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Low power consumption w/ crossfire possible?

H

Hamfiles

Limp Gawd
Joined
Feb 13, 2005
Messages
160
I have an Asus P5Q pro, and I would like to run 2 AMD video card in crossfire configuration. But my power supply is an Antec true power Trio 650 Watt PSU. I would like to reserve at least 50% of the rated power for the rest of my overclocked pc, so are there 2 cards that will only draw about 150 watts each, 300 watts total, in crossfire, gaming at full load?

It not, I guess its time for a new power supply. I know my hardware is somewhat dated, but I really like my current system, and I would like to try crossfire.

Thanks for any replies,

Hamfiles (Handle From my old ham radio / electronics web page)
 
Forget the exact figure but I think the HD 5850 only uses about 160W at load.

Not sure about the 5830, assume it's somewhat lower.

5770 probably uses a bit less than that.

Edit: I used to have that PSU i think, I put it in my dad's htpc, only has 1 6 pin and 1 6+2 pin pci-e connector right?
 
Thanks, Xzyrus and Frank. Thats a very nice review, for a very nice card.

About 340+ watts at full load when overclocked, man thats too much power for my PSU and wallet :D !!

I guess I will try 2 5770s.

On another note, anyone have any advice for a first attempt at crossfire? Hard to do?
 
Hamfiles said:
On another note, anyone have any advice for a first attempt at crossfire? Hard to do?
Click to expand...

This rig was my first time ever using crossfire. Very simple. Put both cards in, plug in crossfire bridge, go into CCC and turn on crossifre. That's it.
 
Hamfiles said:
Thanks, Xzyrus and Frank. Thats a very nice review, for a very nice card.

About 340+ watts at full load when overclocked, man thats too much power for my PSU and wallet :D !!

I guess I will try 2 5770s.

On another note, anyone have any advice for a first attempt at crossfire? Hard to do?
Click to expand...

Crossfire is pretty simple... put in the cards and the bridge. Make sure you download the lastest drivers like 10.3a and make sure you have xfired enabled then you're good to go.
 
You will be able to fit in two 5850s easily.

I run a 5850 with a full system on a 300W PSU (including overclocked quad-core CPU) with no issues. Don't settle for 5770s if you can spring for the 5850s.


If I were you though I'd just go for a 5970. PCI-E specifies a max video card power draw of 300W, and the 5970 is optimized to consume under that with Crossfire built-in. Plus it has two full-fledged Cypress XT GPUs with the full 1600 shaders and 80 TMUs.
 
friend'scatdied said:
You will be able to fit in two 5850s easily.

I run a 5850 with a full system on a 300W PSU (including overclocked CPU) with no issues. Don't settle for 5770s if you can spring for the 5850s.


If I were you though I'd just go for a 5970.
Click to expand...

5850's are pretty overpriced in the market right now. xfired 5770's would perform better than a 5850. I would get a 5850 if they drop below 299.
 
QuadMe said:
5850's are pretty overpriced in the market right now. xfired 5770's would perform better than a 5850. I would get a 5850 if they drop below 299.
Click to expand...

That's true.. I got the 5850 for $70 over my old 5770 back when 5770s were inflated too. At twice that premium, I'm not sure it's worth it, but two 5850s would obviously wreck two 5770s.

IMHO the 5970 is a great value if you can get it in the mid $600's.
 
friend'scatdied said:
That's true.. I got the 5850 for $70 over my old 5770 back when 5770s were inflated too. At twice that premium, I'm not sure it's worth it, but two 5850s would certainly destroy two 5770s.
Click to expand...

Yep 2x5850's would certainly destroy 2x5770's. I'm just looking at newegg prices right now for 2x5770's and one 5850... the price difference is like 5 bucks for 2x5770's. It's a real shame that prices have gone up for the 5850.
 
Wait wait wait: What's the max resolution of your monitor?
 
Thx everyone. My max resolution is currently only 1680 x 1050 w/ 22" monitor, but I plan on buying an ASUS 24 " monitor that I saw the other day. Don't remember specs right now. I want to get as high as possible (frame rates) on a 24" decent monitor.
 
FranklyShankly said:
This rig was my first time ever using crossfire. Very simple. Put both cards in, plug in crossfire bridge, go into CCC and turn on crossifre. That's it.
Click to expand...

