Might wanna edit the title, since you're actually looking for a $400 GPU setup.
Did you consider the GTX 570? I'd rather get a single card now, and maybe add another one later if needed, than start with a CF/SLI setup right away.
Actually, the OP ended up finding a 5850 to crossfire with his existing 5850, which meant that while he was looking to spend 2x$200 (or $400), he ended up spending $150 and getting the same performance. That was thanks to Jason166.
BTW, did I mention I ordered one too? I got my card last week, Monday, just in time to play some BF3. I've got my OC'd at 925/4800 @ 1.2v right now rock solid.
Cheers :thumbsup:
Awesome! Nice OC on that thing. I'd heard of other people hitting 925 at 1.2v, so it sounds like you're right on track.
Again, thanks to you Jason166 for helping us all score a new awesome setup.
I got my 5850 crossfire set up yesterday, and it's really amazing. In BF3, I was at 1920x1200, high settings, 43fps. With crossfire, I got to 80fps, or 86% scaling. But now I'm able to max it out (all ultra, except for MSAA), and it's so darn fast (about 70fps) I just lock in vsync and cruise at 60fps the entire time with my GPUs trotting along at about 70% load.
For you watt-conscious types, I went from 73w to 87w at idle (below the theoretical 18w idle draw of an additional card, strangely), and I went from about 260w to 410w at load (ignoring PSU losses of about 10% on my Seasonic, that's exactly at the 150w TDP, and potentially pushed by the increased load on the CPU). That being said, when I lock in vsync at 60fps, I drop it down to 330w load, which to me is a power bargain - I went from 43fps at high settings to 60fps at ultra settings, and barely use the power of one light bulb to get there. Nice!
Some more information just to put everything into perspective. In BF3, as with other new games, 1GB of ram simply is not enough to push the ultimate settings. While I have the raw power to run 1920/4xMSAA, I'm already at 950MB per card before enabling MSAA, and doing so throws all sorts of errors. The most humourous one was a game crash and then a warning saying "This application requires a video card with at least 512MB of ram". Epic fail!
Also, I had a heck of a time setting up my cards, but not because of what you might think. I had read you had to uninstall all drivers, run driver cleaner, install the drivers once, reboot, install again for the second card, reboot, etc. Well, from the moment I put my second card in (and the slot did not matter - I ran each as the master card), my system was totally unresponsive, with the CPU maxing out and everything running slowly on screen. I of course thought it was a driver issue, but after about 5 hours of trouble-shooting, I realized that my mixed set of RAM capacities was causing some kind of incompatibility with the crossfire setup. I had 2x2GB and 2x4GB (for a total of 12GB), and the minute I pulled the 2x2GB setup, the system kicked into action, and I was on my way.
Lesson learned...make sure your memory subsystem is stable. I know the cards use a bit of system ram just to run, so they must have been encountering some problem accessing it in the mixed setup. I'd recommend dropping down to default memory clocks and timings to start off with your crossfire setup, and watch out for the mixed setups like mine.
And to the OP - you've got a great setup awaiting you when you return to the States!
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