My 4870x2 Died

[CedricFP]

And so now I'm in the market for a new GFX card.

I have been out of the loop for a while. From what I understand the:

5870 roughly equals the performance ofa 4870x2
GTX480 slightly notches above that.

These two hardly seem like good "upgrades"... they are pricey and I get little to no extra performance - at least not performance that counts. 100-->150 fps means nothing to me in an older title.

Are there any new cards on the horizon, or are we waiting for the christmas release of new cards now?

Any advice would be appreciated.

[iboomalot]

i had a 4870x2 my 5870 seems to run smoother and faster IMO

no clue on GTX

[STEvil]

Got a 4870X2 and a GTX480 here, I'd say the GTX480 runs quite a bit smoother.

[CedricFP]

I see. I wonder if there are price drops planned.

[Razmatazz]

After my 4870X2 died (see a theme here?), I moved to a 5870. A single core means less power consumption and better temps. As happens with most new cards after some time, better coolers become available. My temps are definitely much better. So far, so good. No regrets for me so far.

[CedricFP]

I've been looking at a series of benchmarks and it seems that at my resolution (1680x1050), the 4870X2 often gets higher FPS than the 5870, sometimes even higher than the GTX480 in very specific titles.

Razmatazz - when you moved to the 5870, I'm fairly sure you didn't notice a "difference" in either way, sans noise perhaps, but I'm on water - that means temps aren't really an issue as I've got 6x120MM worth of rad.

To others - when you say that it feels smoother now, could this be to do with microstuttering on the 4870x2 (a phenomenon which I admittedly never really experienced / noticed)?

[STEvil]

4870x2's often beat 5870's when both are at stock clocks.

Microstutter doesnt bug some people, but perceiving the 5870 as smoother may show they had some microstutter happening. On a side note, microstutter may be an ACPI issue related to PCi-E 1.0/1.1 and early 2.0 chipsets (check the nV forum for the PCi-E 1.1/2.0 bug thread)

[Xcel]

Did you try putting it in the oven if it was a solder issue? Maybe not a problem for ati but worked on my friend's 8800gts, iirc nvidia had way more solder issues

[CedricFP]

What do you mean solder issue? The card had been in perfect operation for over a year and then kaput, just went.

[Xcel]

Lead-free solder can cause solder connections to fail over time due to loads of heat cycles. The concept is reflow soldering by baking the card in the oven. There are lots of info about it. The thing is the cards I've seen getting fixed this way usually work in some way, they just show lots of graphical corruption but it's worth a shot imo.

some examples
http://www.addictivetips.com/compute...aking-in-oven/
http://www.overclock.net/graphics-ca...-oven-fix.html

[theYipster]

My 4870X2 also died recently when I broke it in half. Good riddance to that card. Mine was a loud, obnoxious, dust-magnet that never reliably worked without a thorough cleaning every month. Two years with that sucker -- glad it's gone. Anyway, I'm going for a GTX 460 SLI setup. It's cost effective and it'll outperform a GTX 480 (and then some) for the same amount of money.

nVidia wasn't lying when they said Fermi scales in SLI better than anything ever released. Recent comparisons are showing GTX 460 SLI setups to sail past 5850 and 5870 CFX setups. Right now, the difference between SLI and CFX scaling is incredible.

Seeing that a single GTX 460 draws about 150w, compared to 250w to the 4870 x2, you'd only be adding 50w with a dual GTX-460 setup. You're HX1000 is more than apt for the task, and your system will draw much less power at idle. Even with two GTX 460s, you're system will be much, much quieter.

If you don't want a dual GPU setup, consider a GTX 480 -- they've come down in price so that they're competitive with the 5870s. Just know that it'll be as much of a power hog and noise machine as your 4870X2, and the performance delta between a GTX 480 and a 4870X2 isn't huge. The 5870 won't be much of a performance upgrade on paper, but it will be quieter and draw less power than both the 4870 X2 or the GTX 480. However, with CUDA support, 3D Vision, and, IMHO, an arguably more flexible multi-monitor gaming option (nVidia requires an SLI setup but can interface with older monitors, whereas ATI requires new monitors with Displayport connections,) I think Fermi is a better bet today.