Thx, Shank, I did not see this one before. You did this on the P5Q? Was x8 and no x16 a significant non-performance issue? I'm gonna do this anyway, but I have heard that my board is not so good for this, b/c is only 8x and not x16 for crossfire.
 
Hamfiles said:
Thx, Shank, I did not see this one before. You did this on the P5Q? Was x8 and no x16 a significant non-performance issue? I'm gonna do this anyway, but I have heard that my board is not so good for this, b/c is only 8x and not x16 for crossfire.
Click to expand...

The 5870 gets something like 96% performance potential in 8x compared to 16x so it's not a huge prob.
 
Wow, you'd think that doubling it to 16x would provide more of a gain than 4%. I guess you run into the law of diminishing returns at some point, where not much more data can be effectively returned.
 
Hamfiles said:
Wow, you'd think that doubling it to 16x would provide more of a gain than 4%. I guess you run into the law of diminishing returns at some point, where not much more data can be effectively returned.
Click to expand...

Yeah cards still aren't using x16 bandwidth fully yet. I meant that my first crossfire experience was on my sig rig, an x58 board with dual x16, but as said before, having x8 doesn't really matter much even with 5870's.
 
Even 4x was like 95% of 16x. Once it's got all the textures into ram I doubt there's an excessive amount of traffic on the PCI-e bus, so you just get a performance hit on min fps when new textures are coming across the bus from system ram. Probably has a larger hit on 512MB cards at high settings than 1GB cards.
 
Well it looks like 2 x cards don't double the power output. I was looking at some old crossfire reviews, and [H] has 4770 crossfire review, and it shows load wattage at 284 for one card, and 379 for two.

Its looking better...might go with higher end cards.
 
Hamfiles said:
Well it looks like 2 x cards don't double the power output. I was looking at some old crossfire reviews, and [H] has 4770 crossfire review, and it shows load wattage at 284 for one card, and 379 for two.

Its looking better...might go with higher end cards.
Click to expand...

It doesn't double total system wattage, no. Those numbers you listed are full system wattages. With 1 4770 a full system draws 284 watts, with 2 4770's it draws 379 watts, about 100 watts per card, and 180 watts for the rest of the system, seems pretty reasonable.
 
Wouldn't two 5770s draw more power than a single 5870 which has slightly better performance?
 
Do yourself a favour and SLI two Nvidia cards. You can grab GtX 260 SLI for cheap...
 
Iching said:
Do yourself a favour and SLI two Nvidia cards. You can grab GtX 260 SLI for cheap...
Click to expand...

He wants low power consumption. Therefore, Nvidia shouldn't be in the discussion :p

That chart linked above shows a single GTX 260 @ 297 watts for a single card! That's 596 watts for SLI!!!

5770 Crossfire is only 390 watts.
 
FranklyShankly said:
It doesn't double total system wattage, no. Those numbers you listed are full system wattages. With 1 4770 a full system draws 284 watts, with 2 4770's it draws 379 watts, about 100 watts per card, and 180 watts for the rest of the system, seems pretty reasonable.
Click to expand...

Thanks for pointing that out. I will read the article over again more carefully.

Maybe I should also upgrade my 650 watt power supply to a higher wattage one. I want the system to be as stable as possible. Someone should write an online guide for crossfire/sli vs. power supply needed for the typical gaming PC.
 
Hamfiles said:
Thanks for pointing that out. I will read the article over again more carefully.

Maybe I should also upgrade my 650 watt power supply to a higher wattage one. I want the system to be as stable as possible. Someone should write an online guide for crossfire/sli vs. power supply needed for the typical gaming PC.
Click to expand...

You could always just get a single 5870 and not worry about it.
 
I wanted to try crossfire for the experience. This system will eventually go to my daughter. I have E8500 socket 775, w/ 4 Gigs PC 8500 DDR2. It is OK, but I will eventually rebuild. On my new build I want to buy the most expensive card I can, and then when price for same card goes down, I will buy another one and run them both.

But I want to play around w/ crossfire on my current system for the experience, and also I am getting a 24 " monitor, which I believ current card, 9600 GT, will struggle with, on some games.
 
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