Hi, I mainly use my pc for design work and CAD rendering with a healthy splash of gaming on the side. But the games I play tend to be fairly old and not cutting edge! I've recently built a new pc but held out on a graphics card to wait for the 5850 to drop in price. Do I need a 5850 or should I go for the much cheaper 5770. I use Autodesk Showcase for my renders, requirements here. Thanks
580 it is deferentially more future proof and will speed up rendering even more.so if you intend in keeping the system and can afford it go for the 5850
What screen resolution do you use? Can you tell us anything more about your system - CPU etc? There's slightly different answers depending on other components. I suspect a 5770 will be OK for you however.
5770 is overkill for rendering 5850 is even more overkill 4890 260 or 5830 would suffice up to 1920x 1080 without issues 5770 below that rez is fine. 5850 is pretty poor if you can get the 260 in sli on your board it will destroy it and its about £60 less. or 4890 for that matter. 4870/50 in crossfire delivers epic level of performance and is less than £200 its faster than the 5850 as well ( friend of mine picked up 2 4870s for around £120) a cheap 4850 or 4870 would do the job if games arnt a major concern; depends on budget to what you get. These days 5830 and 5850 are struggling to hold there own due to massive price increases. 5830 is around £160 (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-238-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1711) the avr 5850 (http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-004-HS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=411) is £230 + more if you want a decent cooler. and the 5850 is not £70 better than the 5830 once the 5830 breaks the £150 barrier it makes the 5850 look even worse.
Thanks so far Hi and thanks for the advice so far. Additional details about pc spec: 17-920 Gigabyte X58-UD3R 6GB DDR3 1600 1TB F3 Spinpoint 700W modular power supply EDIT: Current resolution is 2 screens at 1920 x 1080. Thanks Graphics card is currently a Nvidia Gtx210 that I got for about £30 to tide me over. I'll sell it on when my new card/s come. I have never played with sli/cross-fire before and so do not really know how to set that up. If it's easy then I' be willing to give it a go.