• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

2nd 4850

F

Fluxxer

n00b
Joined
Jul 3, 2008
Messages
24
Quick question for you guys. I have one of the original Asus EAH4850s and was thinking about picking up a 2nd one for crossfire, looks like Asus has changed the cooling and some specs on the cards (looks like factory overclocking or whatever). Will I be able to use my old 4850 fine in crossfire or will there be potential problems?

Thanks for your time.
 
they should work just fine but to be honest at this point I wouldnt get another 512mb version if thats what you have. I would sell the card you have now and buy a faster single card with more memory. also with your cpu a dual 4850 setup will be slightly held back.
 
If you want a simple answer... yes you can use your 4850 to crossfire with any other 512mb 4850 and it will work. It doesnt matter which manufacturer you use they are all compatible. The faster card (if one is overclocked) will just assume the clock speeds of the slower card so they match.

I agree with cannondale that your CPU will hold back two 4850s, I have to clock my E8400 to 4Ghz and I and it is still a bottleneck for my 4850 crossfire setup. Still you will still see a noticeable gain in almost every game. There are some that just dont scale well with multi GPU setups.
 
There was someone selling the original ASUS 4850 on [H] a few days ago.
If you want to maintain consistency, you might try to find a used one first...
 
arcanus said:
What settings/resolution and which game(s)?
Click to expand...

Synthetic tests like 3DMark06 and Vantage @ default settings. With the CPU @ 4GHz any increase in GPU clock speeds shows little to no gain in overall score (im talking 10-100 pts) @ 1280x1024. This points to the CPU bottlenecking the GPU's power. Clocks tested were ranging from 650/1000 to 700/1200.

Once I increase the resolution up 16809x1050 increases or decreases in GPU clock speeds will result in higher or lower overall scores.

As for actual gaming it make much less difference since I always game @ 1680x1050 with all settings as high as possible depending on the game. Real world gaming with 2 x 4850 is a treat and I couldn't care less about synthetic scores.
 
Ah, okay. So you were running a synthetic benchmarking application known to be very CPU-dependent, at a "low" resolution. That puts things into perspective :p
 
I plan on buying another 4850 512meg at the first of the month. I am looking at the HIS one that exhausts the heat. Even with a 3gz quad-core I think it will do fine at 1680x1050 from all the reading I have done.

You do not need 4gz to benefit from from 2 4850s.
 
poppageek said:
I plan on buying another 4850 512meg at the first of the month. I am looking at the HIS one that exhausts the heat. Even with a 3gz quad-core I think it will do fine at 1680x1050 from all the reading I have done.

You do not need 4gz to benefit from from 2 4850s.
Click to expand...
well your phenom at 3.0 isnt the same as a core 2 at 3.0 so yeah you will start to get a little limited but not too bad in most games.
 
I suppose it is possible to balance a CPU and GPU so one is not bottle necking the other, at least not by a significant amount. It is just not something I worry too much about.

I had pretty much planed on a second 4850 when I built this machine. I have read alot on the 4870 1gig and was very tempted to go with it. But the games I play do Crossfire pretty well, from what I have read in forums and review sites. May turn out to be a real pain and not work as well as I hope. Won't know about it till I try.

Depending on the games the OP play he may well be better off with a 1gig 4870. They sure do kick butt. But I don't think he will do badly with 2 4850s IF his games use them. If ya like to play with stuff to get it to work try another 4850. Want it easy and still get more bang get the 4870 1gig.

What ever ya do hope ya have fun!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top