atalkingbear

Just got a new rig (the one in my sig), and I'm looking for a new video card. My budget is $200, new or used. I was thinking about a 4890, or maybe two 4850s? And my mobo is only capable of x8/x8 crossfire. How much less of a performance gain is that from x16/x16?

I'm running a 23.6" Asus monitor through HDMI. Thanks!

meticadpa

HD4850 CrossFire would be slightly better than a 4890 at that resolution, if they're the 1GB cards.

And x8 CrossFire is about a 5% performance drop, not much at all.

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CrazyNikel

I would get the 4890 if I was you, xfire and SLI are nice for games that support it(key word support). A single powerful card solution is always the better choice IMO

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Darksylum

id get a 5770 for now until the 5870s drop in price or the 5890s eventualy come out. In your case id go that was since your using a fairly basic dual core. you would never see the full potential of the 4890 and even with the slight performance gain of the 256bit memory interface and higher clock speed of the core, the 4890 does not have DX11 support. its not a big issue right now but soon it will be. Just to keep yourself in the main stream, save yourself about 20 bucks and get DX11 support. The 5770 is also alot easier on the PSU, so if your power unit isnt the best in the world, you might have problems with the 4890.

as far as the MB goes, most people will say the X8 isnt going to hurt you unless its not PCIE 2.0, But I personaly found X16 slots to give a nice boost when running high end cards.

But yea with your current setup, keep yourself ahead a bit and use something your system can actualy take full advantage of, the 5770 is your best option as far as an ATi card atm. When you step up to a high clock quad core and get a good psu then you can start looking at realy high performance cards.

oops my bad i didnt read that right, you have a quad, Id still try to stay feature proof with an HD5xxx series card. You do not have near the power to operate a 4890. you might run into power issues.

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Darksylum

crazynikel you = fail, maybe if you ran games in window mode a single card would be your best option but with a nice big screen and any game made in the last 3 years an SLi or crossfire system is by far the way to go. Single card setups are just starting to make a come back, until the Nvidia GTX200 series and the HD5000 series, single cards did not realy have the punch to realy push DX10 games and with DX11 on the rise its going to become even more of an issue especialy in High resolutions like 1080P and 1920x1200+, your going to need real power!

__________________
Do unto your computer as you would do unto your wife!
A head shot is only as good as the fps and ping that it is shot on.
Crapping red pew pew on the green boys since 1994!
You can't stop the RED TIDE

Sepiida

I would second the 5770 unless you really want the performance. There have been some driver issues, but it seems to be hit or miss. The 5770 performs a little worse than my 4870; however it scales really well in crossfire.

Even thought there are not a lot of games our right now for DX11 it will save you some money when/if you wanted to use DX11. Crossfire isn't supported in everything and can be buggy at times, but it seems to be a good option if you don't want to spend too much.

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atalkingbear

Okay, I have settled for a 5770 now, and most likely another one down the road. Obviously no one knows for sure, but should I order now? Will there be a price drop anytime soon?

tangcoral

I think the card has been in the market for a month now, i doubt there would be a price drop or more than $10 give it another 2 months at least for price drop.

Darksylum

agreed unless there is a major black friday sale on newegg, i do not see any real savings espeicaly if your in the USA, the Dollar just keeps tumbling down and that makes prices slowly but surely go up.

__________________
Do unto your computer as you would do unto your wife!
A head shot is only as good as the fps and ping that it is shot on.
Crapping red pew pew on the green boys since 1994!
You can't stop the RED TIDE