It's about time video card technology became smaller and more efficient without compromising advancements in speed. It's bad enough you even need to consider buying two cards in this day and age - Voodoo 2 SLI was never cool, in 2009 it still isn't.

As long as ATI continues to make high-performance graphics cards which can still fit sensibly (9.5") inside smaller pc cases, Nvidia are sure to lose the technology war. I certainly hope Nvidia aren't planning any 19" long cards!

Crysis @ 1680 @ High @ 50 frames w/ 1 gfx card = how it should be.

Yet it won't be as long as game developers create engines that are capable of outstripping the capabilities of single GPUs pushing the hardcore gamer into multi-GPU setups. But given that GPU manufacturers now have viable multi-GPU technology they will push that hard to sell more cards, thus allowing game developers to keep pushing the upper limits of their engines.

Now if the hardcore gamer stopped buying muti-GPU systems then the above cycle will end, but they won't - either through pride or stupidity the hardcore gamer will say "but to run this at maximum I need 3 GTX-whatevers" and will go and buy them.

In a couple of years single cards WILL be able to play Crysis as you say - there were many similar complaints about Elder Scrolls' requirements when it came out, but it's hardly an issue now - abut frankly I'm tired of people using Crysis as that measuring stick - it's totally unrealistic! Either through optimisim or pure stupidity, the Crytek engine used is just beyond any sensible levels of technology we have at the moment. I thought Doom 3 on Ultra quality was a bad idea when it first came out and then tech caught up, but I'm not sure we'll see that with Crysis any time soon.

we need more quite, less power hungry and cooler gpus keep them coming

spell check quiet .. my bad

I wonder what hardware do the guys at Crytek use to make a game like crysis...

I don't think it was tested at maximum resolution and effects. They probably had cutting-edge hardware, built so it was playable at maximum settings and then turned up the dials of what the engine could do visually - at that point you only need to do stills to test the effects, or pre-render sequences as video to test it out.

These new cards make 4890 looked like a cheap card LoL - luckily I waited before buying 4890 / 4870x2..

As good as they are, I'm holding off for NVIDIA's cards or getting GTX285s on cheap (as in Overclockers are doing a self-branded GTX285 for £200 cheap) - unless the companies who produce the design software I use embrace ATI's stream processors I'm afraid it's CUDA all the way with me.

Good to see the mid-range card will easily beat the flagships of the old generation. It will be interesting to see how nV's release measures up - and at what power drain!

Anyone know how many amps the +12v rails will need for the 5870/50 cards? I find this information far more useful than wattage figures.

Since I rarely do anything other than basic functions on my comp and just love playing PC games on over consoles. I'm glad to find out that I can buy a nice Mobo for $150, $200 CPU, and get a decent gaming rig. Can anyone please explain to me all the hype around overclocking as far as games are concerned. Or is it mainly for applications that are CPU intensive.

It's not hype, it's basic maths: if you have something that goes X fast but is capable of going Y faster then pushing it to Y will get things done faster than X.

Doesn't matter if it's games, video encoding, finance calculations or anything - if your chip can be overclocked to get the job done faster then why not do it?

Also don't think that games can't CPU intensive: Crysis for instance has a purely software-driven sound engine that will be processed by the CPU, and GTA IV is such a bad port it runs even a quad-core really hard.

The real discussion though is dual-core vs quad-core in games - do you go quad core when most games won't take advantage of it? For the longest time the consensus was always a faster dual-core was better for you, but GTA IV and a few others have now started being quad-aware and that trend is no doubt growing.

Allow me to clarify my question. When saying "hype" I mean popular, not unproven performance. Since the CPU will become inadvertently hotter because of the overclock, I will now have to spend another $50 on a decent cooler like a nice rosewill or something. Am I really going to notice a big difference of 10%-15% when I'm already getting 80-120 fps in games, or good performance in other applications already? Do you see my point? Lokk at the benchmarks above. They sent that thing to 4 GHz! How long will it last for, and does it seem worth such little gain if you have to spend another $50?

^^ I see what you're saying.

Usually it's massive voltage increases and/or not dealing with heat properly that causes damage to the CPU - the D0 stepping i7 for instance only needs a tiny voltage boost, if at all, to reach the 3.8GHz+ mark, and keeping the temps to around 75 degrees or less keeps the chip OK. So that being said, overclocking the CPU to these levels won't do it any harm

The reason for the overclock though in this case is to remove any possible CPU bottlenecks when driving such a powerful Crossfire setup - as the article is about the GPU's performance you want the numbers coming out to be as pure as possible.

Real-world? Overclocking isn't going to hurt you and if you can and keep it under control, why the hell not? But if you can get the perceived standard 60fps+ out of a CPU at stock then yeah you're probably just splitting hairs or showing off by cranking your CPU up for those extra 20 or 30fps you're never going to see.

Applications is a slightly different kettle of fish IMO. I do a lot of graphic and video work and I render and encode masses of data. As a result I can never go too fast, and even if I get an extra 10% performance by overclocking I'll take it - 10% off a 60 second render may only be 6 seconds, but if I can shave 24 minutes off a 4-hour render then it's worth it.

Now I have to wonder if my HD4890 was a good buy (with the intention of going Crossfire at some point), considering DX11 is properly 'on the cards'...

I see. Thank you for the response. When I get my i-7 860 I'll try it out.

great choice of CPU and that one needs to be OC with a £40 cooler u could most likely get to 3.6-3.8 Ghz

in the past after OC my system i have seen an increase in 30% for 3D mark.

as long as ur temps and voltage's are fine theres no down side to OC. just dont be tempted to push the CPU to its max in order to obtain that last 2-5% performance boost lol

Why did I get marked down just for giving a genuine, non-fanboi reason for sticking with NVIDIA cards?

Or is the sheer mention of the green team in a red team article really that much of an insult?