Well I had some problems with my fps when I were running firefox in the background, especially when I had been on youtube.
That was because the ati cards clocks themselfs down when not in use, and so my card refused to run at full speed when I had firefox running cause it only recogniced the 2D things going on and not the game with 3d.

overclock just a lil bit like i mentioned before, it'll fix it. even if u dont have firefox or anything else running, you wont always have the full 3d clocks under normal circumstances coz ati has fail 3d detection with ET ^^

what kind of ati graphic card do u have?

its almost 2012 and next gen consoles and next gen graphic cards will be released, is it a good idea to buy a 450 euro graphic card at this time? because if i buy a 450 new video card it might be outdated in a few months... any comments?

you dont really need to waste that much money... your card should be sufficient (especially if u do that lil overclock to fix the 2d/3d bug). if i would need to buy a new card now, i'd go for a 6950 reference model as they are that expensive and you can fairly easy unlock and oc them to 6970 potential which makes it an even better buy.
so dont get a new card now (except maybe sell urs for a good price and get a 6950 instead - which just slightly costs more) and rather try that overclocking method to see if it will make u happy, if not waste ur money on whatever u believe u need

Next gen consoles are not gonna hit the market at 2012...

And if you buy high end card today (well not today, bf3 might be pushing tecnology a bit with the new FB2 engine), it will serve you next 3 years. Theres still many people with their old 8800GTS And 9800GT cards maxing out todays games with reasonable performance.


What makes you think next gen consoles wont age, after 6 months they are already old.

thanks for the comments guys,
ive got another question... what if i use 2 video cards i mean like 2x hd 6850, will the performance be better?

not necessarily, sli/crossfire unfortunately way too often dont perform as expected. especially older games fail with 2+ gpus. i would rather get only 1 good card(eg the 6950 which is good and not super expensive) and u wont have to deal with even more problems

I do only have a ATI 5770 and I'm quite satisfied.
If I were you, I wouldn't spend more money on a new graphics card, I would if something do the opposite to what snake tells you and get another 6850 cause you won't need more fps in old games but it should give you the push needed to boost your fps in new games.
Here's how it compares to other cards

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/ ... ire/8.html
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/ ... 50/11.html

the crossffire setup do actually perform better then the 6950 http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/ ... 50/12.html

lol really? so obvious...
but still 2x 6850 is a really bad investment. for hte reasons i mentioned above and coz the performance u get for the price of 2 of them is rather poor (not even looking at all the problems a noob wouldnt be able to handle anyway).
just keep ur 6850 with a lil overclock, or sell it and get a reference 6950->easy unlocking to 6970 possible and u cant beat the price/performance with any other card atm if u do that afaik. besides its enough to run all the games mayed out just fine (and again, less problems with a single gpu).

No actualy 2x6850 is good i have 2x gigabyte gtx 560 (just coz i hate ati ) and waiting to get 8 core bulldozer
and btw kepler (6xx) series come in 2012 so buy 7xxx ati

currently have
990fxa-ud3
phenom 555
2x gigabyte gtx 560 (SLI)
8gb kingston 1600 cl9 (so angry in month price drop by 30€)
silver arrow CPU cooler

I heard crossfire/SLI fails 20x more in games (crashing and freezing) than.regular one card.

Maybe PC with shity PSU

no believe me sli/crossfire is totally unnecessary these days, especially if u look at the price u gotta pay... imo its an uber fail investment.
and sry to say it this way... but remember its dragonathan, who doesnt really seem to have a clue of anything on these forums he doesnt need crossfire and thats it. just keep it simple and get 1 good card (or keep ur current one) u wont have any problems with games atm anyway and for upcoming games u wont notice the difference between 40 or 60 fps anyway since ur more of a casual gamer.
enough said, ur money, do what u want but dont come back crying for help in 2 weeks

To buy two cards from the beginning, yeah that's a fail investment, but upgrading from one to two cards, sounds more reasonable than getting rid of the old one and getting a new one without that much fps improvment.

Though as you already said, I would go for a little bit of overclock (that's not needed cause the card is good enough anyway) and keeping the current card.
You don't need anymore power when playing the current games.