4800x900 - 5970 2GB Enough?

E

exlink

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Dec 16, 2006
Messages
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I'm about to be moving to a 3 monitor eyefinity setup (3 1600x900 = 4800x900) and was going to purchase a 5970 2GB. I only have 1 PCI-E slot since its going to be in a mATX case and motherboard (does have clearance for the card though). I was wondering if I would be able to maintain playable framerate (50-60 FPS for the most part) with these three monitors in these games (at high settings):

Battlefield Bad Company 2
Call of Duty: Black Ops
World of Warcraft

I do other PC gaming with much more demanding games (Crysis, Metro 2033, GTA4, etc) but I'm ok to sticking with a single monitor at 1600x900 to maintain high(er) settings.

Rest of My System:

Q9550 @ 4.0GHz (H50)
4GB Kingston HyperX DDR2
ASUS P5E-VM HDMI
Corsair 650HX PSU
500GB Western Digital HDD
Antec P180 Mini

exlink
 
Why not wait for the 6970 coming out in literally two weeks?

Even if you still prefer to pick up a 5970 the prices on those will drop overnight.

It'll ought to give a 5970 a run for its money with none of the problems of a multi-GPU setup. But if you are truly serious about your multi-monitor performance, enough to consider a 5970, then the 6990 out in Jan. will be well worth waiting for, as well.
 
that card should be powerful enough to play those games at that resolution. battlefield might not run at 60fps but it should be playable im pretty sure. like the guy above said, i would wait until the next set of cards release before making a decision unless you need it now.
 
i run a very similar setup with just one 5870 and Battlfield runs great. I think I'm at 4080x768. I think a 5970 would be perfect for that setup.
 
more then enough. don't think your going to do any AA though. are you sure you can't wait until after the 15th?
 
exlink said:
I'm about to be moving to a 3 monitor eyefinity setup (3 1600x900 = 4800x900) and was going to purchase a 5970 2GB. I only have 1 PCI-E slot since its going to be in a mATX case and motherboard (does have clearance for the card though). I was wondering if I would be able to maintain playable framerate (50-60 FPS for the most part) with these three monitors in these games (at high settings):

Battlefield Bad Company 2
Call of Duty: Black Ops
World of Warcraft

I do other PC gaming with much more demanding games (Crysis, Metro 2033, GTA4, etc) but I'm ok to sticking with a single monitor at 1600x900 to maintain high(er) settings.

Rest of My System:

Q9550 @ 4.0GHz (H50)
4GB Kingston HyperX DDR2
ASUS P5E-VM HDMI
Corsair 650HX PSU
500GB Western Digital HDD
Antec P180 Mini

exlink
Click to expand...

@4800x900 you're barely over what a 2560x1600 monitor puts out in terms of raw pixels, the difference is 224,000 pixels, or .25MP, so a good chance that any card that can push 2560x1600 sufficiently can handle your setup.

I would wait for the 69xx cards as it might be a better option for you
 
As I will still be sitting behind a Q9550 @ 4GHz and will probably continue to stay with it until LGA 2011 (I absolutely love my Q9550) then I don't want to buy a brand new spanking card for a lot of $$$ that will be bottlenecked by my CPU. I know that the 5970 would still be bottlenecked but it would be a lot less and considering I've seen some of these sell for ~$380 then I guess it would be a good pick up.

I would assume that the 6970 would release around $350-$400 as well but I'm doubting that it will be able to outperform the 5970 (atleast according to AMD's chip performance roadmap) and the 6990 will outperform it but I'm guessing it will cost no less than $600-$700.

I just wanted to make sure that the 4800x900 eyefinity set up would be of acceptable performance on a 5970. From what I've seen the 5970 usually performs more than adequately at 2560x1200 so I'm guessing that since that resolution is so close to 4800x900 in terms of pixels processed then it should be fine. I really appreciate the fact that I had some personal input given since that helped me confirm my believes.

I will be performing a complete system overhaul when the LGA 2011 socket (Q4 2011 last I heard) comes out and hopefully by then the HD 7xxx or GTX 6xx series or whatever names they will take will either be out or will be coming out shortly after that.

exlink
 
A 5970 will get the job done. You will probably have fun getting drivers to work on BFBC2 though.
 
You are definitely well-set with that processor till next generation, for sure.

However, I think the 6970, in fact, will be at least as fast as the 5970. How can I make that assumption? That's based on the performance of the 580 which is within 5%... assuming that Xfire scales properly, which isn't always the case. But the 6970 will almost certainly be within the ballpark of a 580 for a little bit less cost.

Additionally you'll probably want the 2gb of vram which is coming on a 6970 as opposed to having access to only 1 gb per gpu on the 5970. I think It'll be a way better card for your multimonitor intents.
 
Jalidi said:
You are definitely well-set with that processor till next generation, for sure.

However, I think the 6970, in fact, will be at least as fast as the 5970. How can I make that assumption? That's based on the performance of the 580 which is within 5%... assuming that Xfire scales properly, which isn't always the case. But the 6970 will almost certainly be within the ballpark of a 580 for a little bit less cost.

