Looking at replacing my aging ATI 4850 which is starting to seriously show its age on my LED screen running at 1980x1080. I was hoping to stick with camp red seeing that I own my current card for about two years without any problems. This time around however I would be interested to go a little high-end and thus awaiting on the jury with the new 6000 series from ATI. However I have stumbled across somebody that wants to sell his 5970 (Gigabyte GV-R597D5-2GD-B). He is selling it for 452 GBP and the card costs here new between 519 GBP and 665 GBP. There are a couple of things that bother me (aside from me upgrading my PSU) with the offer - before even getting the whole technical bit of the purchase. I would be really interested if I am seeing this wrong. 1. Selling a two months old high-end GPU based on 1 year old tech (?) for less than 67 GBP does not make much sense for me. 2. What is a acceptable second hand price for this type of card? 3. Should I rather get myself a 5870? 4. Should I buy I new 5970? 5. Should I wait it out (although I do not want to wait till next year just to get a cutting edge card with minor improvements)? My understanding of the 5970 is that it is the fastest single card out there and will most likely stay like that for a very long while hence I am leaning towards getting it and not upgrading for the next 3+ year. I am also not interested going SLI/Crossfire. My current game line up is mostly World of Warcraft (interestingly I am getting performance drops since patch 4.0.1 with the introduction of the new water texture and in-game AF), Starcraft 2 and would like to play all the other games (mainly FPS) out there without fiddling around with the in-game graphic details. I installed COD4 the other day and promptly uninstalled it as it just did not make sense yanking down the graphic details to a large extend. I am currently running an i7-860 with 4GB RAM (let me know if more detail is needed). Oh by the way the conversion is from my local currency and the prices if from one of our cheaper dealers (www.nanodog.net).
First things first - that price isn't particularly good. Used 5970s have been going for £350 on our marketplace, so don't let him convince you that it's some bargain of the century. Not only that, you can get 5970 by crossfiring two 6850s which would cost you only £300. Finally, both nVidia and ATi are bringing out their super duper cards this month, so waiting is best!
Contradiction Street, here we come! The 5970 is a dual-GPU graphics card (2 5870 GPUs at slower speeds). As a result, it's essentially Crossfire on one physical card, and as a result, heavily dependant on drivers to keep it in top form. If you run any games that don't play nice with multi-GPU setups, you'll find the speed drops out of the bottom end like there's no tomorrow. However, these games are getting rarer and rarer to the point of non-existence, so it's not as much of a worry as it was before. In general, a 5970 will beat a GTX480, and will crush a Radeon 4850 hands-down. So you'll DEFINITELY have a lot more power. As far as your questions, it's all down to you. Do you know the card's only 2 months old, hasn't been abused/overclocked/overheating - in other words, do you trust the guy who's selling it to have taken care of it? When it comes down to it, you're only saving 10% of the cost of the card new, and for that, you get the knowledge of a brand new card, complete with bundle and warranty. If you buy used, you either have to hope the manufacturer allows the warranty to be traded, or that the person you buy from is willing to deal with warranty claims on your behalf for the next 3 years. At your resolution, a 5870 would take care of business, but you may need to leave the AA at 2x or 4x for some of the games with more demanding scenes. If that's OK for you, then go for it. You should save a tidy sum, and if you're using an i7-860, I'm guessing/assuming your motherboard would support Crossfire, so a drop-in upgrade is possible if you ever wanted to pursue that route. Interestingly enough, a look on nanodog shows the only 5870 available to be much more expensive than its competing Geforce card, the GTX470 for $1300 less, which I'm guessing to be £120 (based on the above £ prices you gave for the 5970). It's a warmer-running card, uses more power, SLI might not work on your motherboard etc, but the price saving is pretty hefty. If you can shop around and get the 5870 cheaper, I would go that route (based on the prices I've seen on nanodog, I dare say you want to get as close to $4000 as possible). Hopefully I've been able to give you some insight, and clear things up a little, despite knowing next to nothing about the prices of components over there! NINJA-EDIT: Ph4ZeD, the site is located in Namibia. There's no mention of the 6850, and the prices seem considerably higher than UK. Although yes, once the 6000-series hits, it's a very valid upgrade!
Thanks a lot for the detailed reply MaverickWill. Just to clarify - I am aware of the dual GPU setup of the 5970. I was meaning to say i not willing to run a dual card setup at this point I will see if I can find some better prices for 5870 and post them here today - although the prospect of being potentially AA locked worries me a wee bit. Once the 6000 series are in full swing here we will have to deal with very hefty prices for a long while (as you can see from the current pricing) and even if I would love to get a high-end 6000 series it will just not make sense unless i can get somebody to buy it overseas and sneak it in with his luggage. Again - very interesting insight. Any reason why not go for the GTX470 (aside the issues you mentioned)? BTW - I have a Gigabyte P55-USB3L motherboard and as far as I can tell it runs Crossfire/SLI at 16x/8x.
