X-fire versus running 2 cards independently

[mike2fix]

I want to run 2 LCD's using 2 5850's, if I set them up X-fire are only the 2 ports on the primary card active?

My thought is which would give better performance, running the 2 cards independently with a monitor on each card or running the 2 in X-fire and hooking up both LCD's to the primary card.

 

[veri745]

Depends on whether or not you want both monitors displaying the same 3D program. If you're running two independent monitors (i.e. just for normal desktop usage), it probably won't matter. If you're trying to play a game across both the monitors, you need to use CF.

What do you need two cards for? Unless you're trying to game at 2560x1600x2 with eyefinity, one card should be sufficient.

 

[mike2fix]

I don't really need 2 cards, but I got one of the 5870's for my main box recently and have an extra 5850 so I thought I would put it in another machine that already has one of the same 5850's in it. My SO does web developement and uses Dreamweaver, Photoshop, etc and thought the extra 5850 might help, her CS 5 is a resource hog.

 

[veri745]

I highly doubt CF will help with running CS5. It shouldn't negatively affect the system or really even power consumption, since the slave CF card goes into a super low power state.

I'd probably sell it if you don't game on that system, though.