Crossfire VS 1 higher end card.

[Animage]

I am upgrading my computer to make my fiance a computer. I am currently running a 8800GT. Figure im upgrading to a crossfire capable board i might as well upgrade my video card. what im wondering is if i would get better performance out of 1 higher end card or 2 mid range cards, examples of what im looking at below. My thought is also if i get the higher end card that i can get one 2-3 months from now cheaper and xfire it them maybe too.

"Higher End" Card : View Me

"Mid Range" Card(s) : View Me

Any and all help appreciated.

 

[SickBeast]

I wouldn't do any of those upgrades.

Your 8800GT is fine.

You should upgrade when you need to, not just because you can.

 

[alcoholbob]

Single card for the mainstream user. Hell, even most enthusiasts don't want to deal with tweaking just to get a game to run; spending money on hardware then have performance fail, go on the forums to tweak, tweak, tweak...no point.

 

[cbn]

Originally posted by: Animage
I am upgrading my computer to make my fiance a computer. I am currently running a 8800GT. Figure im upgrading to a crossfire capable board i might as well upgrade my video card. what im wondering is if i would get better performance out of 1 higher end card or 2 mid range cards, examples of what im looking at below. My thought is also if i get the higher end card that i can get one 2-3 months from now cheaper and xfire it them maybe too.

"Higher End" Card : View Me

"Mid Range" Card(s) : View Me

Any and all help appreciated.

I think two 4830s might beat one 4870 512 MB.

Pretty soon you will also be able to buy HD4770 for $99 retail (less with rebates). This is a 40nm card that has 96% of the computing power of GD4850 but only uses 80 watts (which lowers strain on the PSU)

Maybe you should run two of these on a AMD 790FX board? I'm sure Anadtech will be posting results soon. Nice thing about 790FX AM2+ boards is that they only cost ~$120 but can run dual x16 PCI-E 2.0 lanes. This is good for the future if you plan on keeping your board for at least 3+ years. (I don't think it will be long before single GPUs start using more than x8 of a PCI-E 2.0 lane. In fact, as early as HD58xx and GT300 might we might see that.)