Go 5870 or Wait for Fermi?

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

It is a great card indeed

 

[Rezident]

Wait for Fermi, compare benchmarks Fermi v 5870, price v performance, and pick the best. Fermis will probably be a little faster but much more expensive so I'll probably get a Vapor-X 5870 once Fermi pushes it's price down.

 

[Grooveriding]

Single 5870 can max every game out there at 1920x1200, the one game you won't maintain 60fps in, is of course Crysis.

I had a single 5870 on my 24" monitor and got about 35fps maxed out in Crysis 4xaa, I then went 5870 Crossfire and got about 45 to 50fps, same settings. I then went to 2560x1600 and got about the same I did at 1920x1200 with a single card, around 40fps.

I would wait on Fermi though, just to push 5870s prices down. Fermi will likely come in at $600 and going on performance expectations in comparison to 5870, give you about 40-45 fps in Crysis at above 1920x1200 settings. Other than that it will max everything the same way the 5870 will.

We're at a point where we have more GPU horsepower than we need for any games on the market, so anything more is just a waste currently, unless you are at 2560x1600 and don't want to use SLI or CF, Fermi's performance will be overkill.

I think this will be the one niche where Fermi is appropiate as a video card choice, if you game at 2560x1600 and don't want to use a 5970 or 5870 crossfire and are willing to give up some of the performance of those solutions, Fermi may be a better choice, as it will be more affordable than those two ATI setups.

Of course you could go Fermi SLI, if you want to hit the holy grail of 2560x1600 at 60fps As its likely that is going to be the setup that will finally offer that, albeit for about $1200.