IS it worth upgrading Xfire 4870's to xfire 5870?

Hey all,

I know someone somewhere has probably asked this, but I cant find any direct comparisons on google.

Is this a worthwhile upgrade? I'm thinking that it probably isn't that much faster than my existing setup (the 5870's being the equivelant of a desktop 5770 card)

I know it will allow me to play dx11 games...but i'm trying to see if its justifiable.

Which brings me to my next question. If I were to decide to upgrade, is this a relatively straightforward process? (I am fairly tech savvy, having been a tech for over a decade)

And, finally, can i buy the Gfx cards directly from Dell? If not, where do I obtain them?

Thanks in advance,

Matt

 

Hi theres Matt,

Being a tech savy guy changing out the GPUs is really super simple. Theres heaps of videos and guides here on this site and over on youtube. I'm sure you will have no troubles swapping or upgrading them in the future.

I would have to say that the 5870s are really not that much faster. Perhaps 15% overall over the 4870s. If you really wanted you could overclock your 4870s as many on this site have done and the performance gap becomes very small and much closer to the stock 5870s.
Yes they do support DX11 however that is pretty much unplayable anyway when you start setting things on high and ultra settings. They are after all generation 1 cards that support DX 11. So Gen 2 should provide a much more viable improvement and performance boost when it comes to DX 11 gaming.

As for availability they would be quite hard to source I'd imagine at this point in time. Yes you are able to purchase them directly from dell however I'm betting that that will cost you a bomb. So not worth it really. You might get lucky and find a pair on ebay or even better yet someone deciding to sell them from an existing M17x R2 machine like I have seen some purchased on this site before.

Also if you wait a while and still want the 5870s maybe when newer stuff comes out there will be a heap of users wanting to sell their existing 5870 crossfire setups. So that will be a good time to buy. However during that time you would be well advised just to skip the 5870s and also upgrade to the newer latest GPU cards on offer. Unless of course the newer cards are super expensive and the 5870s are selling for dirt cheap prices. Then you can consider your options at that point in time.

Also its that time of the year again when new stuff is starting to pop up. Nvidia has just released its 400m range of GPUs and we're all waiting to see what Dell/Alienware decide to do in terms of upgrading or making available some Nvidia GPUs for these M17x spaceships. lol.

So I'd suggest to wait a while and see what happens. Also the AMD 6870 should be around the corner too. Maybe early next year sometime.

Cheers.

 

I second this ^^

 

^^ 100%

 

+1 @ Aikimox ))

 

UUUUHHHHGGGHHHH AMD 6870 sounds weak....ATI 6870 sounds HAWT

 

Reborn2003, Thanks heaps for that! Answered all of my questions perfectly!

AS for overclocking the 4870's I've already done that, and am rather happy with my 11,900 vantage points! I've got them running at 625/1050 quite happily..in fact I'm sure they will go further, but I think a voltage higher than 1.1v is required...

 

I agree with most ppl here. It's cool to skip a generation or 2 until you upgrade unless you can afford it.

 

Yeah and keep in mind that the 6870 are only months away. Unlike the 480M power consumption and heat problems, there are no preliminary reports to support these issues with the upcoming 6870. Therefore there could be a good chance that these CPU work with the M17X R2. These GPU would be an amazing upgrade from the 4870.

NOTE: There are a lot of "if" in my above statement, only time will tell.

 

????? CPU ?????

 

Meant GPU, no need to be all smart about it, if you read my whole post there is absolutely no confusion possible.

 

my bad never meant to be a smart *** i just finished reading this post where they were throwing number like 920xm, 940xm 260m, ati 5870 all over the place and OP was thinking CPU was GPU.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/alienware-m17x/516577-920-940-question.html

 

+1 to reborn2003's post. I performed this upgrade earlier today (xfire 4870 to xfire 5870). Uniengine went from 1100ish to 1300ish using DX10 at 1920x1200 default settings, so I'd say 15% is pretty close to the mark.

As for DX11, yes if you crank tesselation up to "11" it'll drop my uniengine heaven bench to about 8 FPS, but cranked that high the effect is so exaggerated that you probably wouldn't want to run it like that anyway (everything became cartoonishly bulbous). On the other hand, if you keep the settings reasonable I can hover around 30fps. I haven't had a chance to see this in action in many games, though. The only DX11 game I own is AVP, and the tesselation available through the UI (haven't checked into console commands or ini files) is simple a boolean toggle. I flipped it to on, but the effect was not terribly significant so I'm guessing its not heavily utilized. However, the FPS were not affected much.

As for the part availability, what reborn said is also true. According to the tech I spoke to, while Alienware used to offer trade ins on upgraded parts this has pretty much stopped since Dell bought em. You would basically be paying full retail for the parts which I'm guessing would run you north of $500 at least. Used market is your best bet.

-Byshop

 

Once they have them in stock, Dell should actually be your best bet on them.....people have gotten a pair of cards from them for about $450 before....top model cards

Some techs will give you a bogus price (must be multiple skus) so just keep trying until you get a cheap quote.

But that being said, I would skip 5870s if you have 4870s already. The DX11 is more a proof of concept and not actually working well right now. Kind of like the desktop nvidia cards when DX10 came out. The 8800/9800 series had dx10, but the GT200 series did it 10x better