5770 Cross/Tri Fire vs 5850.

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vanilla_guerilla

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i have been seeing that 5770 crossfire is equal or better in most games than the 5850, for about the same price. also, i can go trifire with the 5770 pretty cheaply and from the benchmarks i have seen this is just shy of a 5970 in performance. now will the narrow 128bit path of the 5770's ever become a problem, or does the speed of gddr5 make up for it?
 
5770 crossfire will be faster than a single 5850 but that depends on the too support crossfire.
 
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do you mean a single 5850? i know this. what i am concerned about is will the 128 bit memory become a limiting factor in high res/high quality gaming.
 
I'm a firm believer in the "buy the fastest single GPU you can afford". You don't have to worry about CFX scaling in games and what-not among other things (power consumption, heat, etc). But that is just my opinion.

As for memory bandwidth, I don't think it would be that big of a bottleneck, if any at all.
 
Xfire scaling is pretty good on the 5770's and it should at least equal the performance of a 5850 if not better (closer to a 5870) with current drivers for roughly the same price. Power consumption is the same as a single 5870 so it should be no problem if you a decent power supply.

I wouldn't go trifire though as that has very poor scaling.
 
Look at it this way.

Let's say Crossfire (2 gpus) scales 80% optimum.
Trifire (3 gpus) would be an additional 40% optimum.
Quadfire (4 gpus) MIGHT be an additional 20% optimum. But sometimes you get 0%.

Right now CrossfireX doesn't scale very well. The new drivers are even worse for CrossfireX.
You can try it out, but it probably won't be worth the money for you.
 
i have been reading that 5770 scales very well in crossfire. also, i notice 5770 prices down to $150, and 5850 prices up to $330. looks like 5770 crossfire, for now. this is for a secondary system.
 
vjcsmoke said:
Look at it this way.

Let's say Crossfire (2 gpus) scales 80% optimum.
Trifire (3 gpus) would be an additional 40% optimum.
Quadfire (4 gpus) MIGHT be an additional 20% optimum. But sometimes you get 0%.

Right now CrossfireX doesn't scale very well. The new drivers are even worse for CrossfireX.
You can try it out, but it probably won't be worth the money for you.
Click to expand...

5770s generally do scale better, but even if it's 80% that's pretty damn good... Take a look a this thread:

http://www.overclock.net/ati/683034-bo_punk-review-msi-5770-hawk-cf.html

Just take a look at stock settings for games. xfired 5770's are well worth their money considering how much the 5850 and 5870's have risen in price. 5770's also don't saturate the 8x/8x bandwidth at all.
 
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Benchmarks I saw put the 5770s in Crossfire at the speed of 5850. And it makes sense, considering 5770 is literally half the card a 5870 is, and you wouldn't expect full 100% performance gain from running two in Crossfire. About 80% scaling sounds right, and there's no problem with that number! Especially if the cost of the 5770s comes out to be less than that of a 5850.
 
NoForgiveness said:
Benchmarks I saw put the 5770s in Crossfire at the speed of 5850. And it makes sense, considering 5770 is literally half the card a 5870 is, and you wouldn't expect full 100% performance gain from running two in Crossfire. About 80% scaling sounds right, and there's no problem with that number! Especially if the cost of the 5770s comes out to be less than that of a 5850.
Click to expand...

Here's some additional benchmarks/comments where it has exceeded or had similar levels to the 5870:
http://www.legionhardware.com/articles_pages/ati_radeon_hd_5770_crossfire_performance,12.html
 
since the only 5850's i am seeing below $300 are visiontek and powercolor, and the cards that i like, ie sapphire and msi are around $320 and up (i bought mine when they dropped for around $285 each), i am going with the 5770 cfx. the h.i.s. (i think) with the egg shaped cooler have been on a 24 hour sale since yesterday at newegg. if i miss that sale there are plenty of cards for $159, many of them also have a rebate. i will post some benches with a 4ghz i7/6gb ddr3 trip chan/evga x58 sli, next week before i install them in a secondary machine.
 
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I know you have already probably bought the cards but I think it is worth saying...

I believe buying a single, more powerful, card would have been a better choice. That way you avoid the hassles of a dual-card system and you leave the upgrade option open for later adding in a second card for even more performance.

Of course, this is coming from someone who doesn't even have the option of doing Crossfire so perhaps I am biased. :p
 
get CF 5770's they're great cards, nothing to worry about, yeah it draws more power but not much to notice anything.
and plus CF in a case looks great :)
 
ChristopherB said:
I know you have already probably bought the cards but I think it is worth saying...