Additionally you'll probably want the 2gb of vram which is coming on a 6970 as opposed to having access to only 1 gb per gpu on the 5970. I think It'll be a way better card for your multimonitor intents.
Click to expand...

Its hard to say. I was just going by the AMD Chip Performance Roadmap they presented when they introduced the HD 6xxx series. They placed the 5970 above the 6970 but below the 6990 which makes sense since dual GPU's from previous generations generally outperform a single GPU from the new generation.
 
I ended up biting on the Sapphire 5870 1GB for $215 (After MIR) from Newegg. I also ended up getting 3 smaller LCD's with 1440x900 resolution each because it turned out that the 20" LCD's wouldn't fit well on my desk. So the combined resolution would be 4320x900 which is less than the 2560x1600 resolution. Was looking at some benchmarks and the 5870 1GB can play my 3 most played games (BF:BC2, COD:BO and WoW) without a problem at 2560x1600 so a lower resolution like 4320x900 should be cake for it.

For the more intense games (Crysis, Metro 2033, etc) I'll just game on one LCD at 1440x900 which the 5870 1GB should be able to tear apart no problem. I'll probably just end up getting a 6970 once they come down in price like this 5870 did; I'm in no particular rush to get them.
 
If you're going with a 5870 for Eyefinity you might as well get the 2GB version. Heck a 6970 2GB would have performed even better. But if you can live without AA I think the 5870 will do okay, but not great at Eyefinity resolutions.
 
vjcsmoke said:
If you're going with a 5870 for Eyefinity you might as well get the 2GB version. Heck a 6970 2GB would have performed even better. But if you can live without AA I think the 5870 will do okay, but not great at Eyefinity resolutions.
Click to expand...

Yeah except the 2GB version of the 6870 isn't released yet (and the 6870 is a bit weaker than the 5870) and a 5870 2GB costs nearly double what I just paid for my 5870 1GB...

The 5870 1GB is able to play the Bad Company 2 in DX11 at 2560x1600 (which is larger than the 4320x900 resolution I'll be playing at) at highest settings with 4xAA and 16xAF at around 40 FPS. So I'm guessing once I overclock mine, knock it down to 2xAA and play at 4320x900 I should be getting around 45-50 FPS which is more than enough to make me happy.

As for Black Ops the 5870 is said to be able to play it at 2560x1600, max settings, 4xAA and 16xAF at over 60 FPS. And WoW a 5870 can play it at 2560x1600, max settings, 4xAA and achieve 75-80 FPS. More than ample power.

As for the rest of the games. 5870 is overkill to play at 1440x900. I'll pick up a 6970 2GB once they fall below the $250 mark like this card did, even if that means waiting a year.
 
bkrawk said:
How are your frame rates in current games?
I have a 5850 at the moment and I want to set up eyefinity with the same resolution as you
Click to expand...

In order to get 50-60fps. You are going to want a 2 gb card for that resolution if you want anything other than low settings for a game like BFBC2 for example. 6950 if they have a 2gb? would be my minimum card.
 
bkrawk said:
How are your frame rates in current games?
I have a 5850 at the moment and I want to set up eyefinity with the same resolution as you
Click to expand...

From what I've read, the 5850 needs to run most games on medium/high settings at 5760x1080 to attain good FPS. I remember watching a youtube video posted by a fellow [H] member and he was running BF:BC2 on a 5850 at 5760x1080 with medium settings (No AA) and he was getting 45-70 FPS with dips into 30 FPS. So a 5850 should be decent enough at that resolution to play most games at atleast medium settings. However, graphically intense games like Crysis or Metro 2033 will require 2GB VRam at that resolution to be able to play at higher settings.
 
bkrawk said:
How are your frame rates in current games?
I have a 5850 at the moment and I want to set up eyefinity with the same resolution as you
Click to expand...
frame rates are very playable. Most games run on medium to high settings. Mostly I've been playing L4d2, and it's just about maxed out. Every thing I have tried to play looks decent and playable. I've been quite pleased with it so far.
 
You already own a 5870. I wouldn't 'upgrade' to a 5970. It's not worth the money at all. I played @ 5760x1080 with a single 5870 for a long time. My crossfired 5870's get a few extra frames with slightly higher settings... but I seriously wouldn't spend the money on a 5970 if you've already got a 5870 with the 6970 so close.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
You already own a 5870. I wouldn't 'upgrade' to a 5970. It's not worth the money at all. I played @ 5760x1080 with a single 5870 for a long time. My crossfired 5870's get a few extra frames with slightly higher settings... but I seriously wouldn't spend the money on a 5970 if you've already got a 5870 with the 6970 so close.
Click to expand...

Someone didn't read the entire thread. ;)

I had a GTX 260 c216 when I started this and bit on the Sapphire 5870 1GB when it was $215 AMIR from Newegg. Updated the sig once I ordered the card.
 
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