Any difference from Crossfire to Tri-fire?

[myndcrime]

i have a 4870x2 right now and I still get a bit of lag right now in some games. i see 4870 1gb's for $120 now and was wondering if i'd see a decent upgrade by slapping another 4870 in there. i've seen some benchmarks but they seem sort of inconsistent across different sites.

the rest of my comp is

q9450 @ 3.4 ghz
asus rampage formula x48
4gb ram

 

[Nenu]

Check to see if the lag is caused by CPU.
If it is and you get triple crossfire, your situation will get worse!

 

[myndcrime]

well i dont think it is, its mostly things like adding extra levels of AA and such that seems to kill my framerate. in most games I have to turn AA off because it lags too much. Was wondering if adding another card could help that.

 

[obobski]

well i dont think it is, its mostly things like adding extra levels of AA and such that seems to kill my framerate. in most games I have to turn AA off because it lags too much. Was wondering if adding another card could help that.

what level of AA? up through 8x is able to be done by hardware without any behind the scenes voodoo, 16x is touch and go depending on the game and settings, 24x and 32x won't run even with 4 GPUs with most anything modern because its "looping" data back through to achieve that many samples (if you don't understand it, just accept that its hella inefficient above 8x or 16x AA)

now, as far as "would another GPU give me more features", generally 3x and 4x GPU solutions will do better with 16x, 24x, and 32x AA (yes, they do better, but 25 FPS vs 15 FPS (in the case of 32x) is still unplayable) or similar "ultra high" quality levels, although in terms of "will it make games more playable", maybe, maybe not, depends on the game, settings, etc

4870X2 should do just fine by itself in basically any game available excepting Crysis and GTA4 rolleyes and perhaps a few other titles

so either your CPU is holding you back (think what you want, of course that makes it true), or the lag is from something else (internet connection, hard-disk speed, ridiculous settings choices (like 24x AA), crap software (3rd party mods that are done poorly, or you're playing GTA4/Crysis/etc))

regarding "will another GPU make everything better and go faster", no, especially if your issue isn't GPU bound, you'll get better benchmark scores, have a bigger eCock (TM), and maybe gain 10-20 FPS in games that are already playable (so you'll go from 60 FPS to 70 FPS, oh boy!) or similar (its like a 70% performance increase in a perfectly ideal world where everyone writes good code, reality means anywhere from a 20% to a 70% performance increase, over whatever you already have, meaning if you're getting 10 FPS right now, you'll get, at absolute best, 15-16 FPS $120 later, if you're getting 100 FPS now, you'll get, at absolute best, 150 FPS $120 later, neither of those "improves" if you get what I'm saying )

so, now for the question you should've answered in the first post:
WHICH APPLICATIONS ARE YOU HAVING TROUBLE WITH AND WHAT DO YOU DEFINE AS "A BIT OF LAG", AND WHAT IS MEASURING THIS LAG?

 

[myndcrime]

in LOTRO, I can play the game at max settings but can't use any AA or it starts to drop in the 30 fps range which I don't like. I've tried using edge-detect AA in the control panel, but it makes the game blurry for whatever reason.

Crysis, I can play the game on "Very high" with no aa, but on the outdoor maps, it again lags a little too much. i'd say it can dip down to about 30 fps.

CS:source (lol) SOMETIMES lags on 32 player servers on big, detailed maps. i've tried enabling edge-detect (again) AA but it absolutely destroys my frame rate, so I just stick with 8x in-game AA. Again most of the time I get 90+ fps but a fully packed server on a big map it can drop to 40's, which is a little low for an FPS.

I'm using fraps to measure my fps. as far as it being my CPU, I don't know why it would be, it's not a 4 ghz core i7, but it's not really slow either. My hard drive is a standard 7200 rpm hard drive, I keep it defragmented as much as possible, and I don't think internet would make my FPS drop, my ping isn't really a problem (I have fios 25/15)

 

[Nenu]

So what is your CPU usage when you get low framerates?
Check for each game.