Upgrading to CrossFire: A Few Questions

[orbster556]

Dear All:

I have been using a Sapphire HD 5870 for the past year now and have been happy with its performance. In response to the rather drastic price cuts on the card over the past few weeks, I decided to get a second. This will be my first dual-GPU build ever and thus was hoping to have a few questions addressed. In the event that the info is necessary, here are the principal components of my current build:

Core i5 760 @ 3812.5 Mhz (200 bclk w/ 19 multi)
Asus Maximus III Formula
8 GB DDR 1600 RAM
Corsair 850W PSU
Sapphire HD 5870

Anyway, I'd appreciate thoughts on any of the following:

1) After consulting some online calculators, I'm fairly confident my PSU is up to snuff but just wanted to double check.

1a) Any installation tips or issues I should keep an eye out for or is it a relatively straight forward process?

2) I built this system in November and I seem to recall reading, in some articles, that one of the down-sides of 1156 mobos is that it is not the optimal platform for multi-GPUs because of its limited number of PCIe lanes. From my understanding, however, this applies only when you were running more than 2 gfx cards. I was wondering whether this is correct.

3) Will I be able to slot in the card without a re-format? As I mentioned, I currently am using a single 5870 so I am unsure whether the inclusion of an additional card will cause instability.

4) All things considered, should I keep the card and go CrossFire or will my performance gains be negligible?

Thanks, in advance, for any help or insight you might be able to offer.

Regards,

 

[cusideabelincoln]

1) Yes, you're good.

2) Yes, it's not optimal because the lanes turn into two x8. Optimal would be two x16, but the difference for a 5870 in each slot shouldn't be a concern. Two x16 isn't possible on socket 1156, you would need to go to socket 1366 anyway.

3) You should not have to reformat. A driver reinstall may be in order.

4) You should notice the gain.

 

[orbster556]

Thanks for the info; I appreciate it.

Regards

 

[orbster556]

Additionally, I noticed in a similar thread regarding CrossFire, that implementation isn't all the great (especially when compared to SLI)

I was wondering this is true -- and I will have to do have custom profiles for individuals games -- are whether this is just a re-imagining of the putative bagginess of ATI's drivers.

Thanks again.

Regards

 

[LiuKangBakinPie]

Radeon HD 5870 CrossfireX - 55-60A and a 700W PSU minimum
Radeon HD 5870 - 40A and a 500W PSU minimum

Thats for a power hungry system

 

[blanketyblank]

You'll be fine.
In terms of scaling 6xxx series CF> SLI> 5xxx series. You should still get pretty good scaling though depending on your resolution and game. I think it's something like 50- to about 100%.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_5870_CrossFire/11.html

 

[3DVagabond]

You'll be fine.
In terms of scaling 6xxx series CF> SLI> 5xxx series. You should still get pretty good scaling though depending on your resolution and game. I think it's something like 50- to about 100%.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_5870_CrossFire/11.html

I haven't seen any reviews of 5800 crossfire since the 6000 series came out. Do we know if 5800 crossfire scaling was improved with current drivers? Or, is improved crossfire on the 6000 cards all down to hardware improvements?

 

[Skurge]

I haven't seen any reviews of 5800 crossfire since the 6000 series came out. Do we know if 5800 crossfire scaling was improved with current drivers? Or, is improved crossfire on the 6000 cards all down to hardware improvements?

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-560-ti-gf114,2845-13.html

Apparantly its improved too. Crossfire 6870s were usually faster than 5870s

 

[3DVagabond]

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-gtx-560-ti-gf114,2845-13.html

Apparantly its improved too. Crossfire 6870s were usually faster than 5870s

Thanks for linking that. I'm not surprised. I thought that drivers would be the most responsible for the improvement. I'm also not Surprised nobody is shouting it from the rooftops. AMD wants you to buy their new cards, and nVidia doesn't want you to hear anything positive about AMD. This is where review sites need to inform us. People with 5850/70 who want to upgrade should seriously look at crossfire with prices for these cards as low as they are now. They'll all be gone soon enough and the opportunity will be gone.

 

[Skurge]

Thanks for linking that. I'm not surprised. I thought that drivers would be the most responsible for the improvement. I'm also not Surprised nobody is shouting it from the rooftops. AMD wants you to buy their new cards, and nVidia doesn't want you to hear anything positive about AMD. This is where review sites need to inform us. People with 5850/70 who want to upgrade should seriously look at crossfire with prices for these cards as low as they are now. They'll all be gone soon enough and the opportunity will be gone.

Yeah, problem is most review sites just use scores from older reviews and don't retest older cards with new drivers, especially SLI/crossfire. Maybe some of the members here can post their 5800 crossfire results with older and newer drivers.

 

[darckhart]

Additionally, I noticed in a similar thread regarding CrossFire, that implementation isn't all the great (especially when compared to SLI)

I was wondering this is true -- and I will have to do have custom profiles for individuals games -- are whether this is just a re-imagining of the putative bagginess of ATI's drivers.

Thanks again.

Regards

i had 5850 CF at 5870 speeds. you will notice dramatic gains. profiles get updated every time they release the drivers/hotfixes. you can dl the new ones from their site. it's a few hundred kilobytes. no biggie. most popular titles will not have any major issues anymore. there are a few nagging bugs that continue to affect some people (bfbc2, etc)

if you are keen on tweaking your cards and settings, i would highly recommend RBE and radeonpro.

 

[apoppin]

Yeah, problem is most review sites just use scores from older reviews and don't retest older cards with new drivers, especially SLI/crossfire. Maybe some of the members here can post their 5800 crossfire results with older and newer drivers.

i just finished my evaluation of SLI vs CF with Cat 11.1a vs GF 266.58 - i ran HD 6870 CF vs HD 5870 CF and there has been improvement with both configurations; probably a bit more with 6870 CF. 6870 CF has not generally caught up to 5870 CF except for certain games where it surpasses it like in HAWX 2.

i also tested GTX580/570/560/460 & GTS 450 plus GTX 560 SLI, 460 SLI and 450 SLI plus HD 6970, 6950, 6870, 5870). So we are getting low/mid-range GPUs in Multi-GPU vs. powerful single cards and we will be able to see scaling. *Both* SLI and CF have very very good scaling!

There was going to be more testing but my X58 MB literally melted the PSU's 12V connectors and it went back to Gigabyte on Friday for RMA

The CF vs SLI Excel charts are done - i have to make the images and write the review; as soon as my SSD vs HDD eval is done tonight, i will start working on it. Expect it this week as soon as i finish evaluating my new Diamond USB sound card for a later review next weekend.

 

[orbster556]

Thanks again to everyone for the comments and insight.

I really do appreciate it.