ATI 6970 upgrade
 

Right now I've got the following:

Win7 64
Asus P6T Deluxe
Ci7 920
3Gb RAM (PC3 10666)
ATI 4870 (1GB)

I built this ~2.5 years ago and it's owned everything, till now.

I'm looking hard at a 6970, specifically this

If I dropped this into my rig, what should I expect? How about the RAM?

ATI 69** has a visual bug in this game since day 1. Have to advise to go for gtx580.

I have a 6970 and think it's a great card, but I would not recommend it for CloD because of the horizon graphics problems that the devs don't seem interested in fixing (blue lines and mishandled horizon haze). Get a GTX570 or 580 instead.

I'm aware of the 3 lines issue. I wasn't motivated to buy today. Figured it'd be fixed.

But I'm not married to ATI either. Is there a comparable gx580? What was attractive to me about this card in particular was the heat pipe design. (low noise)

Also, I guess I should get a 6Gb kit too. Is it worth it to get the higher memory frequency ($$$) or just get some low latency (PC3 10666)?

I have 2 of those Powercolor cards in crossfire. I can tell you that one will run a single 25 inch monitor at good speeds, 80 to 100 fps with everything on high except that SSAO is off, provided the rest of the system is up to par. It also runs substantially cooler than the reference design card, despite the fact that it has a decent factory overclock.

I got a second card to run triple monitors better, and it does pretty well, though not what I'd hoped. Also, in crossfire the airflow to the top card is largely blocked by the bottom card, so the top card runs on the warm side now...

In general higher clocked or low latency RAM does very little for performance in games these days, especially when coupled with new CPU's
At most i'd get a CL9 1600MHZ set as past that prices skyrocket for barely any gains.
http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/mem...andy-bridge/12
http://techreport.com/articles.x/20377/4

As for the 6970, my system with a 6950 runs CLOD very well at high settings and besides the blue lines issue, which will be fixed sooner or later, has no ATI specific hickups at all

This is noted in luthiers latest post as bug to be fixed.

Iºm running two hd6970´s in crossfire and after the latest patches it runs silky smooth with everything maxed out. Noise and temps stay nice and low too.

Blue stripes bug is an immersion killer but Luthier latest notes give hope that this annoying bug will be fixed soon.

Sorry to trail offtopic but I think the issue Luthier describes as "landscape stripes bug" are the stripes of water ,or stripes of land, that appear in places they don't belong.
I've seen it mentioned in several threads that the horizon stripes will be fixed based on that line ,but the wording makes me think he's talking about actual landscape and not the horizon.

I unfortunately think you are correct, but am hoping not :)