To x-fire or not

[Chevron]

I cant believe im starting this thread as I'm usually the one dishing at advice but in not sure what to do...

So I need a new graphics card and I saw frontosa has the Sapphire 5850 Toxic edition. That was gonna be my first choice till I saw that the stock 5870 is only like R600 or R700 more. So the first thing is stock 5870 or custom 5850?

To confuse things more, two 5770s in x-fire genrally beat a 5870 but since I dont have a x-fire board itd be an extra cost, but will be about the same price as the 5870 for more performance in general. But im running 6gigs ddr2 at tge moment and dont see the point of getting ddr2 board again.

Any thoughts? Or anyone wanna buy my mobo and 6gigs ram? Its an ecs 790gx board(3months old).

Sigh...

Im leaning towards the custom 5850 as well its custom, but the stock 5870 isnt that much more.

Btw I'm running a corsair 650watt power supply so have enough juice for any option and running a resolution of 1920*1200.

 

[Synaesthesia]

I'd say get a single card rather than crossfire. As for the 5870 or 5850, I'm leaning towards the 5850 - it's perfect for 1920x1200.

It obviously also depends - you didn't say exactly how much the cards were, and how custom the 5850 is. But if you look at the benchmarks, there's very little difference between the 5850 and 5870 in general so the 5850 is usually better value.

Anandtech's review is a great resource

 

[chickenbeef]

I'd get the 5850 and OC it to 5870 speeds (can be done with the reference cards, you shouldn't have a problem).

Obviously if you have the cash to blow the 5870 would be the best single GPU choice.

 

[Chevron]

Ok cool. Guess it is best to stick with the 5850. The whole reason I originally wanted it was becuase of how close to the 5870 it performs.