looking for more advice on Cards (1920x1080)

4

4LC4PON3

DERP!
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Jan 18, 2005
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ok im coming down to the final pieces of my New build wich consist of the items below. I almost have everything needed.

CPU: AMD Phenom II X4 955 Black Edition Deneb 3.2GHz Socket AM3 125W
Video: unknown as of yet
PSU: Corsair 650 TX
Board: GIGABYTE GA-MA790X-UD4P AM3/AM2+/AM2 AMD 790X ATX
Memory: G.SKILL PI Black 4GB - (Paid) $80.00
HDD: Western Digital Caviar Blue WD3200AAKS 320GB
Case: Cooler Master HAF

Im confused on video cards right now but im confused cause i had my plans set on x2 5770's direct x11 but ive read that x2 4890's are still faster then the 5770's. also i dont know if i should go sli or not with the res 1920x1080.

Looking for idea's Please. Either x2 5570's or x2 4890's. Sli at 1920x1080 or no?
 
if you aren't gonna be using dx 11, then the 2x 4890 in CF are good enough.

if you want dx 11, get 2x 5770 in CF.
 
right i understand that i wasnt sure if i should crossfire 1920x1080 Res or will one card be good enough at that res
 
well if you have the money to purchase 2 cards, it may/maybe not a good idea to buy both cards at the same time. (with nvidia not releasing fermi soon, so ati prices might go up for the new cards, and might go down for the old cards, not entirely sure)
 
imo, i'd get the 2x 5770 just in case i use dx 11 later down the line at the sacrifice of some fps. it being cheaper sounds good to me too.
 
Considered getting just a single 5850/70?
would rock at that res without crossfire issues (and ton less power draw than 2x 4890's), and always the option to get another down the line when supply/prices come back.

fwiw 5770 is about equiv to 4870... so 2x 4890's would be a step up performance wise (at expense of heat/power) guru3d has some quite expansive fps comparisons crossfire configs etc in their 5770 review.
 
i would definitely vote for a 5850 as well. should be cheaper than two 4890s, and you won't have crossfire issues.

also, any reason for using am2+/ddr2? personally, i would get an am3 board. amd has been pretty good with socket compatibility recently (e.g. phenom 2's working in old am2 boards), so getting the latest socket is actually a benefit to the end user.
 
Thirding a 5850/5870 as well. A 5870 is probably overkill though.
 
I bought 2x5770 and they are amazing and really effing annoying too.
I'm using the 9.1 driver

If you arent running eyefinity, when you game, disable the second/third display as they cause terrible stuttering as well as a performance drop.
It actually looks like each frame is rendered twice and one frame out of 2 gets dropped, appalling.
This makes it look like 1/2 the framerate while still showing high fps figures.
It took a while to work out what the cause was.
Eyefinity with 2 displays (yeah yeah, thats unusable really but hey, had to try it) at 1080p is really fluid, maybe it does use both GPUs in CrossfireX with Eyefinity ?!
(not supposed to be enabled in this driver)

In multi display mode, opening CCC makes things flicker (like games, playing movies, scrolling web pages) and this persists even after closing CCC, requiring a reboot to fix!!
Careful not to close Unigine benchmark with task manager, this screwed xfire up so that even a re-install and a reset of the drivers didnt fix it. The solution eventually was to change the cards clock speeds (I clocked them up) and voila, instant xfire again, very odd.
There are other annoying bugs in CCC too like forgetting settings.
CCC is really really really crap, I use ATI Tray tools now.
But beware, unless you get the latest version of Tray Tools, it will crash your PC immediately and careful using it to set clock speeds, CRASH! ie close your email, browser etc before trying it.

When xfire 5770 works, the performance is stunning, even with the "beta" 9.1 drivers we are using (they are bad beta quality despite being a final release).
Power draw (Watts) is very low, both cards together are on a par with my old GTX260.
So shit drivers, ace hardware.
 
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Cos I'm late to the party and havent got that far yet!
Thanks for the headsup.
I also just read about the Dirt2 hotfix, is this the 9.11 driver?
How do you tell which driver version is installed?

Edit: yep, am using 9.11 driver
 
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