Hello, please bear with me for not asking about all the latest and greatest last gen stuff. I'm 40 yo with two kids and can't afford to keep up as I used to , so I'll have to be happy with what I can find in the used market. Also, I'm not upgrading my rig any time soon, I can only afford a better used video card :\ I currently have a GTX 460 1 gb that goes up to 800MHz running on a: Asus P5K-pro p35 mobo Core 2 duo E8200 rock solid @3.5GHz / 1.240v 2gb Mushkin 1066 DDR2 @880MHz 4-4-4-12 /1.90v I game at 1080p (XCOM, Grid 2, Dirt 3, Metro 2033, Crysis 3) I can get an Asus eah5870 1gb for 60 euros, is it worth the upgrade or would I see no benefits on my current rig? Thanks from an old school overclocker from way back in the 2000's
HD 5870 is fast as GTX480 so it is quite faster. I say get it and then sell your GTX460 for same amount.
Same price (cheaper if you have a little luck) if you hit up Ebay rather than a retailer. Most everyone uses DDR3 now and many people sell of the old parts. OP seems like he is probably ok buying used.
I vote get HD 5870, sell gtx 460 and use that to fund the extra ram. Seriously, 2gb wasnt even enough in 2007 tbh. I totally understand mate. Im always on a budget. I work part time and am going through medical treatments right now. I got super effin lucky to have the pc i do right now.
Thanks for the replies, but I'm really not spending any amount in ram or any other system component. The doubt that remains is if I would see the 30/40% benefit of the 5870 on my current setup.
No, it isn't. On release it was, but driver updates on the Nvidia side quickly left it in the dust. It's more around the 470 level. So no, it's not a worthwhile upgrade. He might see like 5-7fps difference.
Thanks for the enlightenment Ice. So you're saying that a worthwhile upgrade would be more on a higher tier, maybe HD 6950 or GTX 560ti? Still I wonder if my cpu would be enough to see the benefits from cards on that level.
HD 6950 is not much different from HD 5870 in terms of gpu power since both use Cyprus gpu core. The main difference is that HD 6950 has 2GB vRAM while HD 5870 has only 1GB vRAM. I have two HD5870s as crossfire setup in my second rig. I have been thinking about getting a HD 7950 (or HD 7970) from eBay to replace them. HD 7950 is fairly inexpensive if you get at eBay (about $120-150) and as powerful as 2xHD5870 as crossfire. It has 3GB vRAM, which is good as well. I don't know how much a used HD 7950 will be in your country. But if you can get it at a reasonable price, I would think that HD 7950 would be a good upgrade from gtx460.
6950 is around 5870 performance and GTX570, 560ti would be slower. Any higher and you will be CPU bottlenecked. Your choice.