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Crossfire 2900XT way to go on P35 motherboard?

balane

balane

Senior member
I can pick up a couple of 512mb 2900XT cards for around $650 and run them crossfire on my MSI P35 Neo2-FR board. Is that an advisable route to go? I want to get new video in my PC by Christmas and the market confuses me right now. I don't mind paying for speed. I like nVidia and ATI equally so I don't care which GPU manufacturer I go with. I just want a really fast video set up.

PS My Q6600 gets here on Saturday to replace my E6400
PSS I overclock everything so please consider that in your recommendations.
 
If you want to go ATI route, go with 3870, depending on a test they perform about the same as 2900XT, however they run significantly cooler than 2900XT and are much cheaper. You can still get them from ncix at $240 each plus shipping. You save about 150 dollars and get a quieter and cooler running rig.
 
225 shipped from newegg for 3870, they've been in and out of stock for the past 24 hrs. DON'T BUY 2900XT under any circumstances right now, you won't find one cheaper than 3870, and it is 5-10% slower.
 
Yeah and your 500w will barely be enough (most likely not) for 2900xt since those are very power hungry. Go with 3870CF, about 90w less on load for each, so that's 180 less watts and might even work on ur 500w P/S.
 
OK, thanks So, dual 3870 is a solid route to go on my Intel chip board for speed and future proofing.

I forgot to mention that I am certainly not opposed to getting a stronger PSU should the need arise.

The 3870 cards overclock well?

I will get considerably more performance out of this crossfire setup than I will with any current or near-future single nVidia based card?
 
I will get considerably more performance out of this crossfire setup than I will with any current or near-future single nVidia based card?
Click to expand...

No... Not by a long shot. When it works, HD3870 Crossfire will most likely match/exceed the performance of a single 8800GTX, but there are cases where Crossfire doesn't work very well.

Here is a link from Anandtech's article comparing the performance of HD3850 Crossfire to a single GTX. The numbers look good, but they were only able to got Crossfire working in two of the four games they wanted to include in the benchmarks. In the other two games they saw the performance decrease when Crossfire was enabled.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3151&p=10
 
Oof. That's not what I was wanting to hear at all. Is this something that will improve with driver updates?

So, judging from that there's still no reason not to get a single nVidia based card.
 
Crossfire and SLI will never be the same as having one card... it is cumbersome and impractical... you want to crossfire an EXPENSIVE card to get more then the max... for example, if you were to SLI two GT cards you will get better performance then an ultra, the most expensive card out there... AMD cannot compete in raw speed, so they compete in price...

However, 450$ for two 3870 for crossfire = 8800GTX is less then paying 600$ for a GTX... however a new, better, high end card is about to come out from nvidia... a 1GB revised GTS should probably outperform the ultra (and crossfire 3870) for ~400$... wait two weeks for it.

Generally speaking buying two cards is a bad idea... ESPECIALLY for future proofing, as you need driver "profiles" to make each game run... driver support for multi GPU is horrible from both companies. And will be strongly recommended against.
 
That makes sense to me. So the 1GB GTS due out very soon is supposed to be priced at $400. That sounds like a pretty good situation. I currently have a 640mb GTS. This seems like the way I'm leaning then. I wonder if availability is going to be equally miserable as the current new cards.
 
2x3870 will be much better than an 8800gtx if there is driver support for it. Also, with a p35 mobo you'll be much better off getting one 3870 now and then, if necessary, get a 3850 512mb as your 2nd card to dump in the x4 slot. you should be able to get the 2nd card for 30-40 cheaper plus not see too much of a penalty for using the slower card since it will already be hampered by the x4 slot anyway. also, it appears highly likely that 3850 will oc much more than 3870 atm, so you should be able to get nearly 3870 perf out of an oc'd 3850 512 anyway.

edit: how much slowdown are you experiencing with your 8800gts 640??? that card is very competitive with 8800gt at high res, and at lower resolutions and/or older games you'll still be maxing them out, anyway.
 
Originally posted by: bryanW1995
225 shipped from newegg for 3870, they've been in and out of stock for the past 24 hrs. DON'T BUY 2900XT under any circumstances right now, you won't find one cheaper than 3870, and it is 5-10% slower.
Click to expand...

Unless someone unloads one used. It may happen...in fact I may do it. Depending on how things work out in the next weeks.
 
well, nvidia did not officially declare that price... it is just a general estimate by people in the know... but it should be around that...

The current new cards had hundreds of thosands in stock on lunch day... for them to run out of stock one in ever 1000 americans had to buy one or the other on its respective lunch day.
It is not that availability was miserable, but the 200$ 7900GS from two years ago was ONLY outperformed by the 2900XT (500$+, currently 450$) and the 8800GTS 320MB and up (STILL 350$+)... So most people have been waiting for a card for two years, and are really hungry to buy.

