I feel the need to jump in here to state that I'm the one who's been giving martin my opinions on which stuff to get and why.
First off, it's widely known that Crysis: Warhead is not a game that's friendly towards the 5770's. The thing is, in most other games, Crossfired 5770's do extremely well, often beating the 5870 and at much less cost. Knowing martin's budget restraints, I felt that Crossfired 5770's give him the best bang for the buck overall: awesome performance in every game, low power consumption even in Crossfire, and the cards themselves are tiny.
I'd take great performance in every game over awesome performance in one game any day, and the lower power consumption will save him money in the long run. Because the cards are so small, they can fit in nearly every case and don't impede airflow, keeping the entire rig cooler, which is always good.
Here's a few articles for reference. Note that the Warhead results are much the same, but for most other games, the Crossfired 5770's perform closer to the 5870, and in many cases, dominate it. The main exceptions are, as stated, Crysis: Warhead and DoW II.
1)
Anandtech Article. You can read the whole article if you want, but the Benchmarks start on page 5
2)
Guru3d Article (sgnl05's article). Again, you can read the whole article if you want, but the Benchmarks start on page 14
3)
Tom's Hardware Article. Benchmarks on page 5. This article doesn't have 5870 results, but it still shows how the 2x 5770's stack up against a 5850.
If he had the budget for it, I'd definitely say get a 5850, 5870, or even a 5970, but he doesn't. The 5770's are the current kings of mid-range budget builds; this may change when fermi is released and prices drop, but he'd still get an awesome system out of the deal.
That being said, thanks for helping out with local stores. I've got no idea what's what in Australia, so your input will hopefully be a great help.
