist and wants adobe photoshop. Also possibly some light rendering work. As far as computer rig goes plan right now is this:

Case: Cooler Master Haf-932 Black
CPU: i7 950
Fan: Prolimatech megahalems + fans (unknown what fan I am actually going to go with)
Motherboard: Asus X58 Premium
Memory: Kingston hyper X6gb ram triple channel
Video Card: Graphics card (at least a 6870)
Power Supply: XFX 750W
Hard Drive: Western Digital 7200 RPM 1TB 64MB cache
Optical Drive: Asus Black 24x DVD/CD

i'd consider going nvidia, and getting a gtx 460 1gb, like the superclocked evga, and then add another one for sli. easily enough power on the power supply. price came down on them with release of the ati cards looks like. that card for less than $200 is a steal and a half.

I thought about the 460 before the 6870 came out. But most bench marks that i've seen show that the 6870 ($240) for the same price as the evga FTW gtx 460 ($240) performs better, and significantly better than stock 460s (and that is with 1st gen drivers). Also the 6870 crossfire seems to scale as well as sli does making that advantage mute.

Also, just wanted to ask I'm not completely off on my guess that the 69xx series will be way above my price range right?

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Graphics card Master

The 6870 is certainly a better value right now than the 5870. Sure the GTX 460 is also a good deal, but the 6870 beats it by a good margin so if you have the money go with the 6870. You can wait for the 6900 series cards, but I'm sure that price premium over the 6800 series won't really be worth it, but of course with top end cards it's more about want than need or value :lol:  . I say just get the 6870 now.
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