A new computer and Ultra Mode

My friend just bought this computer this week. It has the ATI 5670 in it. I know the 5770 is the recommended starter for Ultra Mode but with this setup what things should he be turning down or off? I have Nvidia so I'm not a heck of a lot of help ATI wise.

Thanks for any help!

edit - Wow he must have gotten the last one as they are now Out Of Stock!

Well the 5770 is on average about 50% faster than the 5670. That varies from game to game but that's a ball park figure. I suggest starting small and little by little increasing detail until you get a satisfactory result.

Just a little heads up, Cyberpower is quite the mixed bag make sure everything is connected properly and securely and wires are not within you fan(s).

Yeah I told him about that. He has it all set up and checked it all before plugging it in. Came in on time and in good working order.

Good, I personally know 1 person that has a Cyberpower pc and it has been working great for a few years. I know another whose pc was not assembled anyway near proper and even sent pictures of the error... they still have no idea what they did or what the problem was even after looking right at it.

So any way start small with the 5670 and let us know how well it drives coh. You may also have him download msi afterburner and put a mild oc on it.

What a lot of people don't discuss is resolution and how that affects performance. Remember things like anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering as well as the UM feature of ambient occlusion are done on a per pixel basis.

When people say the 5770 is twice as fast as the 5670, what they are comparing is the number streaming processors, texture units and raster units in the GPU. If you include clock speed then the 5770 is closer to 2.2x faster on paper.

More work with less horsepower means worse frame rate. Don't expect the HD 5670 to rock 1920x1080.

For the new hard shadows and water reflections, beware of cranking World Detail up as now it not only controls draw distance of objects but also the range that objects cast shadows and are used for reflections. Pre UM, you didn't need a beast of a video card to crank it up to 200%. Now with UM, leaving it at 200% can seriously groin kick your frame rate.

Actually I was giving a compressed generic performance evaluation of frame rates across several titles at 1920*1200

Funny how that works, half the hardware, half the performance.

Actually TechPowerUP puts the HD 5670 at about 60% of an HD 5770 at 1920x1200 with AA and AF across a variety of games.

Just goes to show its not only the graphics card that figures into the equation, also if a particular comparison is using reference designs for both items being compared.

Bottom line start low till frame rate becomes unacceptable.

I tried to talk him into at least the 5770 but he had a very hard budget of $600 so that's where he ended up. Even atthat he is EONS ahead of what he was using.

I'll find out his resolution and get back to you... I know he has a 22" lcd widescreen.. mostly because I bought it for him for Christmas last year.

Thanks for your suggestions.

I understand completely. I was looking at purchasing a 5770 for myself but was lucky enough to find a combo with a power supply and a 5830. My personal budget kept shrinking so this was awesome.

All after putting together a very very expensive system for someone. I placed a plaque next to my computer and it says "be happy with what you have", and even though I didn't get exactly what I wanted, I am happy...