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Crossfire Eyefinity 5870s?

C

Cirdan

Weaksauce
Joined
May 5, 2009
Messages
75
I've had my Eyefinity setup for a while now, and it's really great! However, I'm not getting good enough performance for it to be fully enjoyable. I've been spoiled with steady >60fps on a single monitor that I don't switch into eyefinity very often(I use the three monitors for work more than play :eek:). I'm considering buying a second 5870 now that the price has dropped a bit. Would I see enough performance boost to warrant the ~$300? The games I'm playing now are WoW, BlackOps and Just Cause 2
 
i'd be interested in this as well, i'm running a Core2 Q6600 @ 3.2ghz, 8GB DDR2-1066...
 
Would I see enough performance boost to warrant the ~$300?
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I would say yes. Although the price of 5870s is much lower than $300. If you're not opposed to buying used the 5870 is VERY affordable. I've got a reference Sapphire one if you're interested ;)
 
More often than not I find a game to be smoother with a single card than xfire. You're not going to magically get rock solid smooth 60 fps by adding a second card if the game wasn't playable with a single card.

Turn off AA, turn down a setting or two and just let it be. Don't get obsessed with FPS and just enjoy the game.
 
I love my crossfire 5870's, wouldn't do eyefinity without them. I see a huge performance boost, atleast 50% if not more, almost double in some games.
 
I would not recommend eyefinity with crossfire period. You will run into countless problems and will tend to see better performance in a single card eyefinity over CFX eyefinity. I dont know if AMD has done a batter job in eyefinity with CFX on the new 6900's cards.
 
martinje said:
I would not recommend eyefinity with crossfire period. You will run into countless problems and will tend to see better performance in a single card eyefinity over CFX eyefinity. I dont know if AMD has done a batter job in eyefinity with CFX on the new 6900's cards.
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Not surprising coming from Team Green.
 
notarat said:
Not surprising coming from Team Green.
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Im am not from team Green, I am from team that works best for my money. When I bought the Dual 480's I saw countless issues with 5870 in CFX in Eyefinity. I also saw problems first hand with my brother in law who tried to get eyefinity working with a 5970 and ran into countless problems.

Looks at this post recently here on HardOcp

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1036570385

I dont have the time to search but there is a member here who had 2 5870 2GB editions and he sold them and because he had to many issues running them in CFX. He posted he saw better results of one card then using 2. Before I invested, I spent countless hours reading lots of forums and doing research where to put my hard earn cash.

If I have time I will post the other hard ocper that sold his 5870's 2gb editions.

Now like I have stated I dont know how the new 6900's handle CFX with eyefinity but I would not put hard earn money on CFX /eyefinity.

Found it you can get more info looking at his post but here is a snipet;

" 12-14-2010, 02:38 PM
blackhawk777 [H]Lite, 7 Months


It's funny that you wrote this thread because I was just about to start a similar one.....

I have had two Asus Matrix 5870 2GB cards in crossfire running three 22" panels in Eyefinity for the past six months. To keep it brief, performance was good but not mind-blowing, and on top of that the cards WOULD NOT RUN STABLE OVERCLOCKED. (BTW, the system is an Asus Rampage Extreme with an X3360 Xeon at 4.0 and 8GB Mushkin DDR3 1600) That's right, two of the Asus Matrix cards that were supposedly made for the purpose of overclocking to the moon would not run stable overclocked together. I tried tons of driver combos but finally decided to put one up on Ebay and just use one until upgrade time came around.

To my surprise, the single Asus Matrix 2GB 5870 that I kept seems to run everything just as well as two of the cards did, and in some cases the games run better! Furthermore, this beast now lets me overclock it to 1000 on the core and 1250 on the memory using iTracker 2, and it runs STABLE at those clocks!

For whatever reason, ATI never got the Crossfire feature working to it's potential on the last generation of cards in my opinion. I'm just glad I was able to recoup some of the cost of one card, and I'm also much happier now with the single card than I ever was with two.... performance is exceptional and best of all CONSISTENT! Bottom line- If you want top notch performance without the headaches, buy the best single GPU out there and don't look back. "
 
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martinje said:
Im am not from team Green, I am from team that works best for my money. When I bought the Dual 480's I saw countless issues with 5870 in CFX in Eyefinity. I also saw problems first hand with my brother in law who tried to get eyefinity working with a 5970 and ran into countless problems.

