Crossfirex - 5870+4890?

If it works, good idea. If it doesn't, bad idea. Hopefully we will know the answer in a few weeks.
 
someone almost got a 4850 + 3850 to work, supposedly. But "almost" like "if" is a very big word. more than likely not going to happen.
 
1) 5870 isn't out yet, how on earth would anyone here know the answer to your question.
2) Does the 4890 crossfire with the 3870? 3870 with the 2900? 2900 with the 1900? That will give you a hint.
 
drleospaceman said:
1) 5870 isn't out yet, how on earth would anyone here know the answer to your question.
2) Does the 4890 crossfire with the 3870? 3870 with the 2900? 2900 with the 1900? That will give you a hint.
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+1.

Emphasis on his first point; we won't know until it's out, so it's all speculation at this point...
 
vjcsmoke said:
Would this work? Good idea, bad idea?
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The key question is: Why?

If it's performance, then, it would stupid since it would restrict the performance to be as slow as the slowest card, which would be the 4890. You'd be better off buying another 4890 and crossfiring with that since it would be cheaper and you'd get the same performance.

If it's bragging rights to say that you did it when nobody else could... then go ahead.
 
Salavat23 said:
You can only CF two or more ATI cards in the same product family.
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Hmm. I thought you could crossfire unevenly. Does crossfire have intelligent balanced loading? Like if the 5870 were accounting for 60% of the processing power, could it offload 40% of the work to the 4890? I'm also not sure it would work since the 5870 would be a DX11 card while the 4890 is a DX 10.1 card.
 
vjcsmoke said:
Hmm. I thought you could crossfire unevenly.
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You had been able to, but only in the same GPU family. Like, Crossfire an HD 4850 and an HD 4870. For balancing load, it doesn't work well; you'll only essentially get the speed of two HD 4850s if you were to do such a thing. Doesn't seem like much point in that to me...
 
Ok, thanks for the clarification. Well I'd like to get a 5870 for the DX 11 functionality. Didn't realize it wouldn't work with my current 4890. Ah well.
 
I suppose you're one of guys who wanted to sli a voodoo 2 12 meg with an 8 meg? lol!!! I remember we did get this working though, but it wasn't efficient. :rolleyes:
 
I think the idea behind "Why" is that if it provided performance greater than that of a single 5870 it might be somewhat worth it to do it if you have the 4890 sitting around. Obviously you'd lose DX11 and it wouldn't be close to two 5870s, but if it's faster than a single one, why not?

I don't see it working though, and if the 5xxx series is as fast as everyone has been rumoring, it's probably not worth it.
 
Ok, I had another idea. How about using the 5870 and 4890 on separate monitors. Like the 5870 would power the primary gaming monitor and the 4890 would power the secondary, internet/browsing/chat display. I know slight overkill, but can you think of a better use? Also is there a way to merge extended desktop for the displays of two different videocards?
 
Abit667 said:
I think the idea behind "Why" is that if it provided performance greater than that of a single 5870 it might be somewhat worth it to do it if you have the 4890 sitting around. Obviously you'd lose DX11 and it wouldn't be close to two 5870s, but if it's faster than a single one, why not?
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The reason for not, is that it would perform no faster than two 4890's, have no more features than two 4890's, but cost more. That's a really good reason for NOT. If it doesn't go any faster than two 4890's, why pay more for one 5870? It's just stupid, and not guaranteed to work either.

ATI has stated many many many times that crossfire will operate as fast as the slowest card and use as much memory as the smallest one in the set. That's why one should never crossfire with different memory sizes nor slower cards if one can avoid it.
 
vjcsmoke said:
Ok, I had another idea. How about using the 5870 and 4890 on separate monitors. Like the 5870 would power the primary gaming monitor and the 4890 would power the secondary, internet/browsing/chat display. I know slight overkill, but can you think of a better use? Also is there a way to merge extended desktop for the displays of two different videocards?
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WTF?
Why don't you run both monitors off of one card?

It seems like you're trying to think up reasons to justify a purchase of a 5870.

Why don't you buy a 5870, sell the 4890 and attach both monitors to the 5870 and you'll get the same performance as your proposed setup.
 
bbf said:
The reason for not, is that it would perform no faster than two 4890's, have no more features than two 4890's, but cost more. That's a really good reason for NOT. If it doesn't go any faster than two 4890's, why pay more for one 5870? It's just stupid, and not guaranteed to work either.

ATI has stated many many many times that crossfire will operate as fast as the slowest card and use as much memory as the smallest one in the set. That's why one should never crossfire with different memory sizes nor slower cards if one can avoid it.
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But if it did work you could just turn crossfire off and then play DX11 games. I know it's a stupid setup as well, but if it works somebody will do it.
 
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