newegg special poses question: 2 x 5770 or 5850

[redrider4life4]

I have always been weary of going xfire with all the headaches and issues I've read about especially when games are first released. Now everything appears much better, so 2 5770s for $290 or a single 5850 for around $300?

I have heard the 5770s overclock better than the rest of the cards as well so this is playing into my decision. My only question will two 5770s be ok with the following system power wise?

i7 860
750 gb caviar black
2 5770s
4gb ddr3 pc1300 memory
600w power supply

-Mike

 

[Madcatatlas]

Yup, your power supply shold fix that without a problem. The only thing i would say speaks FOR the 5850, is if your thinking of going Crossfire later

If not, then the 5770s is the way to go.

 

[Dark4ng3l]

2x 5770s will also have twice the tessellation performance of the 5850. The 5850 (if you get one with tweakable voltage and unlocked bios) is a true monster overclocker though.

The dual 5770s are also significantly faster in most games than the single 5850 would be. I say go for it.

 

[v8envy]

The downsides: microstutter, input lag, lower performance in games without a crossfire profile and the occasional issues running multiple games windowed (think "multiboxing" MMOs). Higher power suck at idle. And for the extreme geeks, no Linux support.

Two 5770s can best a stock 5870 most of the time, it is true. But a good overclock on a 5850 does that as well.

If it were me I'd cough up the extra $10 for a 5850 and not deal with the CF headache.

p.s. not all 600 watt PSUs are created equal. A 600 watt PowOrk isn't going to hold a candle to a quality 400 watt PSU, for example.

 

[GotNoRice]

5770 crossfire would be faster without a doubt. Games that don't scale with at least 2 GPUs are extremely scarce these days. You almost have to go out of your way to find a game that doesn't scale well.

But 5770 crossfire is a dead-end path, whereas getting a 5850 is one step away from 5850 crossfire. If you are able to ultimately get that 2nd 5850, that is the way to go. If you are going to stick with this rig for a while without any further upgrades or modification then go for the 5770s

 

[jtisgeek]

micro stutter is a 4800's series thing not much of a issues on the newer cards. Now days there a cross fire profile for almost everything not a build deal unless you play a lot of no name games.

I vote for 2 5770 faster and may only get better with drivers it's what am looking to do in the future for my main rig.

Power wise 5770 idle really nice so not to bad really.

 

[NoQuarter]

If you plan on setting up a 3 monitor Eyefinity setup you should get the 5850 instead, Crossfire performance is spotty in Eyefinity because apparently the Crossfire bridge wasn't designed with the bandwidth to send 5760x1080 frame buffer data across.

 

[OCGuy]

A vote for 5850.

 

[konakona]

I remember 4830s SLIed having major bandwidth bottleneck at 1080p and higher.
Are 5770s relatively free from this at say, 1080p?

 

[Madcatatlas]

I remember 4830s SLIed having major bandwidth bottleneck at 1080p and higher.
Are 5770s relatively free from this at say, 1080p?

Im surprised that was the only major problem with SLIed radeons ()

 

[bunnyfubbles]

The downsides: microstutter, input lag, lower performance in games without a crossfire profile and the occasional issues running multiple games windowed (think "multiboxing" MMOs). Higher power suck at idle. And for the extreme geeks, no Linux support.

Two 5770s can best a stock 5870 most of the time, it is true. But a good overclock on a 5850 does that as well.

If it were me I'd cough up the extra $10 for a 5850 and not deal with the CF headache.

p.s. not all 600 watt PSUs are created equal. A 600 watt PowOrk isn't going to hold a candle to a quality 400 watt PSU, for example.

The 5700s in CF actually aren't any worse at idle or load than their single card 5800 counterparts.

Although I'd still agree with you, I like to avoid the potential headache of CF which is why I went with a 5850, although I got mine for $259 so my decision was that much easier.

 

[v8envy]

http://www.legitreviews.com/article/1105/14/ disagrees. A 5850 uses about 3 more watts than a 5770 idle. Two 5770s use 20 more watts than a single.

So ok, "higher power suck" did seem to imply unreasonably high, like a GTX480. My bad. But you have to agree, 20 watts higher *is* measurably higher. It's about 10% of the entire rig power use at idle.

