Originally Posted by
Munty
I seem to be turning up some pretty nice bundles on eBay today, some advice on these would be nice. Also some more questions!
Turns out I can get hold of a second 4870 pretty cheaply these days so running 2 in crossfire is certainly doable. What sort of performance would I see from 2 of these older cards compared to splashing out on a single newer one though? I'm pretty sure the former option will give me better performance for the money spent but will it cover new titles? It should do right? I'm not 100% on how crossfire utilises both cards so advice would be good. Also, the link itself, I assume it's flexible so it doesn't matter if the mobo has one or two spaces between the two PCI-E slots right?
On processors, I've found a few bundles with an i5 chip and 8GB of DDR3 memory for a little over £200 so I checked out the cost of i7 bundles too. Turned up some more results for an additional £100 which I could conceivably run to but is it worth it in the long run? Obviously these are 1st gen chips and there's already a 2nd out so how long will it be before these things are getting replaced in peoples gaming machines? And is the i7 £100 better than the i5? It's just for gaming but I do like everything maxed out.
Been looking at PSUs and have found some 600W corsair ones for around the £50-60 mark. Is that something worth pursuing or is there something better out there for equivalent money? Plus how much will I actually need if I'm running the most powerful option I'm considering. That'd be 2x4870's in crossfire, an i7 chip and 8GB of DDR3 ram. I want to have a surplus of power so if it's worth getting more than 600 please tell me now as I'm itching for an upgrade and the PSU will actually be the first thing I get!
Cheers again, T