savior

I had missed that, it is much better than 470 and 480. Also power consumption and temperatures are good. In the benchmarks it is usually beetween 5830 and 5850, but often also below 5830. And yes, ATI must lower prices soon because of it. Anyone has one of these video cards (ATI 5830, ATI 5850, Nvidia GTX 460) and can report how well it runs on Arma 2 ?

@maverick96: I had seen that option but discarded it because i wouldn't like to upgrade a cpu now and having to upgrade again in 6-10 months. Better a more serious upgrade, changing to a newer socket, longer life...and I already have upgraded CPU on this mothereboard once (it is Asus P5B if i recall well). @domokun: thanks, I had not considered the 5830, i will check some benchmarks and prices..too bad the 5850 price went up after the GTX470 came out (without creating real competition to ATI).

Great, thanks! I think i'll go with the graphic card (5850 i guess) and then I will keep it when i change also MB/CPU and RAM, cause i will have to do it soon anyway, but maybe better after the holidays when I am more rested.

Thanks a lot for the replies. Actually, checking the CPU charts here: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/charts/2009-desktop-cpu-charts-update-1/3DMark-Vantage-1.0.2-CPU,1398.html i noticed that my cpu still behaves quite well. And then I've read in many threads (especially regarding Assassin's creed) that many games only use the first CPU, so it would be better to have less cores with higher frequency then the other side around. Told this (you might disagree and hopefully in the future the support to multicore will be more used also in games), changing CPU would mean to change also motherboard and RAM. At this point i should change everything (almost) and that would mean 1000 Euro/1300 Dollars. I think i might first give a try with a new graphic card and see how it goes. In case the performance is more or less the same i will go with a brand new rig (using the new video card of course). Opinions?

Hi all, I have the following configuration: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 3,16GHZ, 2 GB RAM, Windows XP 32, 8800GTS XXX 640 MB, Hard disk 7200RPM. What would be the best purchase (considering the price) to increase Arma 2 OA performance beetween: Hard disk Intel SSD X25-M 80GB at 213 Euro Video Card Ati 5850 at 290 Euro Video card Ati 5770 at 143 Euro. Thanks!