Equivalent single card to 2x 5850s?

[Eureka]

Some of you might be surprised to see it beating a 7970. Me, not so much...

I think a lot of the problems on here is that there's a lot of modifier words used (HUGE upgrade) versus actual usage.

A 7970 is always said to be the "monster card" or a "huge massive upgrade". However, the 7870 performs at 75% of this monster card.

Same with older cards. People don't realize exactly how fast older cards are. The 5850 is probably somewhere in the ballpark of a 6870 which places a bit behind the 7850.. And nobody would say a 7850 is slow.

 

[guskline]

I think a lot of the problems on here is that there's a lot of modifier words used (HUGE upgrade) versus actual usage.

A 7970 is always said to be the "monster card" or a "huge massive upgrade". However, the 7870 performs at 75% of this monster card.

Same with older cards. People don't realize exactly how fast older cards are. The 5850 is probably somewhere in the ballpark of a 6870 which places a bit behind the 7850.. And nobody would say a 7850 is slow.

I agree Eureka. I received some Christmas gift cards and was determined to get a new video card in the 4th rig I had built around a Bulldozer 8150 OC'd to 4.2Ghz with a Gigabyte 990 FXA-UD3 mb. I was running a 5770 because I had one available but wanted a reasonable upgrade in the $200-$250 range (gift cards).

My other rigs below have GTX670s and a GTX 680. The 7950 was @$300 and I really wanted a 7000 series AMD card. I settled on a Gigabyte 7870 OC (got a great deal). WOW what a nice card. Already OC'd to 1100 so no real need to push it further. Obviously not quite as fast as the GTX670s or 680 BUT a real solid card.

 

[FalseChristian]

I'm an avid nVidia user. I'm using 2 GTX 460 1GB SLI but if I had $800 I'd grab 2 HD 7970 GHz edition AMD cards. Each one is 2.5x faster than 1 of my GTX 460 1GB and is a steal at $400.

 

[Jacky60]

Any single GPU setup is an upgrade from a multi-gpu setup.

So I guess I should 'upgrade' to a 660ti from my 6990's. :\