Wait for More DX-11 Cards or Buy Now?

[kenestra1]

Kind of in a situation right now. I missed out on the HD5870 Card I wanted and now no one has them in stock. And I am thinking of waiting for the Nvidia DX-11 cards but that could be after the new year. Wouldnt make sense to buy a GTX285 0r 295 right now either(no DX-11 support). Whats a Brotha' to do I ask? The Manufacturers have got people in a holding pattern it seems right now.

[moshpit]

I'd say buy 5870 now. You can find them. A little perseverance pays off. I had to fight to get my pair of 5870's, but I finally got them from Zipzoomfly. Newegg can't keep em in stock hardly, but I've been able to find them at Tigerdirect and zipzoomfly.

I didn't want the Diamond branded 5870 after the one I got from Fry's died after 4 days of use. Zipzoomfly had the HIS version, so I got a pair of them. As soon as I hit buy and finished the transaction, I went back and looked at the page and they had gone out of stock. Apparently I got the last pair. The next day though, they had stock again.

When my Diamond card died, I was going to be stuck a few days without a video card while waiting for the HIS cards to get here, so I temporarily picked up a EVGA GTX295 from Fry's in exchange for the dead 5870, paying the difference. For the 3 days while I waited for the HIS cards to get here, I tested the GTX295 up one side and down the other, in exactly the same things I beat the first 5870 up with. Furmark, 3Dmark, Farcry 2, Crysis, DoW2, X3 Terran Conflict, Fallout 3, the whole gamut of stuff I have to throw at it. While in many scenarios, the raw speed was indeed a hair faster then the single 5870, in many others it wasn't. And the default IQ of the GTX295 was just plain UGLY compared to the 5870. And many of the tests I had lined up had Dx10.1 or Dx11 support, which of course the GTX295 doesn't support either of. I was so happy to take the GTX295 back to Fry's when my HIS cards arrived. PhysX means far less to me then non-proprietary standards like DirectX.

I used the store credit from the GTX295 to get a second Torqx SSD and a nice printer :p

[kenestra1]

Hey Thanks for the great response. I am still looking and can't find one just yet. I would like to get the XFX version because of the Lifetime warranty and I have had great luck with them also. I have been reading things in some rumor mills that the Nvidia DX11 card might be faster? Oh well cant keep chasing this kind of stuff around though. LOL The AMD seems the way to go right now,if I can score one soon. Thanks again.

[moshpit]

Fermi MAY be faster, but it won't be by as much as a 285 was faster then a 4870, no matter how much Nvidia tries to crow it up. The problem is they spent too much of their circuitry budget on general compute power and not enough on gaming power. So far, we've gotten to hear what a wonderful GPGPU chip Fermi will be, but Nvidia has given almost no info on it's gaming power. This concerns me more then I can easily say.

If Fermi does prove faster, I'm ready to move the pair of 5870's over to my 1366 rig, but I'm expecting Fermi to not be everything Nvidia promises. Nvidia promises carry little weight for me anymore. In fact, niether does AMD's promises. Solid, working hardware, that carries all the weight I need it to. They can all take their promises and shove em :p

[kenestra1]

I hear ya' Man! Maybe if one of the 2 would build the card they would build for themselves and just go all out! LOL, and fullfill those promises.

[mxwritingnow]

I am a huge fan of XFX as well - I have had a few cards go south and their support is top notch.
Let us know what you decide to do.

[kenestra1]

Well I made a decision and scored a HIS HD5970 from Newegg on Wednesday when they came out. Should be here on Monday. Thanks for the repleys.

[moshpit]

you will not be dissapointed.

[Deke09]

Really get the HD5870, there's a reason why they'er hard to find, it's because they are very nice for the price and hey it's got Eyefinity.

Deke