Originally posted by: cmdrdredd
Originally posted by: bryanW1995
225 shipped from newegg for 3870, they've been in and out of stock for the past 24 hrs. DON'T BUY 2900XT under any circumstances right now, you won't find one cheaper than 3870, and it is 5-10% slower.
Click to expand...

Unless someone unloads one used. It may happen...in fact I may do it. Depending on how things work out in the next weeks.
Click to expand...

Not gonna happen... used 2900XT and 8800GTS (even the 320MB kind) still going for over 320$ a peice on ebay... making it cheaper to buy a pricegouged GT that outperforms them then buying a used card that underperforms and produces too much heat...

Too many people think "OMFG I SAW THE CARD AT FRYS FOR 500$ I MUST BUY FOR 300 ON EBAY OLOLOLOLO!!!1" and do just that... a week ago I saw a 8800GTS 320MB oc on frys for 599$, sitting next to a 8800GT for 275$

Also 8800GT are now selling on ebay for over 350$ each... it is like the playstation and xbox all over again... funny enough I read a statistic that claimed 70-80% of the xbox 360 / PS3 consoles bought on lunch day were resold on ebay.
 
dude I have x1900xtx crossfire. It's nice when it works but infuriating when it doesn't.

Just buy one REALLY powerful card and get it over with. I'm waiting till January to sell both my cards and get the fastest and latest single card @ around that time.

It's a love hate relationship.
 
Originally posted by: gersson
dude I have x1900xtx crossfire. It's nice when it works but infuriating when it doesn't.

Just buy one REALLY powerful card and get it over with. I'm waiting till January to sell both my cards and get the fastest and latest single card @ around that time.

It's a love hate relationship.
Click to expand...

LOL , I have just ordered two 3870's and this will be my first tangle with multi gpu . I get the feeling I will have your outlook on this when it is all over with . That being said I HAVE to at least try it once, and then maybe never again unless that is where the future is going.
 
hah... the first multi card things were 3dfx... with the voodoo2 SLI back in 1998.... nvidia reintruduced SLI (now meaning something else) in 2004, after the purchased 3dfx...

it wouldn't surprise me if part of the reason 3dfx went under is its focus of SLI while nvidia was releasing single cards only.
 
Originally posted by: bryanW1995
2x3870 will be much better than an 8800gtx if there is driver support for it. Also, with a p35 mobo you'll be much better off getting one 3870 now and then, if necessary, get a 3850 512mb as your 2nd card to dump in the x4 slot. you should be able to get the 2nd card for 30-40 cheaper plus not see too much of a penalty for using the slower card since it will already be hampered by the x4 slot anyway. also, it appears highly likely that 3850 will oc much more than 3870 atm, so you should be able to get nearly 3870 perf out of an oc'd 3850 512 anyway.

edit: how much slowdown are you experiencing with your 8800gts 640??? that card is very competitive with 8800gt at high res, and at lower resolutions and/or older games you'll still be maxing them out, anyway.
Click to expand...

When you run mis-matched cards in Crossfire, doesn't the more powerful card simply "dumb itself down" to match the slower/lower performing card? e.g. if you have a card with 256MB and 512MB, won't they each only utilize 256MB? Does anyone know how this works for sure?

...another thing to note: P35 really isn't the most idea chipset for dual cards due to its 16x/4x PCIe configuration.

...it's generally a bit slower than 975x, which has dual PCIe 8x/8x:

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2990&p=4

...it's kind of inconsistent when compared to X38 and Asus Blitz (modified 8x/8x P35)

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardwa...intel_x38_versus_p35/1

The fact that P35 is less than an ideal dual card chipset coupled with the overall issues and inconsistent driver support Crossfire would make the idea of adding two HD3870s to your P35 motherboard a hard one for me to recommend.

If the you already had a Radeon and were asking about getting a second one, I might say "go for it", but with $650 to spend on a video card you can pick whatever you want - even an 8800 Ultra if you choose to. I am not saying you should get an Ultra, but I am saying that you wouldn't be getting the most ideal setup IMO if you were to get dual HD3870s to run in Crossfire.
 
good points. realistically, OP should just get fastest card available at reasonable price today (probably 3870 right now, could change to 8800gt if prices and availability get in check) then sell the card and upgrade to a faster one in mid 08 when g100/r700 come out.

of course, amd just released a hotfix for crysis xfire... if both teams focus hard on xfire/sli there's no doubt that they can get them to work much better, it's just a question of how much time/effore they want to put into it.
 
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