4850 Xfire vs 7750/7770

So my situation is that I have an older rig with a Q6600 currently that has crossfire 4850's in them.

I'm considering upgrading them to a single 7750 or 7770. I mean on paper the 4850's seem to be better but any game past 2010 runs like crap and crossfire doesn't seem to help much.

Thing is that my 4850's are only 512mb and they barely play BF3 at low settings. I've seen people get away with playable FPS on a 6770 before.

So I'm looking for advice on the following cards 6770, 7770 or 7750. If anyone could tell me the nvidia options at this level that would be appreciated too as I don't know much about their low level cards.

It's hard if not impossible to find a comparison of 4850's vs. a 7770 where the other specs are the same so the following comments are rough comparisons.

From Guru3d I see that a 4870x2 achieves slightly higher FPS than a single 7770 in Far Cry 2 so your 4850's are likely around par there. As far as their 3dmark vantage scores go the 4870x2 is slightly ahead of the 7770, however a 4850 scores 6682 compared to a 4870 at 8888 so the 7770 would have the 4850's beat there.

So when things scale well and VRAM is not an issue the 7770 is likely to be a sidegrade or slight upgrade. But when things don't scale well or when 512mb of VRAM isn't appropriate the 7770 is going to win by a fair margin. It's also a lot easier on power than 2 4850's.

I think Nvidia's 650Ti or 650 are in the 7770 realm with the 650Ti being better than a 7770 IIRC. Plus if BF3 is your main focus Nvidia seems to have an edge in it as you can see here.

Edit: I personally wouldn't aim lower than a 7770/650Ti if I had 2 4850's.

Thanks for the input, if I can get a 650 for a decent price I may just go with that.

But if the 4870x2 is only slightly ahead of the 7770 it should be a bit more than my 4850 crossfire. The 4850 doesn't have directx 11 and the 512mb vram is definitely a limiting factor, not to mention the older xfire seems not to be scaling very well.

Only reason I'm considering the 7750 is because it is like 80$ where all the 7770's are 109$ with 20-30$ mail in rebates. But since there is no rush I will probably just wait for a good sale.

Any comments on the 6770 though?

Since it's a backup rig I don't want to spend much more than 100$. So the 650, 7750 and 6770 are seeming to be right in my ballpark right now.

I think the 6770 slots right in between the single 4870 and single 4890 while the 7750 is right around the 4890. But most of what I'm saying comes from this chart and a Far Cry 2 performance chart by the same folks.

I'd got with at least a 7850 since its a good 40-50% faster and i dont think your Q6600 will bottleneck the card while being quite cheap. DOnt cost that much more than a 7770.

Even a 7770 would be pushing the budget, a 7850 would be pushing it even more and would be closer to 200$. Like I said this is only a backup comp so I don't need all that much power and I don't really want to invest much into it.

I have my sig rig to play games with. The Q6600 pc is more of a printer server + gaming comp for when friends come over.

I should also mention that the monitor this comp is running is a 1680 by 1050, so all the more reason why I won't need anything all that powerful.

So bottom line is that I want a cheap upgrade, even if it is a side grade that would be fine. I just don't want to downgrade.

Oh I missed the 6600 part somehow. I would imagine that may be your FPS issue in BF3. I was running 1680x1050 low settings on an 8800GTS 320mb and found it playable, usually 30+ FPS.

Maybe overclock that poor thing a lot? While I realize it's not a completely accurate way to comment I noticed a large drop in BF3 performance when I made the changes that dropped my FX-6100 below a 4.0 score in Cinebench R11.5(it was even a bottleneck at 4.0 but lower than that and it was an FPS rollercoaster ride). Last I checked it's a fairly big OC to get a Q6600 to that level so maybe it's the issue.

How does your GPU utilization look in Multiplayer? If it's not constantly hovering in the 95% to 100% range then something else is the bottleneck.

I helped my brother build a Sandy Bridge rig about a year ago, but he ran out of money to get a videocard. I let him borrow my 2 4850s and run them in crossfire for about a month until he got a 6870. The 6870 was either a side-grade or a miniscule upgrade in every benchmark that we tried. The 7770 should be somewhat comparable to the 6870.

Overall you are probably not going to see much increase, but BF3 is something of a unique case due to just how VRam intensive it is. If that is the main game you play then you might look into upgrading.

Even for a backup computer, if its going to play some games, a 7750/70 is a low en card. Its all up to you, and your budget. My HTPC had a GTS450 and its OK for some gaming but i juste buyed an Asus GTX560TI DCII.

A 7770 is ~120$, a 7850 can be found for ~170$, 20% more $ for 40-50% more power.

GotNoRice said:

I helped my brother build a Sandy Bridge rig about a year ago, but he ran out of money to get a videocard. I let him borrow my 2 4850s and run them in crossfire for about a month until he got a 6870. The 6870 was either a side-grade or a miniscule upgrade in every benchmark that we tried. The 7770 should be somewhat comparable to the 6870.

Overall you are probably not going to see much increase, but BF3 is something of a unique case due to just how VRam intensive it is. If that is the main game you play then you might look into upgrading.

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Were they 1gb 4850's? Mine are only 512mb, and in crossfire they can barley run BF3 on low. A 6850 can run BF3 at playable FPS med-high settings.

And no, I'm not buying a 7850. A 7850 works out to 200$ when you include tax and I really don't want to invest 200$ into my old 775 rig. 130$ is the most I'm willing to spend. I have the equivalent to a low end card in it right now anyway.

I'll just keep an eye on the sales for a 100$ 7770 or a 650 Ti. As long as they can play SC2 and decently play BF3 that's all I'm looking for. Even if the 7770 is on par with a 4850 CF setup, it will still have double the memory, dx11 and lower power consumption.

kmo_9000 said:

Mine are only 512mb, and in crossfire they can barley run BF3 on low.

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Seriously, I was running low on a 320mb 8800GTS at 1680x1050(it's about 55% as powerful as 1 4850). 512mb should be fine for 1920x1080, I was using a combination of High/Ultra at 1920x1080 with just 768mb. If you're beyond 1920x1080 then maybe yes, 512mb could get tight, otherwise I think you're jumping to conclusions because you have a really weak processor.

Check out the experience this guy had.
http://battlelog.battlefield.com/bf3/forum/threadview/2832654348333622941/
Sure he isn't playing on low but his average FPS claims are 20% off of what I got from my 560Ti with a 6 core and he's seeing that while overclocked to 3.15Ghz, stock is 2.4 right? He's rarely seeing 100% GPU usage so lowering his settings gets him next to nothing of an FPS increase. Your 4850's aren't great, but your Q6600 is at least as bad and probably worse when it comes to the multiplayer BF3 experience. What other post 2010 games are running slow?

Edit: I see Starcraft 2 mentioned so here's a graph. http://media.bestofmicro.com/G/P/324601/original/StarCraftII.png Your processor is approximately the Athlon 455.

If notting is pushing you to buy fast, wait for good deals. I just buyed a brand new Asus GTX560TI DCII for 108$ (canadian).

Wait for a good deal and youll have a much better card.