BF3 upgrade. Crossfire HD 5850?

[dlong]

Hello,

Im looking to upgrade my comp for BF3. I have a HD 5850, i5 cpu with 4 gb of ram.

Im having trouble deciding whether I should crossfire my HD 5850 or wait for new video card releases.
At the moment, HD 5850s are hard to find. New ones go for 250-320, and used ones on eBay go for about 130-230.


So I guess my question is,

Is the performance increase of Cross-firing two HD 5850s worth the price at this point in time? or are there better options?

I am a low-budget college student btw :/


Thanks

-LongD

 

[celpas]

Wait for its release.A single 5850 maxes out the game easiliy indx 11.Here are some benchmarks of the alpha trial at max settings at 1080p

 

[jyjjy]

Yeah, I would wait for the final release of the game as well as you very well might not feel the need for an upgrade.
Have you overclocked the HD5850? If you have a model with voltage control they can often overclock a truly large amount which could be a nice free upgrade by itself.

 

[swifty_morgan]

BBC3 is supposed to tax video cards more than BBC2. I have a 1gig 5850. It sits idle because it can't keep up with even some older "demanding" games. Won't play BBC2 smoothly for a hill of beans. Way too much going. I wouldn't waste my money on another one. If you game above 1600 and wish to have reasonably higher settings it's time to switch over to a 2gig card. Cross firing will still only give you 1gig.

 

[dlong]

@Swifty_morgan
Not true, I play BFBC2 at 1920-1080 at max settings smoothly with my hd 5850. Id like to do the same when BF3 comes out.

@Jyjjy
Yea i guess i shouldnt rush it, the game doesnt come out until Oct. 25 so I might as well see how my computer runs it. And no I havent OC'ed my GPU, that totally slipped my mind. Ive never OC'ed anything before, so Ima have to do some research. I have the Sapphire version btw.

@celpas
Thanks for the benchmarks, i wonder how different the final version will be. Just have to wait now.

 

[swifty_morgan]

@Swifty_morgan
Not true, I play BFBC2 at 1920-1080 at max settings smoothly with my hd 5850. Id like to do the same when BF3 comes out.

Glad you're satisfied.

 

[ps3hacker12]

just so you know you could crossfire that 5850 with a 5970 if you wanted:

 

[jyjjy]

just so you know you could crossfire that 5850 with a 5970 if you wanted:
http://sites.amd.com/PublishingImag.../WebBannerJPEG/AMD_CrossfireX_Chart_1618W.jpg

Not a particularly good idea. That would be 3-way Crossfire which really doesn't scale particularly well on, especially on cards before the current HD6000 series. Also the GPUs in the HD5970 would be limited down to the number of shaders present in the HD5850 for it to even work. This setup probably wouldn't be too much more effective than a single HD5970 and there are better choices for the money than buying the HD5970 at this point.

@Swifty_morgan
Not true, I play BFBC2 at 1920-1080 at max settings smoothly with my hd 5850. Id like to do the same when BF3 comes out.

@Jyjjy
Yea i guess i shouldnt rush it, the game doesnt come out until Oct. 25 so I might as well see how my computer runs it. And no I havent OC'ed my GPU, that totally slipped my mind. Ive never OC'ed anything before, so Ima have to do some research. I have the Sapphire version btw.

Swifty's standards for "smooth" are notoriously high around here. I would judge for yourself if at all possible rather than taking advice based on them.
As for overclocking a video card it's not that hard. I would recommend using Afterburner;
http://downloads.guru3d.com/Afterburner-2.0.0-Final-download-2562.html
It's a nice program. Easy to use with a good UI.
There are several Sapphire versions of the card so just that info doesn't say for sure. I believe the reference model they sold had voltage control but the others did not. You should be able to get a nice OC even if you can't up the voltage but if you can these cards often can get up around 1ghz which is an impressive 38% over reference speeds.

 

[ps3hacker12]

He could still crossfire with a 5870.

 

[jyjjy]

Crossfire with an HD5870 would be the same as crossfiring with another HD5850, just more expensive.

 

[celpas]

I have seen the visuals of the alpha build and I can say it looks just as good as crysis 2.It doesn't look better than crysis 2 meaning it should give the same performance which crysis 2 gives at max settings (thats if its optimised well).Honestly some levels in crysis 2 had me staring open mouthed at the beauty.Just look at the visuals of the terminus level.If you remove the gun from the screen,you would think it was a photo and it STILL ran at 35-40 fps on my setup at max settings dx 9.If BF3 is more demanding than crysis 2 while looking worse it will just be another console port.Wait until the game is released and see how your rig performs.Besides the 7000 series are just around the corner and they are expected to give nearly twice the performance of a gtx 580 (I may be wrong here)

 

[dlong]

Thanks for all the replies. I will most likely wait until I play the game to see if my GPU needs upgrading. Until then I will keep looking for good deals on ebay for another hd 5850.

 

[dlong]

Best answer selected by dlong.

 

[richard123john]

Thanks for all the replies. I will most likely wait until I play the game to see if my GPU needs upgrading. Until then I will keep looking for good deals on ebay for another hd 5850.

just to tell you i run to 5850s in crossfire and i played bf3 on ultra on one card so to cards would smash bf3 up

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey