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Originally Posted by Onlyasandwich  . I'd just spend half the money on the card and pocket the difference, personally. A regular 4870 would be a pretty fair bet. |
I totally agree with most of what you said, but my experience with dual card solutions has been way different. ATI's crossfire setup is absolutely silly as far as scaling goes. Back during the 3870 days it scaled to as high as 80%, which is nothing to sneeze at considering price/performance ratio. A single 4870 is an amazing card, but if he's getting a 24'' monitor, it'll tax that card to hell and back. ATI is DOMINATING Nvidia right now (anyone see their stock prices fall?) because Nvidia made the same mistake they always do. Underestimate the little guy. I know that AMD/ATI isn't doing as well as Intel or Nvidia, but as far as their performance/price ratio, you can't beat ATI cards at the moment.
Quads are future proof I think. They really aren't necessary, but more and more games ARE taking advantage of 4 cores, even if they are largely GPU limited. Its only a matter of time before its standard. If you want a quad, I see no reason against recommending you get one. Happy hunting!