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Crossfired 5850's a worth while upgrade?

J

jamesdsimone

Golden Member
I have my older computer set up in my bedroom. It has 2gb ram a 720 BE clocked at 3.2 ghz and crossfired 4850's. I do game on it but nothing "modern". I still get lag though. I happen to have one 5850 from an old build. Would it be worth while to pick up another and replace the 4850's. I assume I could get one for not much money at this point.
 
At some point that processor can only do so much, but a pair of 5850s or a single 5870 would be better. I'd opt for at least 4GB ram too, if possible.
 
I will check but I was thinking it might have 4gigs of ram. I thinking about an upgrade if I could do it for less than 50 dollars. And now that I think about it I have a 980 BE too sitting around.
 
I wouldn't bother crossfiring them if you dont already have 2. For $50 you can pick up a newer card that's faster and better, used. Saw a 6950 for $50 new on the forums here the other day too. I've seen 7850's/270s (which are way newer and way faster than the 5850) go for as low as $60 used in the For Sale Trade forum

Worthwhile to drop the one you already have in there though, along with that 980 BE
 
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Headfoot said:
I wouldn't bother crossfiring them if you dont already have 2. For $50 you can pick up a newer card that's faster and better, used. Saw a 6950 for $50 new on the forums here the other day too. I've seen 7850's/270s (which are way newer and way faster than the 5850) go for as low as $60 used in the For Sale Trade forum

Worthwhile to drop the one you already have in there though, along with that 980 BE
Click to expand...

I've looked at benchmarks. Crossfired 4850's are about the same as a single 5850. The 5850 does have the advantage of more bandwidth but that upgrade is not going to make a huge difference. I might try it if I have some spare time to see.
 
The HD 5850 were a stuttering mess in CrossFire, they are legacy GPUs.

Just get a single HD 7970 used.

( I happen to have HD 5870, 5850 x 2 in Trifire )
 
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jamesdsimone said:
It's a legacy system. The CPU is not nearly fast enough for a 7970.
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Depends on the game. A 6700k running a 7970 would obviously be faster, but you should still see very good scaling moving from a 5850 (or 5850 CF) to a 7970 with a Phenom II tri-core at 3.2GHz.
 
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jamesdsimone said:
I've looked at benchmarks. Crossfired 4850's are about the same as a single 5850. The 5850 does have the advantage of more bandwidth but that upgrade is not going to make a huge difference. I might try it if I have some spare time to see.
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Whoops, I thought you had just 1 4850 in there not 2. It's still worth it if they're about equal in total speed because the 5850 is DirectX11 compatible and you don't need to worry about crossfire weirdness
 
And what's about your PSU?

I think a used gtx 750 ti overclocked,is a good match for your cpu and is not old tech. And with the older direct x 11 games you play Nvidia gpu 's are faster with less driver overhead.
Should be at least as fast as a 6950.
 
If your PSU is decent, get a used HD7850/7870 (R9 270/270X) /7950/7970. For new, R7 370 is the best bang for the buck on a budget. Skip the 750Ti as it's overpriced at $100. Don't bother with 5850 CF.
 
I'm always wary of recommending used GPUs unless you really trust the seller, there's always a risk when buying used.
Especially for the HD 7000 series, those cards were popular for mining, and they're four years old by now as well.

Not GPU related TC, but I assume you've already tried unlocking the fourth core on that CPU?
 
Both the 5X an 6X series GPU'S have massive stuttering issues. It wasn't until well after the 7x series was released until frame rate delivery was taken care of.
 
KaRLiToS said:
The HD 5850 were a stuttering mess in CrossFire, they are legacy GPUs.

Just get a single HD 7970 used.

( I happen to have HD 5870, 5850 x 2 in Trifire )
Click to expand...

Madpacket said:
Both the 5X an 6X series GPU'S have massive stuttering issues. It wasn't until well after the 7x series was released until frame rate delivery was taken care of.
Click to expand...

^^This,

The best is to get a used HD 7950 or HD 7970

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2452732&highlight=7950
http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2457750&highlight=7970
 
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I have a pair of ASUS 7970 if interested...

And I've owned both a 5870 and 5970 and never noticed any stuttering. Was that only with crossfire?
 
EXCellR8 said:
I have a pair of ASUS 7970 if interested...

And I've owned both a 5870 and 5970 and never noticed any stuttering. Was that only with crossfire?
Click to expand...

I was just looking back at this thread. Thanks great to be on such an active board. The PSU is no problem. I have a BFG 1200w unit in there. This was my backup system I put together from extra parts. I put it in my bed room then of course found myself using it more and more. I'm on it now. I have a 980 BE I can use too and retire my 720 BE which has been a great CPU. It has 4 gigs of DDR2 which tells you how old it is. I am running XP/Ubuntu so DX11 is not a consideration at least not at the moment. I want to stick with an AMD card so I can just swap cards and not worry too much about drivers. I'm interested in the 7970's. I could do a multiple swap. My other system is a 740 at 3.4ghz/4 cores and crossfired 5850's. It benchs about 2x as fast. I wanted this to be a cheap upgrade so just keep that in mind.
 
KaRLiToS said:
Yes it was only with Crossfire.

The HD 5970 was a dual GPU.
Click to expand...

the 5970 used crossfire, it's 2 5800s on the same PCB


but as far as I know the fixes AMD made for the 7000 series CF frame pacing was also applied to the HD 5000s and higher, only the HD 4000s and lower never got it,

in any case, 1GB in 2016 is hopeless, and now the 6000s and lower are not getting drivers update, crossfire profiles, so yes, it would be a very bad choice.

5850 is pretty slow uses a lot of power and the 1GB limit is a big problem.

you would be better with a 260X or gtx 750 than trying to play games with a 5850 CF

" I am running XP/Ubuntu"

Nvidia is a lot better when it comes to Linux proprietary drivers and they also have better XP support (more recent drivers, more recent products supported)
 
KaRLiToS said:
You just repeated what I said with other terms.

Google images for dual GPUs
Click to expand...

yes sorry,
I kind of assumed that you were meaning something else because I misread the post you were quoting (I thought he said 5870 CF and 5970, and not 5870 and 5970)

but as I said, after they released the fixed drivers in 2013 for the 7000 series they also said the fix was also applied to the older supported cards (like a 5800 CF), but for most of its life yes, it suffered with the lack of frame pacing, but it seems a lot of people didn't noticed the problem, considering they were selling CF/SLI for many years without decent frame pacing (some noticed, I remember some people complaining)
 
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