I was thinking of upgrading my HD 5850 to a HD 6950

[ern88]

Hey guys,

This is my first post on HC. Well, I was think on getting rid of my Sapphire HD 5850 and going to a HD 6950 2 gig card. Play at 1650 x 1050 res. But after reading reviews and benchmarks. I don't think it justifies me selling my 5850. I am going to upgrade to the i7 2600K in the near future. I currently have:

ASUS P5K-E, Intel E8400 Dual core O/C 3.6 ghz. Sapphire AMD Radeon HD 5850. Creative X-FI gamer, 4 gigs ddr2 ram, 500 gig HD. ANTEC Gamer 900 tower. Windows 7 Pro. 610 silencer PSU.

[_dangtx_]

welcome aboard dude.

well, check this out : HIS Radeon HD 6950 2 GB Review - Page 29/33 | techPowerUp

i would rather get a nice 24 inch lcd first, see whats what later. thats your one weakness right now. of course your 5850 wont do the same frames at 1920x1080/1200 but its a start

you may want to look at the 2500k too.

depending on your upgrade budget, you could keep somethings like the psu,dvd,etc.


edit : check some higher resolution benches : Intel Unveils Sandy Bridge: Core i7 2600K, i5 2500K, i5 2400, i3 2100 CPUs - Left 4 Dead 2 - Legit Reviews

[ern88]

Thanks for some insight _dangtx_. I think I will keep my HD 5850. Maybe when I get a new monitor. I will just pick up another HD 5850 and xfire it. I think that would be a good option as well

[Rescue119]

thats what i am gonna do down the road........the 5850 is good bang for the buck

[Stock]

Unless you sell your 5850 for ~$200 and put that money towards purchasing the 6950, it's not worth it. :)

The upgrade from an E8400 to i7-2600k on the other hand...do it!

[EdHilario]

I'd go with the 6970 if you can find it cheap enough and sell the 5850. You can probably recover 1/2 - 3/5 of your money back during that upgrade. Otherwise, I'd skip a generation or wait for the dual GPU platform :)

[Arinoth]

Unless you'll be doing something that benefits from 8 threads, as in folding, you'd be better off going with a 2500k.

[ern88]

Ya, I'm going to hold of till the the AMD 7XXX series cards come out next year. Whatever they will improve on then. Maybe even see what Nvidia is offering up.

[Delavan]

I was in the same boat with my HD5870 running at 1680 X 1050...

The 6950 looks nice and all, and does a little better at "min FPS". also, it has better tesselation performance....BUT, the 5870 is still a nice card (ans so is the 5850)....

As stated above, go 1080P or better RES. first...then grab a 6970, GTX570 or whatever (WORTHY of a real upgrade from your 5850)...

The future's bright: Price will drop a little on 6970, on GTX570, the GTX560 will come out (read SLI), the dual GPU 6990 and "possible" dual Fermi GF110 card...

Crossfire scaling on 69** is great...so is GTX5** cards....

The first step is BETTER RESOLUTION, then more power...

[lowfat]

Originally Posted by Delavan

I was in the same boat with my HD5870 running at 1680 X 1050...

The 6950 looks nice and all, and does a little better at "min FPS". also, it has better tesselation performance....BUT, the 5870 is still a nice card (ans so is the 5850)....

As stated above, go 1080P or better RES. first...then grab a 6970, GTX570 or whatever (WORTHY of a real upgrade from your 5850)...

The future's bright: Price will drop a little on 6970, on GTX570, the GTX560 will come out (read SLI), the dual GPU 6990 and "possible" dual Fermi GF110 card...

Crossfire scaling on 69** is great...so is GTX5** cards....

The first step is BETTER RESOLUTION, then more power...

Agreed. This would actually be my first suggestion before ANY hardware upgrade.