Lowyat.NET: Latest topics by stevenkoh

5850/5870 crossfire or single GPU option

stevenkoh — Sun, 19 Feb 2012 17:04:05 +0800

I am having a serious dilemma on GPU options. I am currently equip in my rig a Powercolor 5850 (reference card). It's been great having this card for two years now, with all gaming at smooth frames at high settings (besides the above average temps), until recently with games such as Batman and Metro 2033. It's seems to be the time to step up the GPU power as I am not getting the average ideal frames for a 1680 x 1050 res monitor (soon to upgrade in the near future).

The question is should I go for a 5870 and crossfire with 5850 (budget RM700), or sell off my 5850 and go for other GC, such as ATI 7950 or Nvidia GT570 etc (budget 1.2k).

The idea for me to go 5870 so that I could opt for both crossfire if the game allows, and single 5870 if the game does not support crossfire. However it would be easier and less hassle to sell the 5850 and get new GC, which brings to my second question.

Is it a good time to get a new GC at this time/month? I read many sites/forums mentioning the ATI 7xxx series is expensive/performance and Nvidia is announcing a new lineup in March.
I hope to hear opinions from others who have taken the step to upgrade from ATI 5xxx series to 7xxx series or Nvidia series on their expectation in gaming improvement.

Appreciate any answers, comments and advice. Thank you.

A small note on my rig specs;
Intel i5 750 @ 2.66GHz @ OC 3.8GHz
Asus P55 - GD65
Xigmatek 600W
Dell 2209WA

Recommendation for a desktop rig - RM2700

stevenkoh — Sun, 17 Jan 2010 01:51:36 +0800

Dear all(mighty) sifus,

I plan to buy a rig by end of this month (the moment I get my paycheck), so I visited LYP, read through few threads in LYN and survey some friends. Receive some numbers of interesting infos and answers but even more questions and decisions opened.

Budget RM2700+/-, rig mainly for gaming and photo editing, with power efficiency good as I might leave it on 24 hours with at most 3 continues days.

Below are suggestion I received:

Suggestion 1
Intel Core i5 750
ASUS P7P55 LX
Kingston 4GB DDR3-1333 (2 x 2GB)
Sapphire HD5770 1GB GDDR5 (Vapor-X)
LG 22x SATA DVDRW
Western Digital 500GB SATA HDD BLUE
CM Extreme Power 500W PSU
CoolerMaster Elite series casing

Price: RM2645

Suggestion 2
Intel Core i3 530
ASUS P7P55-M
Corsair XMS3 4GB 1333
Sapphire HD5750 1GB GDDR5 (Vapor-X)
LG 22x SATA DVDRW
Western Digital 500GB SATA 32MB
ACBEL 660W Real Power PSU
ATX casing cm CENTURION - 5

Price: RM2480

A friend suggests me to get AMD 945 processor, however for some reason I would prefer Intel i5. He also told me not to get CM power supply as they are unstable, is that true?

For GC, I not sure should I get one HD5850, or one HD5770 and crossfire later on.

All in all, I hope I could get some opinions, advice or suggestions on my soon to be rig. I really appreciate all the help. BTW I already allocated separate budget for LCD monitor (Dell 2209WA), not sure how this LCD will perform...