I believe buying a single, more powerful, card would have been a better choice. That way you avoid the hassles of a dual-card system and you leave the upgrade option open for later adding in a second card for even more performance.

Of course, this is coming from someone who doesn't even have the option of doing Crossfire so perhaps I am biased. :p
Click to expand...

dual card system isnt really a big deal for me, i have been using them since gf6800gt sli, so its been awhile (not even counting riva 128 and 2x voodoo2 in sli). its come a long way, there is really not many hassles anymore, if any. and it still leaves me the option of adding a 3rd hd5770 for trifireX.
 
I might be out of the SLI/XFIRE loop... but did you say in your specs that you had the evga x58 SLI? is that one of those dual capable boards? or are you going to try and do XFIRE on an sli machine
 
5770 tri-fire will be a nice boost over a single 5850 in most games on a single monitor. Just note that tri-fire in Eyefinity is completely broke (worse than a single or dual card config) if you're planning going multi-monitor route.

Coming from someone who has also used SLI/Crossfire for many years, as others have said, I'd only go with 3 cards if you already have two 5770s. A third card will give you diminishing returns, and by the time you'll want to get the extra card you're money will likely be better spent on the next gen.

btw, were you able to unmasked the extra pipes on those 6800 gt's? I had a pair of 6800 vanilla's that did this, or what I like to call "the magic $200 upgrade" :)
 
vjcsmoke said:
The new drivers are even worse for CrossfireX.
Click to expand...

That is just straight-up wrong. For one, the 5970 saw some of the biggest increases from the 10.3a drivers and that is obviously a crossfire configuration. For me 10.3a was one of the best improvements from a driver I've had in quite some time. I not only saw a performance bump but gameplay overall appears to be much more smooth. They even implemented separate crossfire profiles, which is an extremely good thing for CrossfireX users.
 
KaizerDan said:
I might be out of the SLI/XFIRE loop... but did you say in your specs that you had the evga x58 SLI? is that one of those dual capable boards? or are you going to try and do XFIRE on an sli machine
Click to expand...

EVGA X58 3XSLI motherboard supports both SLI and Crossfire.


harmattan said:
5770 tri-fire will be a nice boost over a single 5850 in most games on a single monitor. Just note that tri-fire in Eyefinity is completely broke (worse than a single or dual card config) if you're planning going multi-monitor route
Click to expand...

This is the first time i read about eyefinity and tri-fire problems. Is it just a driver issue?
 
harmattan said:
5770 tri-fire will be a nice boost over a single 5850 in most games on a single monitor. Just note that tri-fire in Eyefinity is completely broke (worse than a single or dual card config) if you're planning going multi-monitor route.

Coming from someone who has also used SLI/Crossfire for many years, as others have said, I'd only go with 3 cards if you already have two 5770s. A third card will give you diminishing returns, and by the time you'll want to get the extra card you're money will likely be better spent on the next gen.

btw, were you able to unmasked the extra pipes on those 6800 gt's? I had a pair of 6800 vanilla's that did this, or what I like to call "the magic $200 upgrade" :)
Click to expand...

no, from what i remember it was only the 6800 vanilla that had unlockable pipes. i went from this quickly to 7800gt sli (and got 2x free evga nf4 sli boards with the cards. rememeber that one?) so i probably didnt screw around with them much. but i do remember volt-modding the 7800gt's for a huge bump in core speed.
 
so i got my 2x hd5770 just now. i am going to try them out in crossfirex on my primary system. and prob get another next week for some tri-fire. i will post some pics and benches here in the next few days. if it works out i wil put it into my secondary machine (swapout a 4890) with a new mainboard and cpu, prob something like an x58 sli le.



4457528259_6d26eff907_b.jpg
 
Howz about an update/pics on the tri-fire install and benchies?

Hope it all went smooth. :)
 
@christopherb
"I know you have already probably bought the cards but I think it is worth saying...

I believe buying a single, more powerful, card would have been a better choice. That way you avoid the hassles of a dual-card system and you leave the upgrade option open for later adding in a second card for even more performance.

Of course, this is coming from someone who doesn't even have the option of doing
Crossfire so perhaps I am biased. "
Click to expand...

Respectfully, I'm with ChrisB on this one. I never understood the idea of buying 2 cards at once. I always thought the idea is to buy the most powerful single card you can budget, then leave yourself an open door in the future when a second card is cheaper and games become more demanding. I would think a single 5850 overclocked would do nicely for any game available today. When prices drop, pick up a second 5850 cheap.

Anyway, since you already bought them, I hope you get the results you are looking for. Crossfired 5770s seem to scale fairly well based on some reviews.
 
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