Itching for crossfire

jackoire

Am currently running a single 5870 at the moment with 3x 23" monitors (eyefinity). I had planned a few months back to go for a second 5870 but i decided to hold off and wait for a price drop.

I am seriously drooling over 2x 6950's and just selling my 5870 instead of getting a second. But is it really worth it?

Taughts and suggestions please.

uberpixie

jackoire wrote: »

Am currently running a single 5870 at the moment with 3x 23" monitors (eyefinity). I had planned a few months back to go for a second 5870 but i decided to hold off and wait for a price drop.

I am seriously drooling over 2x 6950's and just selling my 5870 instead of getting a second. But is it really worth it?

Taughts and suggestions please.

6950s will be pretty much performing identically to the 5870s but with a lot less power draw + heat.

If you have a good psu. case cooling and can get a 5870 cheap it's worth sticking with them.

If you can get x2 6950s for under 300 go for it.

lmimmfn

I had a 5850 OC'd to 5870 performance with an Eyefinity setup of 3840x1024. I bought a 6970 and i now get roughly the same performance as my overclocked 5850( running in 1680x1050 resolution ) but at a resolution of 5040x1050 judging by my old Metro2033 benchmarks from last year and F1 2010

If it were me and i had the cash i would do it, and flash the 6950's to 6970's to unlock them.

The 2Gig vram on the 69x0 cards really really helps with eyefinity performance

I dont know if i actually need a crossfire setup now, i can run everything maxed( with 2xAA ) at 5040x1050 and get 45+FPS in all games apart from Metro2033 and Crysis+Warhead( which i just run in single screen as theyre to hard on hardware ). Bad Company 2 e.g. runs at an average of 70FPS, F1 2010 runs on ultra settings averaging 48FPS, with 42FPS being the minimum. Aliens vs Predator averages 70+FPS

I considered crossfired 5850's but the lack of vram for eyefinity put me off the idea as AA needs vram and a lot more in eyefinity

Theres no way you would get 2x6950's for under 300 euro

If you do plan on crossfiring 2x6950's, they'll need 250W each and if you overclock them theyll consume a max of 305W or so, so if youve an i7 OC'd to 4Ghz( uses about 250-260W ), you would definately need a 1000W PSU if youve a sound card and a few harddrives etc.

WARNING: YOU CANNOT USE 69x0 cards in eyefinity where 2 of the screens use VGA->DVI adaptors, one of the DVI ports is DVI only

mikeruurds

I am running 5870 CF (recently upgraded from a single card). Managed to pick up a second hand 5870 on ebay for under €200.

I considered selling my 5870 and upgrading to the new series, but decided that the small performance gain was not worth the additional cost required.

More than happy with my current setup and running it on an 80+ 700W PSU with 4 HDs. No problems at all. Running all latest games at max settings.

lmimmfn

One other thing regarding 69x0 cards, theyre longer than 5870's so make sure you check they'll fit if youre thinking about them.