Graphics GeForce GTX 480 and GTX 470 Release Confirmed!

I'm not liking the prices on the 5830 anymore than I like the complete lack of nVIDIA competition to drive them down. Given that a 5770 sits pretty at £120 and a 5850 is comparatively Everest-esque at £230, I want the 5830 to sit at around £170-80, not at >£200. Where's the sense in that?!

 

On the assumption the drivers work efficiently in the games you play :/

 

Having used crossfire for the last 3 generations of Ati cards, i think i've finally come round to the view that a single card is the way forward, as long as it can offer the framerates you need at the resolution you game at.

The 5870 is the first single card system i've built since i had an X1900 series card, but it currently eats everything at 1680 x 1050, with maximum settings in most cases (even A v P in DX11 with tessellation enabled runs fine). With more and more console ported or 'multi-platform' type games being released, i'm also not sure there will be many games around to tax it in the near future.

2 x 4850's were a great way of competing with the power of the GTX260/280 in the last generation (for a lot less money) but although i had very few issues with them, the convenience of not having to think about crossfire profiles now and having a lot cooler/lower power consuming system is a massive plus point.

I think Fermi will appear in some working form at the end of March, but it will be interesting to see when decent amounts of stock appear and at what price levels.

 

I know the Bit-Tech stance on SLI/Crossfire is that it's just not reliable enough but I'm perfectly happy with my SLI'd 260s. Out of all the games I own, only Crysis has had any problems with stuttering (and with the older 186.xx drivers, even that didn't happen). Everything else has a massive boost in performance.

 

Seconded Pete. Crossfire/CrossfireX/SLI have always worked well for me.
I went for twin 5770's last year when the 5850's were as rare as unblurred asian pr0n. Excellent results in everything so far, especially Crysis and Fallout 3. Now that ATI have stripped the CrossfireX profiles out of the driver stack they take seconds to update between driver updates too.