Advice on 4870cf upgrade

putting together a new rig and I'm a little hung up on the gpu selection. current setup is as follows...samsung 26inch 1920x1200 /q9450 / dfi x48t2r ut / 4gigs mushkin / pc power and cooling 910w / his 4870s 1gb in crossfire / win764. so far the new setup is lookin like an i7 2600k / gigabyte z68 ud7 / 8gigs mushkin / same psu / same monitor / and not too sure on the gpu(s). what would be a worthwhile upgrade? lookin to use them on bf3 skyrim and any other new high demanding games with max sliders at said resolution. whatever i get could just be used as a place holder until the new series comes out and matures, in which case whatever i get will be handed down to my brother. i'm not opposed to another cf/sli setup, but if a single works with a nice increase i'm up for that as well. not a fanboy of either camp, loved my 7800gt, and have been rockin these since 08 with nothing but good things to say. budget maybe around the 650 mark? i'm really just looking for noticeable gains from the 4870s. thanks.

For a worthwhile upgrade, you are going to have to look at dual GPU setups. 2 4870s are about equal to a single 6970. The GTX 570 and 580 would only be a little bit faster than your current setup. On your budget, something like 2 6950s, or 2 560Tis would be a good upgrade, you might be able to afford 2 570s, or possibly 2 6970s if you can up your budget a bit more. Which setup to get will depend on if the board you want supports SLI or Crossfire. You may want to go for the 2GB versions of these cards if you intend to run this setup for quite some time, or if you want to run high AA levels on some of the more demanding titles, like Crysis 2 or Metro 2033.

2 6950s are quite good, they outperform the dual GPU 6990 easily. The 2 6970s do offer a bit more power. As a cheapskate, I probably wouldn't consider the performance bump from the 6970s over the 6950s to be worth the extra money, especially on a single monitor setup. In any case, any of the high end SLI or Crossfire setups will be a very nice upgrade from your 4870s, and will run just about any game quite easily on your display.

yes that is very true, wasnt even thinking about dx11. buying one would be the better route, but im going to stick with a pair. if both cards are not needed ill toss one to my brother, hes running my earlier 4850s. thanks again for the replies and the helpful advice.