Hi, I've been offered a pair of HD6850's by a mate at a pretty cheap price, but I'm not 100% sure if they'd be a worthy upgrade or not over my GTX285. My current machines specs are in my sig and at the moment I'm pretty much playing Arma 2, Xcom, a bit of BF3 and a few others which are ok at near native res (1920 x 1200, native res is 2560 x 1600) at mid-range settings on pretty much anything (BF3 is the performance hog at the mo). Is swapping my GTX285 out for a pair of 6850's a decent upgrade, and if so, will I get any sort of issues with running them in Crossfire? Cheers,
They question is how cheap? Also going for 2 old mid range cards isnt usually a great bet. In situations that use crossfire great but when crossfire isnt supported your down to single 6850 speed. Also what resolution are you gaming at?
You might want to save yourself a bit of money. The advantages: DX11, possibly lower power consumption, although that would be debatable. You'd have less video memory, but unless you're running over 1920x1200 then that isn't a problem. The Disadvantages: Probably higher power consumption, crossfire issues in certain games, lower Vram. It's your call. It's not worth it in my book, but if you play a lot of a game that's well optimised for Xfire, then it might be. It's hard to be decisive, but generally, 2 mid range gpu's do not equal a high end one. A 6970 could be a good deal if you can find one at the right price, and there are a few 580 knocking around for not too much either.
HD6970 at least. A GTX285 is actually equivalent to a HD6850. Crossfire won't yield much improvement to justify it.
ram wise the 6850 came with 1gb or 2 - same as the gtx 285 speed wise 1 x 6850 is comparable to 1 x gtx 285 and ofc in games that support CF then 2 of them are a lot faster!
To an extent, but if you can find a HD6970 or something similar, you're getting a bit more performance (or less) but with less driver hassle.
Cheers all for the info. I've done a bit of research myself and while some charts show the GTX beating the Radeon others go the opposite direction. Generally, I thought that the 6850's were a generation or two ahead of the GTX 285's - that not the case, or is this the generation ATI flopped a bit behind nVidia?
The 6850 is the cutdown midrange core. Unless you can get both cards for around the 100 quid mark, I'd pass on the offer.
Well the HD6850s are straight middle class of the previous generation. The 285s were the top end of three generations ago. The reason for the discrepancy was the fact that the middle range rather stagnated until the GTX460/HD6850 era. The HD5770 being equivalent to a HD4870. The only disadvantage of the 285 is lack of DX11, but it's actually surprisingly serviceable as a GPU. And yes technically ATI didn't manage as many frames as the GTX580 in the HD6xxx generation, but in total fairness, their prices were significantly lower than the competition. A single HD6850 is about as fast as a GTX275. Hence why I mentioned getting at least a GTX 570 or a HD6970. It's almost twice as fast as a GTX285.
