go crossfire or upgrade to newer card?

[johnshop]

so i have a 5850 black edition and i am seeing these puppies on ebay all the time for under 90 bucks, and i was thinking, would that be better than just upgrading to a never video card?

would it be worth it? or the gain would just be too small to even be considered some sort of upgrade?

the rest of my system is not the best, but god it has been reliable and up until then even far cry 3 runs decently. here are the specs:

and necessary info:

System Specifications:

I. Processor/CPU: phenom 2 955 be


II. Current Graphics Card: 5850 black edition


III. Display Resolution: 1920x1080


IV. Power Supply Unit Specification (Brand, Wattage, Ampage, Age). If possible, please provide a link to a website containing the power supply specifications: corsair tx750w


V. Case Specifications(N/A, Model, Length, Low Profile, Cooling, HTPC, Water, Silent): cooler master haf 932


Purchase Details:

I. Budget? : 250 MAX


II. Any particular preferences: no


III. Do you plan to have any Multi-GPU solutions such as Crossfire or SLI: no



V. What are your needs for this GPU? Which games(If any)do you intend to play? If you have this information at hand, what are the desired detail levels?: whatever upcoming games really, nothing in special.


VI. Do you plan on overclocking the card you intend to purchase: maybe.

 

[lehtv]

5850 only has 1GB of VRAM, little point in crossfiring it because of VRAM mirroring. It'd be almost as fast as a 7950, but no one would want a 7950 with only 1GB of VRAM. Not to mention higher power consumption, heat, noise, microstuttering, less stable framerates, potential driver or crossfire profile issues. Crossfire really only makes sense when you can't achieve the level of performance required with only one GPU.

Did you notice the stickied thread

 

[johnshop]

5850 only has 1GB of VRAM, little point in crossfiring it because of VRAM mirroring. It'd be almost as fast as a 7950, but no one would want a 7950 with only 1GB of VRAM. Not to mention higher power consumption, heat, noise, microstuttering, less stable framerates, potential driver or crossfire profile issues. Crossfire really only makes sense when you can't achieve the level of performance required with only one GPU.

Did you notice the stickied thread

edited with the details, sorry :awe:

and how about this benchmark this guy did: http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2245778&page=2

 

[KingFatty]

What is the hit to performance that you encounter with only 1 GB of VRAM?

Also, I'll just put this out there, the idea that perhaps your CPU will be holding you back if you upgrade just the GPU (unless you are running eyefinity?), and you are pretty well matched with your CPU and GPU combo.

In other words, why unbalance your system by increasing the GPU performance without also increasing CPU performance to keep up? Why not just save your money and do a complete upgrade with new mobo/CPU/GPU, and sell your current system to get money to spend towards the new system?

Again, this is the concept of avoiding imbalance between CPU and GPU power, and that maybe it can help to think you are well balanced now and don't need more GPU power because you'll just run into sluggish CPU performance that can't keep up with supercharged GPU.

 

[johnshop]

What is the hit to performance that you encounter with only 1 GB of VRAM?

Also, I'll just put this out there, the idea that perhaps your CPU will be holding you back if you upgrade just the GPU (unless you are running eyefinity?), and you are pretty well matched with your CPU and GPU combo.

In other words, why unbalance your system by increasing the GPU performance without also increasing CPU performance to keep up? Why not just save your money and do a complete upgrade with new mobo/CPU/GPU, and sell your current system to get money to spend towards the new system?

Again, this is the concept of avoiding imbalance between CPU and GPU power, and that maybe it can help to think you are well balanced now and don't need more GPU power because you'll just run into sluggish CPU performance that can't keep up with supercharged GPU.

that is a really good point, and i thought about it before, i have been thinking about crossing over to intel for quite some time, amd is just not delivering as far as i can see. so for now my best choice would just to wait and update the system as a whole? what would be the best you think thinking a balance of price/performance wise on the cpu/mobo on a intel platform?

 

[Hitman928]

so for now my best choice would just to wait and update the system as a whole?

This would be my suggestion. The 5xxx series doesn't scale as well in crossfire and you will definitely start to hit that 1gb limit sooner than later. Shader performance wise your card in crossfire would proabably match about a 7950 boost (when it scales properly) but you would still have 1gb vram and microstutter issues to deal with, as well as not all games being able to scale that well. A single card upgrade at this point would be the best option IMO. If it were me, personally, I'd look at upgrading your gpu when the new AMD cards come out in a couple of months and then look at upgrading the rest of your system after installing the card to see how it performs according to your goals. Your phenomII should do well enough until then.

What is the hit to performance that you encounter with only 1 GB of VRAM?