From the looks of the specifications, your motherboard only supports Crossfire, not SLI. It's not necessarily being completely AA-locked, but in games with explosions/big action scenes, turning from 8xAA to 4xAA (or even 2xAA) will shift the load, and you'll be playing lovely. FWIW, I'm running a 5870, and even when the going gets tough in Serious Sam (about as action-y as you can get!), I'm able to keep AA on full. The 470 IS a decent card, but it's the cooler/heat output that's the big problem. If you can find one that has a custom cooler attached for only a small price premium, it'd still be cheaper than the 5870s over there, so I'd plump for that. Again, £120 isn't an amount of money to be sniffed at. Once the 6000-series land, the 5000-series should take a price drop. It's worth noting, however, that because ATi shifted their naming scheme, the 6870 and 6850 are direct replacements for the 5770 and 5750, with performance about 90% of the 5870 and 5850 respectively. The direct replacements for the 5800-series are the 6900-series. Do you have any time-scale as to how long it'll be before the 6000-series cards arrive in Namibia? The 6870 and 6850 have already launched, and the 6900s are scheduled to launch within a month or so (I think!). It might be worth holding off until then, see what prices change.
Being in Namibia, (thanks to MaverickWill for pointing me here), here's what I think: The 5970 is a great piece of hardware, and the price is decent. While I don't know the guy selling it personally, I do know that the COST price on those here (i.e. wholesale excluding VAT) is just more than what that guy wants for it (N$5000,- right?). Personally, I would spend a bit less and get a GTX 470/480. They seem to cost a bit less, and are more available. Admittedly, they are also slower. They do however feature PhysX (AFAIK), which is a bouns as well. I can safely tell you that in pure visual performance, 10% makes no difference. By the time a game drops to unplayable framerates (<20 fps), the extra 2% aren't going to make a big difference. All that aside, though. Feel free to PM me. I might be able to get you better pricing than Nanodog has... No promises, but Through some contacts I can normally get away a bit cheaper. Edit: Just to clarify: ATi seem to be more expensive here as a general rule. It's been like that since the 9800's (That's 6XXX series in Nvidia land)
On an average it can be anything from 1-3 months but one can always ask from the vender/seller to do a special order (with a special price tag at time). Do you personally feel that your 5870 will keep you happy without upgrading to any of the 6000 series offerings? That is what I thought as well but noticed drops from 60 fps to 40-50 fps in slight stuttering which does effecting gameplay over long periods. That is why I was initially drawn to the 5970 as the minimum frame rate seem to be excellent which makes for smoother gaming experience without sacrificing visual details. Admittedly I am basing this all on my 4850 which might give me a more drastic observation but generally speaking I would not like to downscale everything by 50% after a year. I got some new pricing which are, GTX470 for 349 GPB and a 5870 (MSI R5870 Lighting) for 405 GBP (both new - need to get additional details for the GTX). Can you see how much you can get them for? As for the initial offer of the 5970 it seems based on the comments and impression i formed the seller is not 'lekker' in his head. Oddly enough I would still love to have a dual GPU on a single card setup ...
Haven't read through the whole thread (I'm at work ). I can say this much though. Unless I knew whoever was trying to sell me their graphics card personally and knew the card in question I'd probably hold off on buying a 2nd hand graphics card altogether. You can so easily get a fritzed (or border-line fritzed) card, because the original owner overclocked the hell out of it (or damaged it in another way). All you end up with is a lot of wasted money and a borked card. Call me a cynic or just overly cautious, but I can see this scenario happen quite easily.
~3850,- for a GTX470 is pretty good, mate. My contact said realyl quickly "Around 3900" to me... Pricing on the 5870 I can't help with... my contacts are all out of ATi I know I can get a GTX460 for around 2500,- and a GTX465 for around 2800,- Also, I can get a second hand GTX275 (two,a ctually) MSI Lightning edition for 1350,- each...
Ah yes - will try to find out if I can get 4850. Seems like the 5870 is also a good buy even in light of new GPU series being released.
The GTX460 mentioned above is a MSI, BTW... the gigabyte ones seem to be a bit cheaper, though my suppli9ers can't get them (damn this country)
Would you be able to get the 5870 - i am willing to wait for a reasonable period. Waited for almost two weeks for my ASUS Xonar DX and I don't have a urge to have "that talk" with the seller.
nope... doesn't seem like it. I will phone around a bit more and let you know if I stumble across anything
Alright - some updates. Can get a new GTX580 for 437 GBP here :/ This is getting crazy. I can impulse buy this card now or wait till the 6900 series is released (and whatever else from NVIDIA). How much better can the 6900 series be in terms of price to performance ratio? .... omg i hate shopping for GPUs.
From what I recall, the presentation slide from AMD placed 6970 at slightly below 5970 in terms of speed, so it would be on par with GTX580 give or take. But if AMD is delivering their card at a lower price than GTX580 by a fair margin, that would probably make them instant win. To be honest, I don't think it's worth it to get 5970 now...you best either get a GTX580, or wait for 6970. Dual-GPU/Crossfire/SLI will always rely heavily on game scalling and driver support, along with the 'possible" micro-stuttering issue. If you go single GPU card, you have few less things to worry about.
Yeah - so the GTX580 is going to be the flagship model - unlike ATI's earlier release of the 6870 and 6850. ATI's equivalent will be then the 6970. So the only thing that will really be a final buying decision is the price of the 6970 as based on the observation of the 6850/70 this might be on par or better? If GTX580 is the last in line release of NVIDIA (except their dual GPU card) then I might as well buy the bloody thing or buy straight after the 6970 (any idea when that will be released?).
