2x 4850x2 or 4870x2

[Slayer32163]

i have an nvidia gtx 260 and i hate it the drivers are all messed up and i cant play many games with high fps. i was wondering if i should get a 4870x2 or 2 4850x2's


amd phenom II x4 920
asus m3a78-t
nvidia gtx 260
bfg 550w soon to be corsair 1000w
160gb hdd
4gig ddr2 1066


i have windows xp 64bit

 

[gkay09]

NO for 2x 4850X2 - Reason -> It is actually Quad-fire, which will have even more greater driver issues, and wont scale well at all...
Even a 4870X2 is not a good option if you don't have a very high resolution monitor...
I would say you clear out the driver issues, as the GTX 260 is a very good card and wait till max end-of-year as ATI will be launching the DirectX 11 cards within that...And then spend money on that...

And @ what resolution do you game???

 

[jinu]

single card is better. there are articles and benchmarks of the fps dropping instead of increasing

 

[megamanx00]

1st off, why did you get a crossfire board and then get an nVidia card

2nd Windows XP 64-bit is a bit finicky. Yeah you will have driver issues, but you're gonna have more issues going with crossfire. Also, the XP drivers don't support quad crossfire.

3rd depending on the game it could simply be your CPU that is the limiting factor. You say many games at high res, but I don't know if you're trying to play Crysis at 1920x1200 with 8AA and 16AF, or Quake 3 at 1440x900.

 

[megamanx00]

Well, now that you listed your resolution, yeah you may as well go with two 4890s. A Configuration of two 4890s and another card to drive two seperate displays is possible. Since the 4890 is a dual slot card that white PCI-E slot will be covered up leaving you able to use those PCI slots. It looks though like your board can run the black slot in 4x mode, and the white and blue in 8x mode (but I don't know if that's the case). If that is the case then you can run a 4890 in the blue slot, one in the white slot, and then put a card with a single slot cooler in the black slot. Of course, you should make sure that's the case for if you crossfire the 4890s with an 8x slot and a 4x slot there will be a drop in performance compared to using two 8x slots.

 

[JofaMang]

I have been using xp64 for the past 4 months or so, and I have had zero driver issues, from the 4870 512 I built it with, to the 4870x2 I put in recently: everything has run as it should, with pretty much a plug and play experience. I can't speak for nvidia, as I haven't owned an Nvidia card since my 5200fx like, 5-6 (?) years ago, heh. And that was crap (admittedly a budget purchase). I haven't tried using CF (second PCI-E runs at x4) but the 4870x2 is running great with its internal CF.

 

[Slayer32163]

i play at 1900x1080 and explain to me how, in any way my processor could be limiting my gtx 260? The reason i bought the motherboard is because some dumb *** put the price tag for only 50$ new, when on newegg a open box is 100$. I cant play bioshock at any detail or resolution because it gets down to 1 fps. i can barely play crysis at low with res at 1900x1080. Farcry 2, fear 2, bioshock, gta4, saints row 2. None play well at all. I will try ati for the first time because i have 3 ati cards and my best i bought is not working for me. i have reinstalled the drivers and rma,ed the card but no luck. Simple question. 2 4850x2 or 1 4870x2

 

[smartel7070]

The GTX260 is a more than capable card and you should get much more fps in the games you mentioned. (In Bioshock you should be getting over 60fps) Your rig has serious driver issues. Have you tried to reinstall Windows ? Can you buy a copy of Vista64 ?

If you really wanna buy another video card IMO it's a waste of money. I would try and get your present rig working first, either by reinstalling Windows or buying an OEM copy of Vista64 Home Ed.

 

[Slayer32163]

i have reinstalled windows and i have flashed bios and pretty much done everything else to fix. I have tried vista ultimate 64 but many of my games(codWAW being the worst) would crash simply after minutes of gameplay. could it have anything to do with the drivers. I have thought it was the motherboard for a while.

 

[Slayer32163]

Alright. i have not yet mentioned this. When i install the drivers, at the end of the driver installation, the screen will get all weird and lines and red dots will go all over the screen. I also have no post from the video card at startup as i had wit an early 9500gt i took out.