HD5770 x2 or GTX470?

HD6870! Just because of power efficiency.

wouldn't adding another 5770 cheaper?

I would also go with 6870, much less power consumption. I know you don't want eyefinity, but options are always good to have.

Obviously the actual card is cheaper, but my motherboard doesn't support crossfire, so I'd have to buy one, which is about £60.

5770 Crossfire - £109.99 for card, £60 for Mobo £170
6870 - £180
GTX 470 - £190

So they all work out within £20 of eachother.

rolli59:
that's the problem though, I don't mind about the power consumption all that much. Disregarding Power usage would the GTX470 be any better?

Yes, the GTX 470 is better than the HD6870. If you're willing to spend the extra money, get it.

The GTX470 is a little faster http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/Radeon_HD_6870/2... but the difference is small and hardly noticeable.

I just realized you said you didn't want to OC, in which case the HD6870 may be better. However, if you ever wanted to OC the cards to their maximum capacity, the GTX 470 would be better. The HD6970 doesn't OC well at all, at least not yet.

The GTX470 would be a little faster. There may also be a custom version available (MSI, Gigabyte, Gainward, KFA2, EVGA, etc.) with an improved cooler. The 6870's are all reference type models at this point. And finally, if you play games that feature PhysX, the GTX470 would be the clear choice, as the 6870 does not support PhysX.

The main advantage of the 6870 is power draw, but with heavy gaming the extra cost of the GTX470 on your power bill would only be about 1 or 2 Euro per month, if that.

I'd only OC the amount that's safe cooling with air, tessellation seems pretty impressive as well. I'm still really stuck though, drivers wise whose better? Are there any killer features?

It's so hard to choose

Don't forget about heat. The HD6870 won't produce a lot, but a GTX470 will. That may be an issue if your case doesn't have good airflow through it. Also, what brand/model of PSU do you have?

I can't remember the exact model, but it's a 650w Coolermaster. My Case is an Antec 300, with all the fans possible.

killer features?

somebody mentioned PhysX above, I don't know if you can find many, if any, of those games.

6870? eyefinity, less power draw, less heat, cheap.

you probably can't go wrong with either card at current price point. Just go to store and grab one looks nice.

How much do you want to spend?

What do you want to do that you can't do with your machine right now?

Does your motherboard sufficiently support a dual card setup?

Do you have enough power supply to support more graphics solution?

If that Coolermaster PSU has a little voltage switch on it, it is one of their older, low-quality models. I would not trust it for any more than 80% of what's on its label, and that not efficiently.

I would spend the extra and go with the GTX470. Awesome cards to be fair.. Not much/if anything can stop it, Sli the buggers, they will love you for it.. trust me  

I second that, and pick up a copy of Unreal Tournament III, turn the Hardware PhysX on, and get a huge kick out of the body parts that go flying when you frag someone. Now try that on a card from AMD.

I am a sucker for physx, but, AMD claims that their second generation cards are more efficient at AA and up to 100% better at tesselation.
Does this mean the 6870 may be better for DX11 games when more are released

Compared to the previous 5000 series, the 6000 series has improved tesselation. It still lags behind Nvidia's performance, however:

"However this also highlights the fact that AMD’s tessellation performance still collapses at high factors compared to NVIDIA’s GPUs"
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3987/amds-radeon-6870-685...

"Here we see the new Radeon HD 6870 beefed-up tessellation engine offers up to a 27% boost in performance, according to Unigine, versus the previous generation of Radeon 5000 series products. The Radeon HD 6870 actually just edges out NVIDIA's strong tessellation engine in the GeForce GTX 460 but falls behind the more expensive GeForce GTX 470 by about 23% or so. The Radeon HD 6850 offers roughly a 7% performance increase over the Radeon HD 5850 but can't keep pace with the GeForce GTX 460 and trails it by about 16% or so."
http://hothardware.com/Reviews/AMD-Radeon-HD-6870--6850...

Well, if things stay as they are for the moment then the GTX470 is definitely my first choice, I'll be looking to get the card this Christmas, but by that time, AMD will have released the 6900's and I may rethink,

Thanks for the advice

I used to get 22FPS (HD5770) on Just Cause 2 when running the dark tower benchmark at highest settings and 2x AA, but I've just overclocked my cpu from 2.9GHZ to 3.4GHZ and clocked my GPU to the max settings inside CCC and it now runs at 44FPS with the same settings, and 31FPS with 8xAA all benchmarks done at 1920x1080.

My question though, a bit off topic but, does changing the FSB speed overclock my GPU as well as my CPU?

Changing the FSB speed overclocks your PCIe as well unless you set it back to 100Mhz where it should be. Also it overclocks your RAM unless you change the RAM settings. Take out the OC and open a thread in the overclocking section for OC help.

The HD 6870 will gain more with new drivers, the GTX 470 not so much. But a HD 6950 will be a sweet card to have.

Nope.
But if you have a cpu bottleneck , there is a sharp curve where increased cpu speed and increased memory bandwith can greatly effect your fps results, especially at 1680x1050 or less.
For most games , once you hit, for example, 3.4ghz, almost every speed higher all the way to 4ghz will not give any increases in fps.
Every game is different though.

And as gpu power increases every new generation, or multiple gpu's we see gains in some games all the way up to a 4ghz o/c.

Thats why its good to balance a system. You would not want a 5970 with a 2.8 tri core ideally.