I have an i930 (@ 4.0 GHz) system with 6GB ram and an older ATI 4870 X2 and a 1920 X 1200 monitor.

I generally get good performance with most eye-candy turned on although the FPS do drop a bit if I go too far.

Any of you with ATI 4800 X2 experienced that have upgraded recently and noticed a good increase? What did you upgrade to?

Note: I'd rather stick with a single slot solution although a double card in one slot (like the 4870 X2) would be fine.

Recommendations?

Originally posted by Sylvarii
Budget?

Let's say max $500... the 4800 X2 has been with me for 3.5 years so I can splurge a bit :)

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125413

there ya go. 7970 for $500. will last you another 3 years.

A Radeon HD 4870 will give you performance in the same ballpark as a Radeon HD 7750, Radeon HD 6770, or GeForce GTX 550 Ti.  On a $500 budget, you might as well go for the top of the line and get a Radeon HD 7970 or GeForce GTX 680.  Either of those will get you about quadruple the performance of a single 4870, or double the performance of a 4870 X2 assuming perfect CrossFire scaling (which is an impossibly optimistic assumption).

As for the choice between a 7970 and a GTX 680, you can buy the former today but not the latter.

Originally posted by Quizzical

As for the choice between a 7970 and a GTX 680, you can buy the former today but not the latter.

Thanks all.

I kept browsing a few HW review sites (Hardware Canucks, Guru3D, etc) and came to the same conclusion. As you say, the 680 seems to be out of stock everywhere at the moment but the 7970 is everywhere. I can hold off a bit and see what happens when they're both readily available and competing head to head. Leaning the 680's way as it seems to be about 10% faster on average.

But either one will be a heck of a lot quiter than my 4870 X2 which has always sounded like a leaf blower under heavy load :)

I have a feeling I'll be able to pick-up one of those in the $450 range--maybe even lower--within a month. I saw a Visiontek 7970 already for $479.99 at NCIX.

I agree with going with either the 680 or 7970.

Just as a point of reference, I have a i7 920, with a 6970 (no longer readily available), and I can run pretty well everything on a 1920x1200 monitor (so long as I don't go overboard on FSAA, limiting it to around x4, but I can't tell the difference past x4 personally so it doesn't matter much to me). I run at all stock clocks (2.66G CPU, and 880Mhz on GPU), and haven't really found anything that I absolutely need to overclock for.

So with that data point in mind, a 6970 is roughly equivalent to a 7870.

Now, if your budget allows, certainly go for the better card, and I think waiting a little bit for 680 supply to steady out is a good idea. Just giving you a reference point with a similar CPU

Best time is now to get a high end GPU, you can get the sapphire 7970 OC for $459 free shipping and a $10 rebate if you wanna use it bring price down to $449, you also get 3 games Free with it.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102982

Originally posted by Iselin

 

But either one will be a heck of a lot quiter than my 4870 X2 which has always sounded like a leaf blower under heavy load :)

You know what happens when you try to put too much heat into too little space?  Either it gets too hot, it gets too noisy, or both.  If you don't like that, then don't get a dual GPU card.  Getting a dual GPU card in a new system really only makes sense if you think two high end GPUs in CrossFire or SLI aren't good enough, and so you want four, with two dual GPU cards.

I loved my 4870, though mine was a single gpu.  Thing ran hot as hell though!  Finally had to buy an aftermarket heat sink for it.  Not a couple of months after that, I decided to just get a new one as well.  Ended up buying two Asus HD 7770's crossfired at $139 each.  Installed them the day of the GW2 beta weekend lol  They run awesome!

For a single slot solution, I'd get the ASUS HD 7970, but I didn't want to spend that much...though thinking about it, I spent about the same since I had to get a new PSU to power the 7770's haha!