Crossfire or new card?

for 300 bucks you can get two 7770's. crossfired they run right behind a $450 7950

If you are looking at crossfiring cards and have $300 to spend I would go for 2 6850s. I am a fan of XFX and the 6850s crossfire well together.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E168...

Either that or wait for a 7850/7870 and just buy one of them.

and you picked last gen cards because?

For the same reason I am still using my 5970. Because whats in the card is more important the the number out front. 6850s in CF slightly out preform 7770s for the same price.

hmm, that's interesting, i didn't think you could "save money" buying two cards instead of one. I always considered crossfire as a way to save money and catch up to new, expensive cards

What?

by using crossfire on a couple of $150 cards, i thought the performance would be comparable to a $300 card, not a $450 card

You can't CF w/ a 9800 GT ...that would be SLI. You can get a 570 and use the 9800GT for PhysX

@OP
what's your total system specs and your monitor's maximum resolution? what games do you wanna play?

The opposite is true....the mid range cards also arrive in factory OC'd versions which generally can attain higher % OC's then the top end cards, shortening te performance difference between them:

Two factory OC'd 560 Tis get 862 fps in Guru3D Test Suite for $420 or $0.42 per frame.
Two factory OC'd 6950's get 759 fps in Guru3D Test Suite for $480 or $0.63 per frame.
Two 6870's get 701 fps in Guru3D Test Suite for $320 or $0.46 per frame.

Now lets look at the top end cards.....

A 6970 get 526 fps in Guru3D Test Suite for $320 or $0.61 per frame.
A 580 get 616 fps in Guru3D Test Suite for $500 or $0.81 per frame.
A 7950 get 603 fps in Guru3D Test Suite for $450 or $0.75 per frame.
A 7970 get 675 fps in Guru3D Test Suite for $550 or $0.81 per frame.

As you can see, the twin cards offer substantially higher performance than single "top of the line" cards.

The two 6870's give ya 16% more performance than a 7950 for 71% of the price . On a cost per frame basis, the 7970 is 63% more expensive.

The two 6950's give ya 12% more performance than a 7970 for 87% of the price . On a cost per frame basis, the 7970 is 33% more expensive.

The two 560 Ti's give ya 28% more performance than a 7970 for 76% of the price . On a cost per frame basis, the 7970 is twice as expensive.

It looks like two cards is a cost efficient way to go. Since i'm waiting until summer i still have a lot of time to research all possibilities. I don't want to start a flame war/fanboyism rage, but i was originally going to go with a phenom 2 x4 "black edition" maybe oc'd a little, but it seems intel's i5 is a slightly better option when it comes down to gaming. I would probably use a smaller solid state drive for a boot drive and dump everything else on one or two other hard drives. I would like to be able to play bf3, mass effect 3, and for upcoming games such as bioshock infinite i would like to run as high settings as possible.

You can, but it may not be such a good idea. People tend to look at performance charts and take it at face value. Crossfire is a much more troublesome setup, and often deviates quite a lot from the expected performance. Also, by buying two cards at once, you lose the potential crossfire/sli future upgrade (yes, you can add a third card in some cases, but... really?). I wouldn't recommend crossfire unless:

-You already have one card, and adding a second would provide more performance than buying a new one. That's your doubt, but I wouldn't recommend since 2x9800GT wouldn't last performance-wise.

-You cannot achieve the same performance with one card. (not your case)


If you look at the latest "Best VGA for the money", you'll see they favor a single GTX 570 over a pair of 6850's, exactly because of the troubles a dual-card setup comes with. A single GTX 570 can be bought for US$335, or US$315 after rebate.

*I do own a crossfire setup, and the ARE faster than any single card I could have for my money, but only WHEN they work properly. I only have a dual-card setup because the second one was bought later on (2x6870). Would not buy two at once.

yeah, and there are other costs with crossfire too, extra fans for cooling, higher electrical bill, bigger power supply, not to mention little things like headaches from cramming two cards in a case, and potential glitches and stuttering

I suggest waiting as the 7800's should effect the prices of the 560~570's. Another good suggest would be wait till late April for a 670GTX. If leaks are correct it is 15% faster than a 580GTX.

good idea, i've always hated choosing a graphics card, they release so many and the prices are always going down