Looks at this post recently here on HardOcp

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?p=1036570385

I dont have the time to search but there is a member here who had 2 5870 2GB editions and he sold them and because he had to many issues running them in CFX. He posted he saw better results of one card then using 2. Before I invested, I spent countless hours reading lots of forums and doing research where to put my hard earn cash.

If I have time I will post the other hard ocper that sold his 5870's 2gb editions.

Now like I have stated I dont know how the new 6900's handle CFX with eyefinity but I would not put hard earn money on CFX /eyefinity.

Found it you can get more info looking at his post but here is a snipet;

" 12-14-2010, 02:38 PM
blackhawk777 [H]Lite, 7 Months


It's funny that you wrote this thread because I was just about to start a similar one.....

I have had two Asus Matrix 5870 2GB cards in crossfire running three 22" panels in Eyefinity for the past six months. To keep it brief, performance was good but not mind-blowing, and on top of that the cards WOULD NOT RUN STABLE OVERCLOCKED. (BTW, the system is an Asus Rampage Extreme with an X3360 Xeon at 4.0 and 8GB Mushkin DDR3 1600) That's right, two of the Asus Matrix cards that were supposedly made for the purpose of overclocking to the moon would not run stable overclocked together. I tried tons of driver combos but finally decided to put one up on Ebay and just use one until upgrade time came around.

To my surprise, the single Asus Matrix 2GB 5870 that I kept seems to run everything just as well as two of the cards did, and in some cases the games run better! Furthermore, this beast now lets me overclock it to 1000 on the core and 1250 on the memory using iTracker 2, and it runs STABLE at those clocks!

For whatever reason, ATI never got the Crossfire feature working to it's potential on the last generation of cards in my opinion. I'm just glad I was able to recoup some of the cost of one card, and I'm also much happier now with the single card than I ever was with two.... performance is exceptional and best of all CONSISTENT! Bottom line- If you want top notch performance without the headaches, buy the best single GPU out there and don't look back. "
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Cool Story, Bro.
 
stop with the freaking internet memes already.

an entire generation hasn't the foggiest notion of debate, they just come back with "you mad, bro?" or "cool story , bro"
 
I found it worth it to go two 5870's at 3 x 24". But I want even more power to turn up the AA on games. I mostly race now but while everything runs decent (NFS: Shift, RaceON, rFactor, Dirt2), I really would like to add more AA to improve the track in the distance. So, in short, yes, it will help, but will it be the amount you're looking for? You will still thirst for more, I believe.
 
Cirdan said:
Would jumping to NVIDIA and Surround be better?

Looks like it: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/07/20/nvidia_surround_technology_performance_review/1
Click to expand...

Why? If a game doesn't play nice with SLI, it won't work in surround period. At least with crossfire you get the option of running with 1 card if you absolutely have to. This has been the case for me plenty of times for more obscure or older games. My roommate has GTX 480 SLI and can't run some games period in surround because they don't play nice with SLI.

The issue with SLI and Crossfire is that all the review sites out there review the same titles and nvidia / ATI make damn sure that these titles work well with their technology. When you play more obscure titles or older titles things just aren't that rosey. Over and over again people mention the same 3 or 4 titles and that's simply not very representative.

You can't just look at performance numbers. FPS variance is more erradic with multiple cards as well as the fact that microstutter is very prevalent at these FPS levels and overall I just find games to be smoother with a single card even if the FPS is lower. I know that my next setup will have a single card. I played with a single 5870 in eyefinity for months before getting a second one. The only reason I kept my second one was the few AAA titles that worked well with xfire (like BC2 for example). My gaming platter is rather large though so the range of titles that I play is relatively large. I've probably played over 50 games with eyefinity / crossfire and for most of the games, using one card is the best choice.
 
Somewhat of an OT update: I tried Black Ops again tonight in Eyefinity for the first time with the 10.12 drivers...and there has definitely been a performance improvement since the last time I played (w/ 10.7 drivers). I don't know if it was a BO update or the drivers but there is no more stuttering and I'm getting ~60 FPS with mostly high settings and AA off. Really enjoyed that round of cod
 
Has 5870 CF/EF scaling improved with any of the recent drivers, or have they dumped any ideas of improving the performance (required infrastructure change)? I've been really happy with my 5870 at 6048x1080, but would like a bit more oomf for BC2.
 
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To be honest, for eyefinity, I'd say sell the 5870 and get a pair of 6950s. The extra memory will make the extra 'oomf' of crossfire much more useful.
 
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