As texture sizes increase, you'll have to turn down texture quality. The main issue, however, tends to be resolution and AA settings. With only 1GB of VRAM you will be limited to lower res / AA settings because once you run out of VRAM, it's game over. At 1080p it won't be such a big deal but there will definitely be games where you wouldn't be able to run AA at all (Max Payne 3 is already an example and I think Skyrim as well on ultra).

 

[jacktesterson]

This would be my suggestion. The 5xxx series doesn't scale as well in crossfire and you will definitely start to hit that 1gb limit sooner than later. Shader performance wise your card in crossfire would proabably match about a 7950 boost (when it scales properly) but you would still have 1gb vram and microstutter issues to deal with, as well as not all games being able to scale that well. A single card upgrade at this point would be the best option IMO. If it were me, personally, I'd look at upgrading your gpu when the new AMD cards come out in a couple of months and then look at upgrading the rest of your system after installing the card to see how it performs according to your goals. Your phenomII should do well enough until then.



As texture sizes increase, you'll have to turn down texture quality. The main issue, however, tends to be resolution and AA settings. With only 1GB of VRAM you will be limited to lower res / AA settings because once you run out of VRAM, it's game over. At 1080p it won't be such a big deal but there will definitely be games where you wouldn't be able to run AA at all (Max Payne 3 is already an example and I think Skyrim as well on ultra).

I think if you can find another 5850 around $100, you can't get that much improvement on a $200 card. (Sell yours for $100 plus cost of the 5850)

The 5850s provide 80% or more boost in crossfire over a single 5850 in most 1080p games.

I say go for it. 1GB Vram has almost no impact at 1080p or lower for the majority of gamers out there who are happy with Near ultra settings rather than completely maxed out AA.

If your an AA hog (which I doubt as your using a 1GB 5850), then I say go for it.

 

[ShreddedWheat]

I picked up a second crossfire 5850 two Xmas's ago from Ben's outlet for $ 115. I noticed a big increase in frame rates in all my games. For $90 bucks it should hold you over if you are looking at going on the cheap.

I plan on keeping my setup for a long time. Anandtech's benches show crossfire 5850s somewhere around 15-20% slower than 7970 in most games. That review in the post (crossfire 5850 vs 670 is interesting).

my 2 cents....

 

[Termie]

Guys, this isn't even close to an apples to apples comparison. Assuming he could sell his 5850 for $90, which is a stretch, a 7950 would still cost $280-90=$190. Buying a new 5850 would cost him $90 or less, for generally similar performance in most games. Yes, there are some, like Skyrim, Batman:AC, and probably some newer games as well, where the performance will be much lower. But it's twice as much money to go with a 7950. Unless he increases his budget to $500 and goes for a new platform, I would not recommend a 7950 to him.

I went from 5850 crossfire to a 670, and the performance difference was nice, but certainly not worth it if you looked at cost alone.

 

[KingFatty]

Agreed, but it's quite telling that the crossfire/SLI financial argument works when you consider a 5850, which is quite old. It's market value has dropped to less than 1/3, so the math works out, especially when comparing to current gen hardware that is still relatively expensive and hasn't depreciated yet.

So yes, the crossfire argument works when you are talking about no-longer-current hardware, from two generations ago, that is cheap to get and already depreciated a lot.

But when you work this out for current video cards, say the 7XXX AMD or 6XX NVidia cards, then it's a bit different, because their prices are still high, for both new and used/refurb.

so maybe it's more of an argument about buying old computer equipment for use in crossfire, and not an argument about pure crossfire vs single-card.

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

I wouldn't do it. I already run into VRAM limitations with Skyrim with the default HD texture pack. I cannot run 4x AA without a severe performance drop, lowering it to 2xAA vastly improves performance at 1080p for me. If I wanted a small upgrade I would sell my 5850 and just get a 7850. Any more than that and I would want a new CPU.

 

[Attic]

Yea, VRAM limit means if you want an upgrade you need to get into video card with 2gigs or more VRAM. Your budget of 250 is close to getting you a 7950. If ya sell the 5850 for 100 bux you should be in without too much financial pain.

 

[RaistlinZ]

I highly recommend going with the 7950, if you're going to upgrade your GPU instead of CPU. Overclock it and you'll get even greater performance than your 5850 crossfire, 3GB VRAM to play with and no hassles with Crossfire.

 

[FalseChristian]

You really want a GPU with at least 2GB VRAM. Your 5850 is faster than 1 of my GTX 460 1GB But, for both of us, 1GB is going to limit us to a resolution of 1680x1050 or lower without experiencing a performance hit. I'm at 1680x1050 so 1GB is enough.

 

[Unoid]

I did exactly what you were over a year ago.

Bought a second 5850 for BF3. And I noticed that my GPU usage wouldn't cap out at 100%.

my q6600 at 3.6ghz was bottlenecking the GPU's big time, (oc'd its very similar to your cpu)

I'd upgrade cpu and gpu