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5970 + 5870 Crossfire

O

obliv

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 1, 2009
Messages
383
Now that we know what both camps have available, it doesn't look like upgrading my 5970 makes much sense at the moment, considering the price i would have to shell out for 2x580's to get a significant upgrade.

I am looking to upgrade my 24" 1920x1200 monitor to atleast a 30" and possibly eyefinity. i love playing with new hardware and having high framerates at highest quality settings so i want to do something with my single 5970. I am hoping that prices will come down a bit on 5870's and that i could pick up one of those for 3 way crossfire. I know scaling isnt perfect but im hoping it will give me the extra boost needed to play at the higher resolutions until the next generation comes out. This leaves me with two questions for anyone willing to answer.

My System is an I7 920 @ 4.1 on a Gigabyte EX58-UD5 Motherboard HX1000 Corsair PSU.

I had 4890's in crossfire and found that the top card always ran significantly hotter than the bottom. Which concerns me if my 5970 is the top card. Would it hurt if i ran the 5870 on top in the first PCIX slot and the 5970 on the bottom? Anyone have experience running it this way? I guess i have always assumed the faster card gets the top spot.

Second question is has anyone ran a 5970 with a 5870 or 5850? If so what were the results?

Thanks!
 
I'm also curious.

Looking to upgrade my 5870 with another, or preferably a 5970 when a deal will present itself!


Y.
 
1GB of video memory hurts you at 2560 and above, so I'd upgrade to a pair of 2GB 6950's if you were looking to do that.

I found that my 5850's ran with about a 7 degree delta in temp between the bottom and top card. My case is reverse ATX with the CPU towards the bottom, so the "bottom" card is actually "top" in this orientation.

The 5970 is longer, so it may actually get some airflow even if the fan is partially obstructed.
 
Yah i never thought about the memory bottleneck. At the High 2560 + resolutions i probably wouldn't be 2 concerned with AA anyway so hopefully that wouldn't make too much of a difference. Anyone have experience with Tri Crossfire on the 5 series?
 
obliv said:
Yah i never thought about the memory bottleneck. At the High 2560 + resolutions i probably wouldn't be 2 concerned with AA anyway so hopefully that wouldn't make too much of a difference. Anyone have experience with Tri Crossfire on the 5 series?
Click to expand...

I've had enough experience with eyefinity + crossfire in the 5 series (former 5970 owner) to know that it's not a great idea. I often got a stuttery, herky-jerky mess, through every driver, beta, custom, and otherwise, that I could find.

I've heard things have improved for the 6000-series. The 2GB of RAM is definitely a major selling point when you're doing Eyefinity resolutions. I would recommend selling the 5970 and trying a single or dual 6970 setup. I don't have much faith in CFX anymore so I'm starting with a single 6970. I've heard that dual 6950s are great though - great price and they produce far less heat than a 6970, so a dual card configuration might not be so bad.
 
I'm in Tri-Crossfire (5970+5870 @1000/1200), gaming at 2650X1600, since over 1 year already, and scaling is great. Better then alot of people thing it is. :)

Everything, every software or game I use/play, is rock-solid, rock-stable and fluid for me. I have all the latest games, and have over 75 games in my Steam folder, and can't remember the last time I had a crash/BSOD/freeze/stuttering in a game or while using software like Photshop, etc. My computer is on 24/24 and I didn't had a single problems in the last 8 months. Not a single BSOD. Nothing. :)

I think that 99% of the ''problems'' people get with multi-cards set-up, be it ATI/AMD or Nvidia (and Nividia are not better BTW in that regard...) is PEBKAC. I have 3 computers at home, all of them with Crossfire or Tri-Fire set-up (multi-card set-up) and the 3 computers are ROCK-stable. We play ALOT of LAN game for hours every day, and don't have any problems... Stuttering? LOL!

580 SLI? Not interested. Not enough memory. I'm waiting to go 6990+6970 next month. More memory, crazy scaling.
 
LEVESQUE said:
I think that 99% of the ''problems'' people get with multi-cards set-up, be it ATI/AMD or Nvidia (and Nividia are not better BTW in that regard...) is PEBKAC. I have 3 computers at home, all of them with Crossfire or Tri-Fire set-up (multi-card set-up) and the 3 computers are ROCK-stable. We play ALOT of LAN game for hours every day, and don't have any problems... Stuttering? LOL!
Click to expand...

It seems to only affect some people... a lot of those people are likely multi-monitor users. After all, tri-crossfire is overkill for almost all single-monitor setups.
 
Thanks for the replies everyone,

Levesque, Thanks for the input, I agree with you, i have had multiple - multi card setups and they have always been rock solid. My 5970 has always been great to me and i cant really pin point any problems that i thought were specific to it or ATI that were not resolved with newer drivers.

Now i have witnessed an epic fail when it comes to 4 way crossfire on 2 5970's + Multi monitors. That was a disaster. The multi monitor definitely seems to affect crossfire scaling. (Thats how i got my 5970 from a friend who bought 2 when the launched and got negative scaling on multi monitors)

I Think if i go with a single 30" and add a 5870 once prices come down a tad, i will be happy until the next gen.

Thanks again guys.
 
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