2 4850s or 1 4870 1GB

[baddmrchocolate]

I just recently got a new monitor and want to play at the highest res(1920x1080) and 1 4850 seems enough for most of my games(does better than what I thought it would). So I was just curious what I would benefit more from, 2 4850s or 1 4870 1GB(or any other recommendations?). My PC specs are as followed(you probably don't need to know some but o well):

AMD PII 940@3.2
4GB DDR2@1066 Corsair Dominator
ASUS Radeon HD 4850 512MB
Killer NIC
500GB SATA HDD
Biostar TA790GX 128M

 

[toyota]

I wouldnt add another 4850 since the games that are demanding enough at 1920 to need more gpu power will likely also need more than 512mb of vram to crank the settings. 4890 1gb cards are going for 200 bucks now so thats what I would go with and just sell your 4850.

 

[Tempered81]

Yah, I'd either go 4850 crossfire, 4890, or 4890 crossfire

 

[happy medium]

Originally posted by: toyota
I wouldnt add another 4850 since the games that are demanding enough at 1920 to need more gpu power will likely also need more than 512mb of vram to crank the settings. 4890 1gb cards are going for 200 bucks now so thats what I would go with and just sell your 4850.

What he said:thumbsup:

 

[fffblackmage]

The 4850 in crossfire could help, but the 512MB vram is a bit of a limitation.

ATT can monitor free video memory and free texture memory, I've seen a few cases where I ended up using up all video memory space. I was playing Necrovision with max everything and framerates were terrible, turning off AA didn't help, but lowering texture settings made the game playable. When I lowered texture settings, I also noticed a bit of free video memory leftover in ATT. So, I would conclude that 512MB vram isn't quite enough for 1920x1200.

 

[cusideabelincoln]

If a single HD4850 is running all of his games better than expected, it's highly unlikely he's even close to running into the 512MB framebuffer limit of a handful of games.

I would not upgrade to a single HD4870 1GB. At the very, very least the HD4890 would be the minimum upgrade. Why? Because it's about 40-50% faster than a single HD4850 and is a simpler (more consistent) single card solution. By adding another HD4850 for Crossfire, you can expect to see an average improvement of about 50% in performance, although this number varies greatly from game to game such that you may see no scaling or up to 90% scaling with Xfire.

You migh just be as well off waiting until prices drop or new cards come out before upgrading if you're pleasantly surprised with current performance.