 

[cbn]

The downsides: microstutter, input lag, lower performance in games without a crossfire profile and the occasional issues running multiple games windowed (think "multiboxing" MMOs).

Why do you say "input lag"?

I thought input lag would only be an issue with asymmetrical xfire (where the weaker card renders every 3rd or 4th frame and the stronger card renders the first 2 to 3 frames).

 

[cbn]

V8 envy,

How about triple fire input lag? Would that be worse than regular crossfire....or the same?

 

[lopri]

I have a feeling that AMD will cut 5850/5870's prices right before 470/480's retail availability (12th?).

 

[v8envy]

This has been covered. Think about this for a moment. A single card will take N milliseconds to render a single frame. A card twice as powerfull will do it in N/2 milliseconds. The users' input will always show up N/2 milliseconds slower in the multi-GPU scenario. You simply can't start rendering a frame resulting from user input until you get the user input, and the slower card x 2, x3, or even x9000 is no faster at generating the initial image post change than a single card.

This goes for AFR, btw. SFR would not have this issue, at least not to a large extent.

 

[Patrick Wolf]

This has been covered. Think about this for a moment. A single card will take N milliseconds to render a single frame. A card twice as powerfull will do it in N/2 milliseconds. The users' input will always show up N/2 milliseconds slower in the multi-GPU scenario. You simply can't start rendering a frame resulting from user input until you get the user input, and the slower card x 2, x3, or even x9000 is no faster at generating the initial image post change than a single card.

This goes for AFR, btw. SFR would not have this issue, at least not to a large extent.

Doesn't really sound significant.

 

[NoQuarter]

I remember 4830s SLIed having major bandwidth bottleneck at 1080p and higher.
Are 5770s relatively free from this at say, 1080p?

They bench amazing at 1920x1200 so I'll say no bandwidth issue.

 

[nyker96]

just get a single 5850 oc it and save yourself all that issue with extra power consumptions and headaches from Xfire drivers.

 

[Patrick Wolf]

Here. A factory OCed 5850 w/ Free MW2 for $300. That's -$30 if bought from ebay. Plus another -$9 w/ bing cashback.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16814131351

Two 5770's would be good too though. The choice is easy for me since I only have one x16 slot.

I guess since you spent the cash on an XFire board (and if you don't want/need two 5850's) might as well take advantage of it.

 

[v8envy]

Doesn't really sound significant.

Depends on what you're playing. At 30 fps from a dual card (15 fps each) you're looking at 1000/15 = 66.6ms of input lag. Or 2 whole frames slower than a card running at 30 fps in the first place. So when the action gets heavy and you hit minimum frame rates (which is usually when you want your reactions to be fastest) you suddenly turn into a HPB.

Remember that latencies are additive. Add to that your LCD monitor's input lag, your network latency and suddenly you could be dying before you even see your 120 hz CRT using opponent on your screen. The insignificant disadvantages add up.

 

[cbn]

Thanks V8 envy for reminding us of "input lag" with multi-GPU.

P.S. I also found some information relating to this on the Nvidia website--->http://developer.nvidia.com/object/sli_best_practices.html

However, I am still trying to digest all this information.

 

[cbn]

Depends on what you're playing. At 30 fps from a dual card (15 fps each) you're looking at 1000/15 = 66.6ms of input lag. Or 2 whole frames slower than a card running at 30 fps in the first place. So when the action gets heavy and you hit minimum frame rates (which is usually when you want your reactions to be fastest) you suddenly turn into a HPB.

Remember that latencies are additive. Add to that your LCD monitor's input lag, your network latency and suddenly you could be dying before you even see your 120 hz CRT using opponent on your screen. The insignificant disadvantages add up.

It sounds like Multi-GPU would be best for multi-monitor gaming then?

Three Nvidia GPUs on three 1080p monitors would have the same input lag as one Nvidia GPU on one 1080p monitor?

 

[MagickMan]

I went with the 5850, it's plenty for now. Later I'll add another when I need more oomph.

 

[cbn]

Doesn't really sound significant.

It sounds like the "situation" the video card is used in matters a lot.