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Hello,
I am new here and have a few questions, I did some Google searching last night and couldn't find my answer in a current context.
Anyway my current computer is as follows:
Motherboard: MSI X58 Pro-E LGA 1366
Processor: Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz
Memory: Kingston HyperX T1 Black Series 12GB + Kingston HyperX 3GB (3 x 1GB)
Graphics Card: [Purchased: XFX HD-587A-ZNF9 Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) 1GB ] [Warranty With XFX currently have: XFX HD-587X-ZNFC Radeon HD 5870 1GB ]
Power Supply: Antec TruePower Quattro TPQ-1000 1000W Continuous Power
Monitors: 3x Dell 21.5" HD Display
My objective is:
To determine if I should purchase a new graphics card single 7970 or crossfire with 2 or 3 5870 cards. My options I see now are currently:
- 1x 7970
- 2x 5870
- 3x 5870
My budget is ~350$ putting the 7970 a little out there for me.
My questions are:
I am looking for more power as I run a 3 screen eyefinity group and with battlefield 3 all settings on low I get ~40fps at 3240x1920 I am not a fan of that because when I start shooting that drops to ~30fps. When I purchased this computer crossfire and eyefinity didn't work well with each other.
1. Does eyefinity and crossfire function? well?
Now I looked up my motherboards PCI speeds when all 3 slots are in use and they would run 16x / 16x / 4x I am concerned that If I were to drop 3 cards in the 4x might slow things down, if so how much and would that negate the worth of the 3rd card?
2. Is running 16x / 16x / 4x going to slow the crossfire down to the point that the 3rd card is of no use?
Further looking through benchmarks from ~2009 / 2010 showed that the scaling multi gpu setups showed their power at higher resolutions where the difference between 2 5870s and 3 5870s at 1680x1050 was ~10 -> 20% as where the jump running at 2560x1600 was ~50->75% would this continue to scale up as the resolution continues up? Logically since most games are pixelshader bound (I think little research has been done in this area) and in my case memory bound (I have only 1GB) the extra memory and pixelshader units would help as they did in the higher resolution tests.
3. Will the performance of the 3rd card scale as well if not better than the test with 2560x1600 back in 2009 because my resolution is 3240x1920?
I looked around at some benchmarks with newer single and double cards 7970 and the 6990 ~500+$ and compared them with the 3x 5870 frame rates they are about the same, but I might have to overclock my 920 to push back some of the CPU overhead?
4. Out of the options above, what would you purchase to get the next performance boost?
Thanks for sticking through this mountain of a post but I feel like I should know exactly where I am going if I am spending money. Sorry about any stupid assumptions I may have made, feel free to correct me I am not a master in all things, I just enjoy my games!
I am new here and have a few questions, I did some Google searching last night and couldn't find my answer in a current context.
Anyway my current computer is as follows:
Motherboard: MSI X58 Pro-E LGA 1366
Processor: Intel Core i7-920 Bloomfield 2.66GHz
Memory: Kingston HyperX T1 Black Series 12GB + Kingston HyperX 3GB (3 x 1GB)
Graphics Card: [Purchased: XFX HD-587A-ZNF9 Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) 1GB ] [Warranty With XFX currently have: XFX HD-587X-ZNFC Radeon HD 5870 1GB ]
Power Supply: Antec TruePower Quattro TPQ-1000 1000W Continuous Power
Monitors: 3x Dell 21.5" HD Display
My objective is:
To determine if I should purchase a new graphics card single 7970 or crossfire with 2 or 3 5870 cards. My options I see now are currently:
- 1x 7970
- 2x 5870
- 3x 5870
My budget is ~350$ putting the 7970 a little out there for me.
My questions are:
I am looking for more power as I run a 3 screen eyefinity group and with battlefield 3 all settings on low I get ~40fps at 3240x1920 I am not a fan of that because when I start shooting that drops to ~30fps. When I purchased this computer crossfire and eyefinity didn't work well with each other.
1. Does eyefinity and crossfire function? well?
Now I looked up my motherboards PCI speeds when all 3 slots are in use and they would run 16x / 16x / 4x I am concerned that If I were to drop 3 cards in the 4x might slow things down, if so how much and would that negate the worth of the 3rd card?
2. Is running 16x / 16x / 4x going to slow the crossfire down to the point that the 3rd card is of no use?
Further looking through benchmarks from ~2009 / 2010 showed that the scaling multi gpu setups showed their power at higher resolutions where the difference between 2 5870s and 3 5870s at 1680x1050 was ~10 -> 20% as where the jump running at 2560x1600 was ~50->75% would this continue to scale up as the resolution continues up? Logically since most games are pixelshader bound (I think little research has been done in this area) and in my case memory bound (I have only 1GB) the extra memory and pixelshader units would help as they did in the higher resolution tests.
3. Will the performance of the 3rd card scale as well if not better than the test with 2560x1600 back in 2009 because my resolution is 3240x1920?
I looked around at some benchmarks with newer single and double cards 7970 and the 6990 ~500+$ and compared them with the 3x 5870 frame rates they are about the same, but I might have to overclock my 920 to push back some of the CPU overhead?
4. Out of the options above, what would you purchase to get the next performance boost?
Thanks for sticking through this mountain of a post but I feel like I should know exactly where I am going if I am spending money. Sorry about any stupid assumptions I may have made, feel free to correct me I am not a master in all things, I just enjoy my games!
