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I have an EAH4870 1024 that is about a year old.

I am looking to upgrade in preparation for BF3 and Skyrim but I just do not know what to buy.

I was looking at this ASUS 6870

also looking at this MSI 6850

and this MSI Hawk talon attack GTX460

I have read through alot of stuff about these cards and I am leaning towards the GTX460. What I do not like about it is that it achieves roughly the same FPS in BFBC2 with all settings maxed out as my (heavily overclocked) 4870. I have also read that the 6800 series performance is the same if not lower than the 5800 series performance which I also do not like.

I am looking for a serious upgrade that I can use for the next few years and I want it to stay at or under 200$.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card-game-performance-radeon-hd-6670,2935.html


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If you can Crossfire that would be your most economical upgrade, if you can't I'd go with the 6870 or 6850 in that order.

I could crossfire those cards, but I would be concerned with my PSU. It is a 750W raidmax that has 2 rails, one for video cards, and 1 for everything else. Since those video cards do not have PCI-E plugs, I would effectively have a 375W PSU for my entire computer which, combined with my 140W quad core, would not be able to handle that kind of load.

If I were running a 650W corsair or something, I may bite on dual 6670, but I just cannot do it.

Do you have anything backing up the suggestion on the 6870/6850? From what I have read, they arent an upgrade from the 5800 series cards at all.


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I have my system setup as follows:

CPU: AMD 965BE 3.4Ghz
RAM: 8gigs OCz DDR3 1600
Mobo: MSI 790FX-GD70
PSU: Raidmax Hybrid 750W
HDD: WD 1TB caviar black
GPU: ASUS eah4870 1024

All in a Raidmax Smilodon case containing 13 fans. It is a big case that will probably hold anything and the mobo has quad PCI-E slots for four way crossfire.

I wanted to leave my options open with the Mobo for future upgrades. I may do a 1000W antec 4 rail with dual crossfired cards in the future, so I would like to look at a single card for now that will be a viable card for crossfire a year down the road.


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Something I am interested in is this 5770:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121363

I know ASUS is good about their rebates, and I could potentially crossfire two of these for ~180$.

They have excellent clock speeds (1200Mhz memory clock o_0), directx 11, 2560 resolution, GDDR5, and they only take 1 6pin connector.

I may look into these some more.

Why not just go all out and get a 6970? I'm ordering mine on wednesday!

I decided to bite the cost and go with dual MSI 6850 Cyclones. They have solid clock speeds at 800Mhz core and 1050 memory. The two will run me about 300$ after rebates, (149.99 each).

From what I have read on tom's hardware, running these in crossfire smokes the pants off of single cards that cost over $500 and that is not even taking into consideration the overclocking potential of ati cards.