4850x2 advise

[john3850]

PC 1 is getting slow @1920x1200.
CPU is a early stepping 3110 Xeon @3900 on a EVGA680i 4GB G.SKILL P.C.750PS.
Running 2 early 8800gt in sli at 745core mem is kept low 975 because blew 1 card @1200.

PC 2 is a P5E-D E8400e @4500 with a 8800gtx.
P5E-D seems faster in most stuff and games compered to the old 680 sli.

I was deciding to get a 4850x2 2meg to replace the GTX.
If i get a 4850x2 i can always go crossfire.
I like the XFX or SSC 260 but the 4850x2 2meg seems to be much faster in game charts.
I game very little so driver problems are patched by the time i play most games.

 

[SlowSpyder]

I would think you'd be fine with an 8800GTX and sli 8800GT setup if you game very little (a lot of people would be happy with those if they gamed a lot ).... but, if you want more power than a 4850x2 would certainly be a noticable upgrade over an 880GTX for sure.

 

[john3850]

This Thanksgiving day my 680i will have been up for 3 years.
This MB always needed extra or high voltage to run stable.
Do to the age of 680 I got Asus p5 48 MB.
Never had money for 2 4870-1 meg to go with it.
Now with recent priece cuts it seem a good time to update my video.

 

[nitromullet]

I personally wouldn't get a 4850 X2. It can perform well in some situations, but when Crossfire doesn't scale well it doesn't perform well at all. IMO, either save your money and go for a 4870 1GB or GTX 260, or for about the same price as the 4850 X2 2GB pick up a GTX 280. I would always opt for a more powerful single gpu over a dual gpu setup.

 

[dguy6789]

Originally posted by: nitromullet
I personally wouldn't get a 4850 X2. It can perform well in some situations, but when Crossfire doesn't scale well it doesn't perform well at all. IMO, either save your money and go for a 4870 1GB or GTX 260, or for about the same price as the 4850 X2 2GB pick up a GTX 280. I would always opt for a more powerful single gpu over a dual gpu setup.

Crossfire scales far more often than not. Even when it doesn't, a single 4850 is still noticeably faster than an 8800GTX.

The 4850X2 makes the GTX280 and the GTX285 complete wastes of money. They are more expensive and slower.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: dguy6789

Originally posted by: nitromullet
I personally wouldn't get a 4850 X2. It can perform well in some situations, but when Crossfire doesn't scale well it doesn't perform well at all. IMO, either save your money and go for a 4870 1GB or GTX 260, or for about the same price as the 4850 X2 2GB pick up a GTX 280. I would always opt for a more powerful single gpu over a dual gpu setup.

Crossfire scales far more often than not. Even when it doesn't, a single 4850 is still noticeably faster than an 8800GTX.

The 4850X2 makes the GTX280 and the GTX285 complete wastes of money. They are more expensive and slower.

Yes, but when it doesn't $290 is pretty pricey for single 4850 performance IMO.

 

[dguy6789]

Are there any times it doesn't scale when a single 4850 isn't fast enough anyway? I'd imagine every AAA high end modern title would get special attention from ATI. Maybe some small company game that is very niche won't scale well, but for little games like that a 4850 is probably way more than enough to run maxed out anyway. ATI also said somewhere that their intention is to make 4870/4850 style mid to upper midrange cards and then just make X2 versions of them to compete with whatever nVidia's flagship will be. With this as their way of doing things, I imagine how well they deal with multiple GPU solutions on both the software and hardware side will only improve with time.

The 4850 X2 2GB(just called the 4850X2 in this article) doesn't appear to have any scaling problems at all in terms of performance improvement offered over the single 4850.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3517

 

[Tempered81]

It would be hard to post some reviews of a 4850x2 not scaling. If you can find one (there are a few) where it doesn't scale in a particular game, there may be other reviews from other sites that have it working just fine in that exact same game.

The 'doesnt scale, microstutter, drivers' argument is less valid considering price/performance IMO. Id take this card over a 280/285/4870.

 

[VisceralM]

"The 'doesnt scale, microstutter, drivers' argument is less valid considering price/performance IMO."

This is the bogey man argument right here for this card and it's used by a lot of people on the net to discourage the 4850x2. The problem is, there is only the one Anadtech two gpu review that really comes out and says the card is the best buy, other reviews are older, using older driver sets. I'd be more convinced that this card was the best buy for the moment if we could get some other up to date reviews showing the same kind of performance. Comes to think of it, that anandtech review also shows the single 4870 dominating the GTX 260, core 216 buy a good margin not seen in other shoot-outs. Either the anandtech is the latest one and is using modern drivers while the others are not, or it's just plain biased. We need more information from another source.

 

[nitromullet]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
Are there any times it doesn't scale when a single 4850 isn't fast enough anyway? I'd imagine every AAA high end modern title would get special attention from ATI. Maybe some small company game that is very niche won't scale well, but for little games like that a 4850 is probably way more than enough to run maxed out anyway. ATI also said somewhere that their intention is to make 4870/4850 style mid to upper midrange cards and then just make X2 versions of them to compete with whatever nVidia's flagship will be. With this as their way of doing things, I imagine how well they deal with multiple GPU solutions on both the software and hardware side will only improve with time.

The 4850 X2 2GB(just called the 4850X2 in this article) doesn't appear to have any scaling problems at all in terms of performance improvement offered over the single 4850.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3517

Well, I'm not gonna argue against Derek from AT.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3517&p=14

 

[Tempered81]

Originally posted by: nitromullet

Originally posted by: dguy6789
Are there any times it doesn't scale when a single 4850 isn't fast enough anyway? I'd imagine every AAA high end modern title would get special attention from ATI. Maybe some small company game that is very niche won't scale well, but for little games like that a 4850 is probably way more than enough to run maxed out anyway. ATI also said somewhere that their intention is to make 4870/4850 style mid to upper midrange cards and then just make X2 versions of them to compete with whatever nVidia's flagship will be. With this as their way of doing things, I imagine how well they deal with multiple GPU solutions on both the software and hardware side will only improve with time.

The 4850 X2 2GB(just called the 4850X2 in this article) doesn't appear to have any scaling problems at all in terms of performance improvement offered over the single 4850.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3517

Well, I'm not gonna argue against Derek from AT.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3517&p=14

Yeah Derek makes a good point in your link,

"But the real stand out has to be the Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 X2 2GB. This unique card really shined and held it's own all the way up to 2560x1600. While a 1GB 4850 might not make much sense (the extra RAM only really helps at resolutions where the 4850 can't keep up in terms of processing power), the 1GB of RAM per GPU on the 4850 X2 2GB really helps make this single card multiGPU option high end. The Sapphire 4850 X2 costs less than a single NVIDIA GTX 280 or 285, and performs better than these as well."