Can get a 5870 need help with a quick decision...

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XvMMvX

[H]ard|Gawd
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Jan 13, 2005
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I have a 5870 on hold for 399.99 (433 after tax), I am in the middle of an i5 build and got the great deal this weekend on at Frys (Giga UD3R and i5-720 for 200).

My question is that I had originally set out to purchase a 5850 but can't find any in stock and really do not want to play the waiting game. I do not do much gaming but planned to do more on the PC with the new build.

Games I Play/Would like to:

Dragon Age
Crysis (doesn't have to be full force just want to check it out to see what the fuss is about)
Emulators (All the way up to PS2)
Starcraft 2
Diablo 3
And a few older ones that I know will not have a problem no matter what I choose.
I will probably dive into more since I will have a decent rig now

The reason for this thread is I can not decide whether to just go get the 5870 and be done with it even though I feel that it is overkill (can afford it but I do not like to waste money). Or should I get a 5770 and then see how that does with what I want to play?

I had planned for the first card to be a hold over (125$ 4 series card) but then bumped it to a 5850 just so I do not double spend, now I am stuck and don't know what to do.

I game on a Sony 32' bravia 1080p television, would like to play at that resolution, I will drop to 720p if necessary.

Thoughts?

I have to decide on the 5870 in the next few hours or I lose it.

Thanks In Advance.
 
I bought a 5870 because the 5850 was out of stock.. and I certainly do not regret it..

I'd get the 5870 :)
 
I know you guys are going to rail on me but I am passing on this card...I just can't justify spending that kind of cash on a card when I haven't had the want to upgrade my desktop in 5 years (AMD 64 3200+, BFG 7800GS).

I am going with the XFX 5770 and if I push it to the max and want more I will upgrade once I see what the next gen Nvidia brings....just want to get the i5 up and running and start on the home movie network project.

Thanks for the input though.
 
I will never understand purchasing a budget video card, but then again my uses are different than yours probably. It just seems for me, that I always find a need for the extra power and the difference in cash is usually useless anyway as a few parking tickets or trip to the dentist just puts me down the money saved anyway, so what have you saved with a lesser card? 100 bucks? I would rather spend the 100 and have a card that was viable for longer. Im still using two 8800ultras in SLI, the first one cost me $600 and the second cost me $200. I got my $800 worth and then some, really could stick with these another year or two if I wanted, but I couldn't have done that with the lesser cards available at the time.
 
You probably game daily on your PC, I don't. I have not been heavly into PC gaming since I got my AGP 6800 GT. I bought a PS2 (then a PS3 etc) and have never looked back. My PC always played Starcraft, Emulators, and such just fine so why upgrade. The only reason I am upgrading now is for processing power for video encoding. For what I play and what I have read the only game that I am concerned about is Dragon Age and I will scale the settings to get the best results.

The price difference is $263 to be exact, there is a lot I can do with that money as opposed to putting it into something that I may or may not use to its fullest. For example, I can order my brackets to hang all my TVs in my house, or that is half of the media center I want to build etc etc etc.

If I max this card out and feel that I can justify it then I might splurge and get something else down the road....
 
Nothing wrong getting a HD5770 for your stated uses. :)
 
For light gaming the 5770 is plenty. I picked up the 5750 simply because even the 5770 is overkill for me. To be honest my old 8800GTS is plenty for what I currently play but figured why not splurge during the build. Plenty of people, even power users don't always need a ton of GPU power. And even if these are "budget" cards, they will still run most anything at moderate level's and older games like butter. Add in the great HTPC virtues of the 57XX series and it can be a really good buy. And that money saved can go towards something you'll see an everyday benefit from like more RAM or an SSD. I think if more people were honest with themselves about what they need vs. what they want you'd see a lot more money going towards SSD/RAM than high end GPU's. Everyone has different needs in their builds, and not everyone needs a top end GPU. No harm in that.
 
XvMMvX said:
I know you guys are going to rail on me but I am passing on this card...I just can't justify spending that kind of cash on a card when I haven't had the want to upgrade my desktop in 5 years (AMD 64 3200+, BFG 7800GS).

I am going with the XFX 5770 and if I push it to the max and want more I will upgrade once I see what the next gen Nvidia brings....just want to get the i5 up and running and start on the home movie network project.

Thanks for the input though.
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Nah, if we knew you had an amd3200 we'd say "upgrade the rest of your system before you screw with the video card" Your 5770 is gonna be super-bottlenecked with a single core athlon64. I got a 3800x2 and when I had a 4850 I was only getting maybe 60-70% of what the card is capable of, and sometimes alot less. edit: misread:p Thought you were considering the 5870 on the old machine when I read that post. The i5/5770 should be a great match to a moderate gaming/htpc machine. I just put in an order for the xfx 5770 myself, big step up from an x1800xl :D
 
I would honestly wait. If you're willing to spend the cash on one, why not get one? The price difference between that and the 5770 is enough to justify the 5850. If you've waited so long to upgrade, why not wait a little more? Your system will be plenty powerful for a long time and the card will complement it well. You will not regret it. I say wait :)
 
I say go with what you feel is best for you. I was thinking of the 5870 myself, but instead went with the 5850 because the rest I will put into my music setup. MIDI controllers don't come cheap! I can easily see myself playing music more than gaming.
 
Slider19 said:
I say go with what you feel is best for you. I was thinking of the 5870 myself, but instead went with the 5850 because the rest I will put into my music setup. MIDI controllers don't come cheap! I can easily see myself playing music more than gaming.
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My system is built for the same purpose. I have a Q9550 at 4.2 and 4 gigs of ram running OSx86 10.5.7 and Vista64. Paired with an MPK49 and Mackie HR824's, this computer makes a fantastic "do everything" machine. :)

Reason 4, ProTools 7 and 8, Digi002, HR824's and saving up for a Roland Fantom G8 (drool).

What about you?
 
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