Does Crossfire scale in Crysis?

VirtualLarry

No Lifer
Aug 25, 2001
56,582
10,221
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I was reading a review of the Powercolor 1GB 4870 here , and it shows two 4850s in crossfire performing only slightly faster than a single 4850, and slower than a single (OCed) 4870. What's up with that?!?

The review was done with Cat 8.6. Perhaps things have improved with 8.7 or 8.8.

More here , the CF 4850s are actually slower than a single 4850 in lower resolutions. What??
 

Denithor

Diamond Member
Apr 11, 2004
6,298
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Benchmark

Looks confirmed. Crossfire doesn't scale well at low res in Crysis, really only works well/makes a significant improvement once you get to 1920x1200 or higher.
 
Aug 28, 2008
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I generally stay away from 2 card configs from both NV and ATI. I would just get the best one card setup you need. The benchmarks most of the sites did were with 8.6 Catalyst drivers which almost invalidates the tests. The 48XX series had just come out when 8.6 was released there is no way especially with crossfire where ATI could have optimized the drivers. The sites need to rerun the tests with 8.8 or newer. I would say until ~8.10 comes out the test will not really reflect an optimized performance for the 48XX hardware.
 

sourthings

Member
Jan 6, 2008
153
0
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I have a 4870X2, it does indeed scale in Crysis, but compared to other games, the scaling is not as good. It's still the fastest single slot card for Crysis, but not by much. Crysis is much more Nvidia friendly. If you're only concerned with Crysis, buy 2 gtx280. For everything else 4870x2 is pretty much faster.