i have had great luck with scaling on my cards, its never 100% but it still puts up better number then the 5870 by a decent margin across the board.

i can buy 4890's brand new for $199.99 each, i am yet to see a 5870 under $400 and that will only get higher and higher as demand goes up and supply goes down much like the 4770.

650watt psu is all that's required for 4890 crossfire, i'd say most people that demand this kind of performance already have at least that.

don't get me wrong at $300 the 5870 would be a great deal even $350 but no way is it worth it at $400+, and nvidia being at retarded price levels is no excuse. 5870x2 i would suspect now will be over $600, is disappointing for me since it was my planned upgrade path.

So who's going to be the guinea pig and buy one? I suspect one would be a tad overkill for me for playing Battlegroup42, RvS, GRAW2 and C&C And of course I need a lot of other things a whole lot more than yet another video card.

How are your 4770's treating you doc?

Yeah, I really can't justify putting money aside for the 5800 series cards, as much of a performance geek as I am.

I keep hearing about "The rule of 50%" when it comes to upgrading graphics.

Basically, it's not worth it long term to purchase a card that will only give you less than 50% performance increase.

So I wouldn't even think of ever grabbing one of these cards unless I knew I would get a 50% performance increase over my 4870.

I say if you can afford it. Go for it.

I can't

They were about 2min away from not being in my system anymore But I thought about it too much and missed the deal. I've got to do some more OC'd runs anyway to see if I can break 20K in '06. Seems CF and multiple monitors becomes more of a pain in the asset with every driver release.

I can give y'all the 100% guarantee I'm getting one (a 2GB version, even if it is the 6 display model) and a 3rd monitor in January once I get back from visiting my parents I don't have to buy a new mobo, or cpu, or ram, or power supply, and I like that.

The drivers would have matured, crossfire will be working and NV would have released their new cards which would drive the cost down.

MB sells the GTX285 for almost 450$, which the 5870 wipes the floor with (most of the time, barring TWIMTPB green goblin conspiracies).

AMD isn't crying they are going to sell all the cards they make even at 400$ CDN. It's *generally* faster than 4890's in crossfire and GTX295, while consuming less power. Some people overlook the total cost of ownership and if you can save 100$ over the lifetime of product from power savings alone, it's worth it.

I was thinking the same thing. Pay a little more for the card up front, a little less on the power bill over time. Sure why not do a 4890 as prices are lower, but pwr consumption compared to a 5870 is much higher so are ya really saving? - no.

Steve-o I am anxious to see you're "review" of the card when you get one. benchies and all that good stuff. Too bad there wasnt a readily available dx11 game to try it on, all in good time.

Also, hence the Januany timeline, that and Windows 7 has to be loaded up on my box, hoping for speedy boot times on the SSD raid heh. Then I can use the raptor for backup purposes since I don't trust a raid 0 that much, even if it's on a decent raid controller.

yeah sometime in Jan would most likely be better. Gives ATI the chance to get a couple if not few driver releases out for the 5 series. I am anxious to see the numbers in the coming months of win7,dx11 and the 5 series cards( a few visuals wouldnt hurt either).

Win7 is very fast for shut down and boot up now, faster than xp, on ssd raid it would down right retarded. I will be moving to win7 on my main rig in a couple months myself.

On a side note I managed to snag a 4890 for $182 delivered( will have it in a few days). Thus holding off on anything 5 series for a minimum of ~6 months.

Does anyone know what the ETA for the 5870's are for MB and what they are kinda going for? I've got some birthday money coming in and I wanna do a fishing expidition, as long as someone is willing to buy my 4870 for a reasonable price....heh.

As for the 5870x2...


yeah, not gonna happen, and not because of the price...that looks to be over 14" long lolz.

2 of those badboys and you got 10Tflops of computational juice!

They look appealing and the x2 is more appealing.

All the "Blown out of proportion" charts look goof for tht seriously i'll have to see how it goes first hand.

...is more appealing...lemme know the timeline on that one instead Mr. MB! (end October i hear)

wow that x2 is massive, i think it would be simplier for me to wait 8 months for the price to come down and grab 2 single cards.

Personally I figured they would have done a double wide solution or perhaps a little bit taller rather than the stupid long copout.


voodoo 5 6000 on top, ati rage fury maxx on bottom


ahhh the good old days

You're telling me - I still have my first Nvidia AGP card in an old chassis somewhere buried in my room. Top of the line stuff - small too. Now it just looks like ATI is trying to make people appear to be compensating for something with the size of their cards.