Want advice for a budgeted graphics upgrade

[Senseputer]

G'day all,

I've recently started a new game (The Secret World) due to the untimely murder of my favourite (City of Heroes).
The change has given me ample time to notice something I knew about, heat. My poor old graphics card gets warm after playing for a while and summer is coming up.
My plan is fairly basic. Upgrade my graphics, without upgrading the demand (from games,etc.), to take advantage of the better efficiency. I do not expect a 30C drop in temperature, but every little bit helps.

My system:
Core i7 2600K (factory settings)
Thermaltake BigWater A80 All In One Liquid CPU Cooling
Antec HCP-850 High Current Pro 850W Power Supply
Gigabyte GA-Z68MA-D2H-B3 Motherboard
GeIL ENHANCE CORSA Series 8GB (2x 4GB) DDR3
AMD/ATI Radeon HD 5870 (Sapphire Vapor-X, factory overclock)

I'm also running my two monitors and tower, through a 1200W UPS.

For the upgrade, I want to get an AMD card (sorry nVidia people).

My questions are mostly to do with CrossFire.
1) Is CrossFire compatible with multiple-monitors? (In the past I've read about some incompatabilities, but I haven't seen anything mentioned that is recent.)
2) What heat-related benefits would I get, from running (for example) two Radeon HD 7770's vs. one Radeon HD 7870?

That's all the questions I can think of right now. For my budget, I've got somewhere around $AU200.00-$AU300.00 available although I might be able to find more.

If anyone not used to the Australian market wants to check prices, try heading to http://staticice.com.au although I'll likely be purchasing from Mwave.com.au or PCCaseGear.com due to familiarity

Other advice on cooling my system down a little is also welcome, as long as it's not crazy expensive.

Thanks for your time.

EDIT: I'm not 100% sure this is the place to put this, but it seemed like the most sensible after glancing over the forum sections. Please advise and/or move it if I got it wrong.

 

[MadMarc]

For this budget the best amd card would be a MSI Radeon HD7870 Hawk 2GB
Yes Crossfire works with multiple monitors (for a single screen it's not necessary)
It's generally better to buy one higher end gpu instead of two lower end, less power consumtion, less heat

How hot does your current gpu run?

 

[Master&Puppet]

I had 5850s before I upgraded in April to my current xf 7950s. The jump between the 5xxx series and 7xxx series in terms of energy efficiency (read heat), raw performance and overclockability is very significant.

I wouldn't recommend getting twin 7770s over a 78/79xx card primarily because of the small dedicated Vram. The 1gb that you currently have will be a significantly limiting factor in FPS at 1080p, let alone running multiple screens.

I'm guessing that you are gaming on just the one screen but have a second for other purposes so the best budget card is definitely a 3rd party 7850 with a non reference cooler and preferably some factory overclock. You can pick these up pretty cheaply:

http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials...R5+PCI-Express+Graphics+Card+?productId=50116

 

[Senseputer]

Thanks for the replies so far. I guess CrossFire is looking like a waste of my time, due to my situation. What kind of difference am I likely to get between a 7850 and a 7870? Is a 7950 worth looking at?

I've had a look around based on the combined recommendations and bookmarked these cards: Sapphire 7850 OC V2, Gigabyte 7870 OC, Sapphire 7870 OC, and at the extreme range of my budget Sapphire 7950 OC V2. Once again, I'd like to note that my primary motivation is to drop the heat output in general, without any plans to increase the demand I put on the system.

While I mostly do normal gaming, I've been known to run up to 5 instances of games (I'm not too bad at multi-tasking) and normally will run several other programs alongside my games.

The other thing to note about my gaming is that I prefer playing windowed rather than full screen, even at resolutions as high as 1080p, due to the lower likelyhood of game crashes when switching to Firefox, email and messengers. I haven't ever paid attention to the difference in demand on my system, but I imagine there is some.

How hot does your current gpu run?

For most of TSW it hovers around 75C although other games (most notably Dawn of War II: Retribution's The Last Stand) have pushed it as far as 93C. The card tends to idle around 54C (in my old systems my CPUs ran 45C & 38C, this system it idles 33C).

The 1gb that you currently have will be a significantly limiting factor in FPS at 1080p, let alone running multiple screens.

I'm guessing that you are gaming on just the one screen but have a second for other purposes .....

