For someone just going Eyefinity (3x 1680x1050), 1x 5970 or 2x5870?

lopoetve

Extremely [H]
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Oct 11, 2001
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Just trying to decide if going with a pair of 5870's is really worth the price premium over a 5970. Got 3 screens, want to use Eyefinity at decent settings (not massive, obviously, since the screens aren't the fanciest), and just torn between card choices. Any thoughts?
 
You would get better performance going 6870 Crossfire. They scale better than 5870 Crossfire and will cost you less.
 
Pick up two Cayman cards in a month. I would not be surprised for Cayman to outperform a GTX 480.
 
Well, my hesitation on that is that I avoid being a first adopter - I tend to give it 2-3 months to shake out any issues, especially since I also have to use this machine for my work ;), and for linux Given that, it'd be 4-5 months before I'd get my hands on one, barring any issues with supply, and I REALLY want to put that extra monitor I have sitting there to use right now :)
 
Well, my hesitation on that is that I avoid being a first adopter - I tend to give it 2-3 months to shake out any issues, especially since I also have to use this machine for my work ;), and for linux Given that, it'd be 4-5 months before I'd get my hands on one, barring any issues with supply, and I REALLY want to put that extra monitor I have sitting there to use right now :)

Then pick up two 6870s, It depends on what your work is. If you just need to display the monitors there should be no issue. If you run some uncommon program on linux that's another story.
 
From someone who has owned a 5970 for 11 months, don't go with a 5970 if you have the slots for two cards. The internal crossfire bridge seems to be slower than pci-e 2.0 resulting in lower performance at the same clock speeds of two 5870s, and the vrm cooling is worse than two individual cards. Idle power consumption is also worse because the second gpu doesn't get fully shut down like two individual cards are supposed to do.
 
2x 5870s > 5970 fur shure.

But at 3x 1680x1050 any single 2GB version of 58x0 or 68x0 would do.
Some games would be played at medium-high, not max - but hey!
 
Two 5870s are going to suck a bit more power and definitely are going to be more expensive than a single 5970. The 5970 overclocks better than the 5870 in many instances as well, as the chips are binned better so they can run at 1.05v. With a simple boost in voltage you can easily hit 5870 speeds and beyond.
 
There is a benefit in having the the extra 1GB when running crossfire cards at high resolutions. It's when the GPU's aren't as taxed that you can see the memory being utilized when you crank up your settings. This seems to be more the case at higher resolutions like 5760x1200 though. I'm not sure if this would be the case at 5040x1050. I'm sure you would see some improvements, but not enough to be worth it imo.

Here's an [H] review on the subject...

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2010/04/12/ati_radeon_hd_5870_eyefinity_6_performance_review/
 
Well, these will be on the for sale forum shortly.

Tip for anyone considering these: If you're planning on doing non-eyefinity multi-screen gaming (Say, for instance, EVE on 2-3 screens), get something, anything, else. I'm getting about 1/2 to 2/3 the performance I got before with multiple clients open than I used to be, which is pretty concerning, especially since the SM3 client will be coming out shortly and putting more load on the system. One client screams, easily pushing way past what I had before, but the second you log into the second, eprformance tanks, and a third makes it totally unplayable. We're talking less than 15fps.

I'll be going back to my GTX 285 for now, and saving for an SLI 460 setup with compatible motherboard in the future.

I expect eyefinity will work ok, and i'll give it a shot to see if it's worth worrying about in the future, but I'll be ditching these asap.
 
Ok, additional testing and another new windows install - it looks like it's anything on the third screen is not accelerated (crossfireX is off since you can't use 2 cards' outputs with it on). Is this a windows limitation, or ATi?
 
and wonderfully enough, the user manual that comes with the card is not for the 68xx series cards, but the 5XXX series cards or 4XXX series cards.

It also claims that you can use two DVI connections AND a displayport at the same time - which seems to be false, as windows will ~not~ enable that port if you've got 2 dvi ports in use already (but again, this is from the 59XX series manual, since they didn't include the 6XXX series one).
 
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