I'm just thinking about what my next upgrade should be in the near future. I will be upgrading to Windows 7 x64 if it matters.

Right now my system is doing great and doesn't need an upgrade, but soon it will. I am thinking the cheapest option is just getting another HD4870 and running Crossfire since my board supports it. I'll have about the same performance as a HD5850 I figure, but will not have DX11 support. I believe my PSU should be able to support it. It's either this, or sell my HD4870 and buy new DX11 card. The smartest option is probably to just get a new card isn't it...

Here is my current system as it stands:

Intel Core 2 Q6600 G0 @ 3.5ghz
4GB OCZ Reaper HPC Edition PC2-8500
ASUS P5Q Pro
XFX ATI HD4870 1GB
SAMSUNG Spinpoint F1 1TB 7200 RPM
OCZ StealthStream 600w PSU
OCZ Vendetta 2 CPU Cooler
24" LCD 1080p
Windows Vista 32bit Home Premium

If it was me, I would wait, then sell the 4870 and keep a single video card ( 58xx series ).

I think you should upgrade to a 5870 so that you can start recommending that other people buy something faster than a 4870 1GB. lol j/k

But seriously, don't buy a second 4870, a single card with the same performance is the better way to go.

I know it's probably best to have a single card solution, but another HD4870 would only cost $160 when a new HD5870 is $405+ - which is the only reason I'm thinking about it.

You could do it just to wait out gen1 dx11 cards and look what's gonna happen for gen2. I think you should be able to run games just fine with a crossfire setup and careless about dx11. It will take a long time before game developers can code dx11 games with all the eyecandy

sovietdoc said:

^ This is my whole logic behind buying a second card for Crossfire.

Wait- there are no games that really need new cards yet.

Idk why, but it reminded me of this quote:

For his own good, tell Bruce Lee and the Karate Kids none of us are carrying automatic weapons. Because here - in this country... it don't add inches to your dick. You get a life sentence for it.

lmao. I said 'thinking about what my next upgrade should be in the near future.'

Not right NOW!

True, but there aren't ANY games coming out that will push the envelope. Or even in development, as far as I know. If I had your rig, I wouldn't be upgrading for a year or two.

Except for Win 7.

Micheal another 4870 will give you a nice increase in performance.Your PSU should be fine some people are running dual 4870's on a corsair 520.Sos you should be ok..But if not Rosewill has a modular 1000 watt psu.Its a nice PSU for the money

$169
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817182188

I've just came to the conclusion that buying another HD4870 is not worth it. There are too many driver issues and it's not fully optimized in most games. The power consumption is way too high and look as if I will need to buy a new PSU to run it anyhow. The option is out the window.

I just took a look at SEVERAL HD5850 benchmarks and I'm pretty impressed. Forget the 5870! The 5850 is the card to get! Awesome price/performance ratio for that thing - it barely performs worse than the 5870 and I can get it for $279 instead of $406 for the 5870. Though I don't know if I can justify upgrading to it over my current HD4870.

Would any LGA775 CPU be worth upgrading to over my Q6600?

At this point I would say no. If you really have some cash burning up your pocket you could go ahead and buy a couple of SSDs though.

Yeah, I basically just wanted an upgrade for no reason. I'll hold off on stuff, I can't see me benefitting from an SSD at the moment. Next upgrade - Windows 7!

Michael C said:

If you're using programs written to take advantage of SSE4 then you will see about a 110% increase clock for clock going with a Q9xxx over the Q6600 (not a typo over 2x faster). Most of the apps that use those instructions are video/audio encoding programs though, so unless you're really heavy into that kind of thing its not really worth upgrading.

Indeed I am not. Just comtemplating what would be worthy upgrades.

This is starting to turn into a joke thread?

Get 7 and be happy with it.

LEntless said:

No?

Michael C said:

A Core 2 Quad @ 3.5GHz is about as fast as a Core i7 920 @ stock or slightly faster... So you're in the same ball park speed wise as the newest Intel has to offer.

There are a few cases where having more than 4GB of memory might help but not many... I guess you could upgrade that because its cheap and DDR2 is only going to get more expensive as it moves from mainstream to legacy.

About the only thing that you could really upgrade and get any noticeable performance out of is your video card. Just drop in a 5 series Radeon and call it good. There really isn't a whole lot of room above you to upgrade into. You could spend 5 grand on your system and maybe see a 30% speed increase all around, completely not worth it.

That sounds about right Bungle. I was thinking once I get Windows 7 of throwing another 4GB of ram in as it would only cost me around $70 but I doubt that's even worth it. I'll just stick with what I have for now I guess.

Michael C said:

You're pretty much in the same boat as Plug and I. There are parts that are clearly faster but they don't run circles around what we're running now... Upgrading requires a platform swap which on its own is expensive but to make matters worse the parts under the new platform that offer the clear benefits are the ones that are stupid expensive.

I really wan't to pick up DX11 compatibility so I'll probably upgrade to a 5870 sometime soon but I need to buy a new case first.. my Lian Li mid tower just isn't big enough for the mammoth video cards they've been putting out lately.

Here's what I'm tenatively planning for upgrades:

(current) => (planned)

Lian Li PC60BII => Silverstone TJ09 (Q4 2009)
PC P&C Silencer 750W => 850W Corsair or PC P&C Silencer 910W (Q4 2009)
GTX280 => 5870 or 5870CF or 5870X2 (Q4 2009 - Q1 2010)
MoBo/RAM/CPU => Sandy Bridge / AMD Bulldozer [whichever is faster] (Q4 2010)
Vista x64 => Windows 7 (Q4 2010 [same time as platform])
Logitech G15 => Logitech G19 (Q2 2010)
DVDRW x2 => BDRW x2 (when they start bundling bluray player software with the drives)
Hard Drives => RAID 0 SSDs (when the price comes out of the stratosphere 2011?)
Sound Card => run it till it dies then use onboard