What to get?

[madshots]

So I have some money to spend on my self for christmas and was wondering what would be best? (may wait till after christmas and get the new intel gear though)..

I have a coolermaster 1000w psu | i7 920 | ati 5850 | 6gb Ram | Intel 80gb SSD

Should I get 2x 5950s and crossfire? a 5970 or a Nvidia 570? I could get the 580 but I dont fancy spending £500 on one graphics card.

 

[Stryker64]

5950? Do you mean 6950s in crossfire?

 

[Stryker64]

Anyhow, getting two 5850s in crossfire will be just a bit slower than a 5970, since the 5970 is a 5870 and 5850 in crossfire. So just read the 6970 and 6950 review and in the graphs just in your head swap out the 5970 as the crossfired 5850s and take off around 5%?

EDIT: How often do you upgrade your system and what do you use with your computer normally?

EDIT: If gaming which games?

 

[madshots]

Anyhow, getting two 5850s in crossfire will be just a bit slower than a 5970, since the 5970 is a 5870 and 5850 in crossfire. So just read the 6970 and 6950 review and in the graphs just in your head swap out the 5970 as the crossfired 5850s and take off around 5%?

EDIT: How often do you upgrade your system and what do you use with your computer normally?

EDIT: If gaming which games?

yeh 6950 sorry.. so I'm looking at a 570 or 6970 then, I upgrade around every year now as I like to keep up to date.. but this will be my last upgrade If i do it ( with the new Intel cpus coming out) for a while so I would go crossfire or sli later down the road just so it should last a long time...

I use my pc almost 24/7 as I do web design / Video Editing (why I was thinking nvidia) / Photo Editing and Gaming... I play mostly FPS games such as black ops, crysis, metro, bad company 2, MOH... I'm torn between the nvidia as it has cuda, PhysX and 3D and AMD (ATI).. I guess the smart pick would be the 570

 

[Stryker64]

The smart pick is the 570 because CUDA is supported by most video editing software and it will save on rendering time, the games you play also tend to favour nVidia and they will all greatly benefit from Physx. The only real benefit from AMD is that you can get Eyefinity with just one card, which can help you when it comes to design since you have more monitors to do stuff on.

 

[madshots]

I ant got room for 3 monitors at moment lol but I do run two, thanks for your time.

 

[DrBoomstick]

I would get either a 570 or 580, they are great cards and a pretty much better than their current ATI counterparts.

These are great cards and if you ever want more power, there is plenty of room to put another card in.