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Tri-fire or upgrade...

E

eViL_M@LuM

Crosshair's Nephew
Joined
Aug 28, 2002
Messages
3,688
As some have seen in a previous thread I recently made the transition to AMD/Ati after years of being green. My transition included 2 5850 in xfire. Now do to a niche in my ass I decided I would like to either, sell these two and move to two 6850s or add a third 5850. I've seen mixed reviews on the tri-fire experience but overall I hear it is nice. Yielding on average a 50-70% gain. Looking for opinions.

Current setup
Asus Crosshair Formula IV
1055t x6 @ 4050mhz 300x13.5 @ 1.5v
4x2gb g.skill eco 1333 @ 1600 7 8 7 24 31 2t
2x 5850s with asus flash
ht @ 2.4ghz
nb @ 2.7ghz
kingwin 700w mach1
4xseagate 750gb in 2 raid 0's



Now I know the PSU seems to be lacking for an xfire adventure. However I used the same psu for over a year with an I7 920@4.4ghz 12gb of ram, same 4 hd's, and 3 sli 260s, including 8 case fans, 2 optical drives and a corsair h50. It puts out a decent 74amps on the 12 rail. However I'm willing to upgrade if needed.

Opinions enter below. K thanks bye
 
I think 6850s would be a sidegrade/downgrade. think you need to go to crossfire 69xxs to see an improvement.
 
going off that I would say add a third 5870. are you playing at 2560x1600? I am not knowledgeable enough to know if it would scale as well at lower resolutions.
 
honestly... i use only 1 monitor. I have not found 3 monitors that tickle my pickle enough to invest in eyefinity.... that being said the only pc game I really play atm is SC2.... This is more of "I can do whatever I want at whatever resolution i want" sorta thing.
 
Just from personal experience I love my dual Crossfire set up. Tri and quad Crossfire setups, as well as tri and quad SLI setups, are iffy at best. By adding that third or fourth card you often get negative scaling and your performance goes down the toilet or you get quirky issues like flicker or something weird and that is on both sides of the isle. I have a lot of high end systems running multiple cards come through my fingers and in all honesty it is not worth it to go over two cards. If you want more performance then I would recommend two bigger cards but is there anything that you really cannot play with Crossfire 5850s on a single monitor? That should be plenty for anything that has been released so far.
 
Never had a hiccup outta my sli setup, and from the review i posted above the scaline from 2 cards to the third is actually pretty substantial. Did you read that link?
 
The only upgrade I'd consider if I were you is a GTX 570/580 or a 6950/6970. Then, when the prices of these cards go down, add another. But I think your best option is to stick with the 5850s.
 
eViL_M@LuM said:
honestly... i use only 1 monitor. I have not found 3 monitors that tickle my pickle enough to invest in eyefinity.... that being said the only pc game I really play atm is SC2.... This is more of "I can do whatever I want at whatever resolution i want" sorta thing.
Click to expand...

So you're considering doing tri-fire and the only game you're playing right now is a game that sees almost no scaling in crossfire.

Well this one's easy.
 
Intel_Hydralisk said:
So you're considering doing tri-fire and the only game you're playing right now is a game that sees almost no scaling in crossfire.

Well this one's easy.
Click to expand...

Live I said, it's really just a "because" I can sorta thing. I play other games just not as frequent.
 
I wouldn't advise tri-anything on a single monitor, assuming you're not running a 30". If you want to upgrade just for the hell of it, might as well make it a useful upgrade.
 
Your in the same boat as I.. I'm debating on going trifire or just picking up a 6990.. I primarily play SC2 on a 120hz monitor.
 
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