Originally posted by: toyota
a $250 5850 would be a massive waste while using a 2.6 Opty. a 4890 would also be pretty dang wasteful too but at least its $100 cheaper. really a $90 4850 would be a nice boost and thats about as high as I would go as even that will be noticeably limited by your cpu in many modern games.
wow, I didn't see that comment coming. Unfortunately, even a broken clock is right twice a day.
@OP, you should be concerned about the performance increase vs your current card. I went from a 3870 to a 4850, in most instances it is a good but not great increase. The 4890 would be a much more noticeable increase, but it is old tech dx 10.1 and is a power hog, plus it would be bottlenecked significantly by the opty even if you oc it to 3.0-3.2. 5850 is much better on power but is just too much for your cpu in many situations where it would actually make a difference.
Save the money from the potential video card purchase and upgrade your system first. A p55/i5 combo can be had for just slightly more than the price of a 5850, grab those and part out the old system before upgrading the video card.