I find FPS as low as 30 to be playable comfortably in many games, and personally I find no benefit in having FPS over 60 (two blasphemies, I know). You did guess correctly about it being 1080p (the secondary monitor runs at the 16:10 equiv. and normally has Firefox, Vent, TS3 and similar programs on it).

 

[Josh Weston]

The 7850 is a very respectable card, especially considering its price point. It overclocks like a champ whilst staying cool, also.
I have my 7850 Power Edition clocked to 1200MHz on the core - at benchmarks and in games, my £160 card beats a GTX580

 

[seumasbeathan]

Considering you can get like £120+ for a 5870 in ebay I would recommend the same one as Master - http://www.aria.co.uk/SuperSpecials...R5+PCI-Express+Graphics+Card+?productId=50116

Essentially £30 for a much better card

 

[Senseputer]

£

I'd have to check the exchange rates to see if that seems reasonable to me.

I found the ASUS Radeon HD 7850 DirectCU II 2GB V2 for $AU229 here. With a core clock of 860 MHz and memory clock of 4800 MHz.
The same website sells pre-overclocked versions of the 7850 as well.
The Sapphire one that I linked to above has a core clock of 920 MHz and memory clock of 5000.
The Gigabyte one (not linked to above) has a core clock of 975 MHz and memory clock of 4800.

Considering I've never done real overclocking before (just used basic software provided by AMD), is it worth my time getting the ASUS card, instead of grabbing one that's already been juiced up slightly?

I'm still also not sold on the need for me to have an overclocked card, to be honest. I know I'm on an OC forum, but I'm asking here more for the fact that you people (presumably) know the cards a lot better than other places likely would.

I would like to assume that one of the main reasons that the ASUS card is recommended over the others, is superior cooling, since cutting heat is my primary (and secondary I guess) reasons for doing this.

Starting to feel like I'm taking up too much time here. I guess I'm too used to being given reasons (pros/cons) to choose something, rather than recommendations. (and yes, I type a lot, I talk a lot less without a keyboard)

Okay, tired of re-re-re-re-editing this post. I'm hitting Sumbit Reply before I wear another letter off my keyboard.

 

[Master&Puppet]

Prices will of course be very dependant on where you get it from. All we are suggesting is, in order of importance:

1. Stay away from the reference cooler. They are loud and don't cool particularly well. I know I'm linking from an english site but you want to keep away from the cards which have a single fan like this and this.

Look for ones that have multiple fans and look a bit racey like this and this. Each of the major manufacturers have decent coolers and there maybe ones that are slightly better than others but generally we are talking about a few degrees or decibels.

2. Getting a factory overclocked card I think is a bonus. When they are on special deals they are often almost the same price as a non-OC'd card so it's free performance. I wouldn't pay much more for one though. Having a factory OC on it doesn't mean that it is necessarily any better at overclocking if you did decide to go that way. In fact I have two reference 7950s - the only real reason to get a reference cooler is to take it off and put a water block on it, which I did and they overclock fantastically.

Overclocking on the 7xxx series is really a must! GPU overclocking is much more simple than CPU overclocking and with this generation of cards you will get approx an extra 20% before you even touch the volts. We can show you how - Josh will be the best for that since he has a 7850.

3. If I was looking to save my $ and buying from that website you linked I would get this. That cooler is mental. Big fans but a low profile design means excellent cooling and inaudible noise yet it's still only dual width. Just make sure that your case isn't too narrow - according to this review it is 120mm tall. You also get a big processor overclock for free (memory speed is less important).

I hope that this answers your questions a little better!

M&P

 

[Senseputer]

That was not only helpful, but also educational. My thanks.
I think I have enough to dwell upon for the time being, so I shall be making my purchase in the next few days and hopefully, I'll have something sitting in the case purring away soon.

I'll admit, I'm still curious about the need to overclock these. Even when I toyed with overclocking using AMD's CPU software years ago, the benefits I saw were pretty small. I do understand though, that s a big difference (accuracy, customisation, fine tuning.. type of stuff) between that and the type of overclocking you're talking about.

*tries to remember bits about overclocking* So.. 20% extra oomph without increasing the voltages.. and the voltages are the main contributor to heat. Sounds good! Off to pay attention to the girlfriend now, she demands it. Oh well...

My thanks to all of you.