Put it in the bank for a year, and then buy a PC upgrade next year. It sounds like your current GPU setup is such that a 5870 would not be an upgrade, more of a sidestep. And, as others said, there is some really neat SSD technology coming out in the next six months. Don't spend the money right now on something that won't really step up your performance, and then have buyer's remorse. You're better off saving the money until a 5970 or something that's a significant upgrade from a 4870 xfire drops down to your price range.
I would go for the SSD. I'm building my new PC at the minute (see end of signature) and would need a new power supply as well if I got the 5870 because I would want the option to buy another next year and crossfire. I would prefer the GPU but to stay in the budget the SSD would be the best option as no other new parts would be required. But as most people on this post are saying, I would wait until next year to get the best SSD for the 300.
Hi thanks for all the replies don't really need a new monitor and don't have room for an additional monitor. Think I might go for a one of the 64GB Crucial C300 and wait and see what happens on the graphics card front.
SSD gives a great performance increase for hard drive bound tasks like loading programs and booting an OS. gaming is not hard drive bound after the initial level load. if you want imroved gaming performance, get the graphics card.
Personally, I'd go for an SSD as your crossfired cards will outperform the 5870 IIRC. On the other hand, I've no experience with SSDs (yet) but I'm a little bit wary of the benefits people preach about them. My computer boots Windows in 40-45 seconds and is immediately ready to go. Programs like Excel etc. open up pretty much instantly and I have 2TB of disk space for £120 rather than 160GB for ~£200+. People mention that games load up faster on SSDs but in reality, if you have have a decent game collection, you'll never fit it all on an SSD!
I got a Crucial C300 64 GB a few days ago and I have to say that if you are looking for price/performance this is the way to go. You have a very capable GPU setup right now so no need to upgrade that. As for SSDs... they are nice to have, but are they really worth the prices charged right now?? I guess everyone has a different answer depending on budget and needs. I'd say get that SSD for 113 pounds from Scan and within 12 months get a new one. Even if I had 300 pounds for an SSD right now I'd think twice about it. Something tells me that within 12 months we will see gear which destroys current models both in terms of performance and value. No proof behind this though, just a gut feeling.
I'd go for the SSD, there's very little making use of DX11 besides tech demo's and there probably won't be until the new consoles come out - another 5 years apparently.
like alot of people here are saying, go for a SSD, i have the 4870x2 and looked into getting a new gpu, but i thought id try a SSD because i was also told to upgrade the harddrive instead. and to be honest my pc is faster than its ever been, even a single 4870 can run games at respectable levels. while i was looking to upgrading, someone recommended this website: http://www.cpubenchmark.net/ you can check benchmarks on various pieces of hardware and see the differences between them, gpu's, cpu's, harddrives. id certainly check it out.
