Best Single GPU Solution

[edifice]

I am hoping someone can offer me some good sound advice?

I am looking to soon upgrade my GPU and I don't want to make the same mistake as I did the last time. I upgraded to a Radeon 5870 2gb Eyefinity, and yeah I now realise that there is not much if any difference between the 1 and 2gb versions if your not taking advantage of the 6 screen scenario, which I am not!! A classic example of not doing my homework before parting with my money. It is a good card and does a good enough job I suppose, but I am very tempted by the GTX 580 (the 590 seems too expensive) and 6990 although it seems a powerhouse, I have been told that the tessalation on AMD/ATI cards is not up to that of the nVidia equivalents?!


So can anyone please give me their advice as to what the best solution would be? I have an 850 watt PSU, using a 1920 x 1080 full HD screen, 6gb of OCZ triple channel RAM @ 1066 mhz, all attached to a Gigabyte X58A-UD3R mobo (revision1) even if anyone seems to think there is no reason to upgrade I would be grateful to hear your views too?!


Thanks in advance,

 

[shrkbay]

no AMD and nVidia tesselation power is more or less the same, 590 and 6990 is somekind of CF/SLI *which have a lot of issues* means they are not single GPUs, best single GPU is 580 then 6970, 570 etc, if you care about bang for buck then from the top 3 cards *580,6970,570* best has the 6970, very close to it 570 and then 580, if money isn't an issue then go for 580, it has everything you need, but probably all of these cards would be an overkill for 1080p

 

[rambostyrer]

the 5870 is more than enough for a 1920*1080 setup (I would even say that it is overkill)

but id you MUST have a new card, the 6850 1gb will do a good job in that resolution, but if you have the money. a 6950 1gb is a good solution also. Absolutely no reason to go above a 6950 in that resolution (I assume this is for gaming)??

None of these cards are faster than your 5870, but will support Tesselation, DX11 and crossfire better than the 5870, but that for me is a weak argument, when you have such a powerfull car already.

So if I were you, i would keep my 5870, and spend the money and something different, or save it for the next rig, a SSD or a bigger monitor.

 

[jay2tall]

If you have a 5870 at 1080P res, why are you upgrading? That card should push some pretty high settings on most games. Maybe with the exception of high AA it should be fine. The best single GPU card out is a GTX580. I would not get any of the dual GPU cards, GTX590 or 6990. I actually sold my 5970 for the GTX580 as I had terrible driver issue and it ticked me off one to many times. Its nice to be stable again.

My honest recommendation would be to hold onto your card and wait for the next gen. Like Rambostyrer said upgrade something else. If you have money burning a hole in your pocket look at a new gaming mouse, keyboard, SSD for OS, or something like that. I dunno. Or just save it for now.

 

[shrkbay]

yeah i agree with people 5870 is still capable of performing head to head with new high-end cards like 6950/560 and 580 is only 2 steps above them..

 

[jay2tall]

You can also give it a little bit of an OC to squeeze out some more performance.

 

[ionut19]

If you want the better card try getting the EVGA GTX580 water cooled model. Overclock it to hell and back, you should be able to get near 1Ghz core clock with it and keep the temps around or under 50 in full load. That would be the single(gpu) fastest video card solution right now.