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Using 5670 with 5870 Possible?

E

ebolamonkey3

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Sep 2, 2008
Messages
1,237
Hey guys, I have a Gigabyte 890FXA-UD5 mobo and 2x 5870s right now in crossfire. But when not gaming, that's way overkill. So I'm thinking if it would be possible to put my spare 5670 in the third PCI-E slot and have it run my monitors when I'm just browsing but switch to the 5870s when gaming.

If so, where would I plug in my monitors? The 5670 or the 5870? I only have 2 monitors right now, and that's fine since the 5670 doesn't support eyefinity (no DP port), but what if I add a third one in the future?

Please help me on this issue, as it would be awesome to have 5670 power usage for daily browsing an only use the 5870s for more intense tasks.
 
I think maybe you should actually look at the idle usage of the 5870.

From memory it is only 20w in 2D mode. And Crossfire switches off the second card in 2D mode.
 
I would imagine it's entirely do-able.
You'd just have to come up with a profile in ATI overdrive or whatever.
Your browsing monitor would have to be attached to the 5600 card, and you'd simply input it into DVI port #2 and manually switch it over when not gaming. So you'd need another cable, if you don't have one lying around.:D

Like m4 said though, when in 2D, the master card is downclocked and the slave is essentially off except for 20% fan cycle.
 
Not worth it because of the above mentioned reasons. You can also use a program to set the 5870 to underclock even further in 2d mode if power usage is such a concern. But be careful - with multimonitor setups too low of a refresh rate will cause monitor flicker which is super annoying.
 
Ahh I see, so the 2nd card is essentially off in 2D mode. That's much better, and essentially removes my reason for using the 5670. I'm assuming this is the case with tri-fire as well? With the first card down clocked to run 3 screens and the other two practically off except 20% fan cycle?
 
ebolamonkey3 said:
Ahh I see, so the 2nd card is essentially off in 2D mode. That's much better, and essentially removes my reason for using the 5670. I'm assuming this is the case with tri-fire as well? With the first card down clocked to run 3 screens and the other two practically off except 20% fan cycle?
Click to expand...

Yup.
 
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