Advice on 5870 CF

[nate_2011]

Guys/Girls,

Basic question on weather or not it would be worth adding a second XFX 5870 to my build. I have a work colleage who has recently upgraded his work desktop GPU (used for design) and is using his XFX 5870 as a book end!! He said i can have it for £50 (About $79 USD) a bit of a steal but will it be beneficial or just cause no end of crossfire problems?

I only ask as currently my machine seems to handle gaming pretty well almost always maxed out on graphics settings @ 1080 resolution (Im using a 24" HDTV). My current machine spec is

System specs are
AMD Phenom II X4 B60 3.3Ghz - OC'd to 3.7Ghz Arctic
4GB corsair memory
ATI Radion 5870 GPU - OC'd to Core 900MHz Memory 1300MHz
2x Seagate 500GB HDDs
Lian Li V1000 case
ASUS M4A88T-V EVO Motherboard 2x PCIe 2.0 x16 (In CF Blue @ x16 Grey @ x4)

I currently have a Jeantech 750w PSU but if i do get a second card i will get a better make 800w.


I play most current games Deus Ex HR, Dead Island, Crysis 2, RAGE, F1 2011, and a few older ones. And certainly plan on Batman AC and Star Wars: TOR.

Cheers people!

 

[wa1]

1st, if you run dual card setup it will be x16 and x4 speed, which is not good.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131668
That is your board, right?

2nd, http://www.jeantech.com/power.htm
I can't find any relevant info about your PSU, I doubt about the quality, so I won't run dual cards on that PSU.

3rd, $79 USD? The hell, get that card, whether you'll using it or not is your choice, but for that price I will surely get that card...
You always can use it for CF setup or for a spare card in case your current card is in trouble.

 

[nate_2011]

1st, if you run dual card setup it will be x16 and x4 speed, which is not good.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131668
That is your board, right?

2nd, http://www.jeantech.com/power.htm
I can't find any relevant info about your PSU, I doubt about the quality, so I won't run dual cards on that PSU.

3rd, $79 USD? The hell, get that card, whether you'll using it or not is your choice, but for that price I will surely get that card...
You always can use it for CF setup or for a spare card in case your current card is in trouble.

Hey mate, To your 1st point yeah thats my board, was told i should still get good scaleing @ 16x and 4x together so im not too put down by that.

To your 2nd point forget the PSU it will 100% be replaced if i decide to use this card, you wont find any info on it as Jeantech went bust a few years back (Were a reputable company at one point). Will get a nice 800w Corsair

And your 3rd for that price dont worry their is no doubt i will be buying it, in actual fact its sat right here now he just dropped it off. Im just trying to figure how worth it wold be cross fired into my rig. XFX to lifetime warrenty so if the card goes bust i know they have very good customer feed back reviews! I am also building a rig for my dad with a Core 2 Duo E7600 but it will be used for office work and music production so a top notch sound card will be required. I was gonna give it a 5770 think a 5870 would be a sad waste.

 

[nate_2011]

From all the information above i guess the real question is for my machine spec and the spare XFX 5870 i now have, will i gain anything worth mentioning by running Xfire 5870's @ x16 and x4 on PCIe 2.0

or......... is it possible to force the x16 and x4 PCIe lanes to both run at x8 in Xfire....

Hopefully someone with good detailed knowledge of GPUs will have the answer.

I could always put it in my dads new build but i dont think a 5870 will much improve the graphics of Solitair

 

[Djentleman]

There isn't much of a performance difference between x16 x8 x4 configurations...
Check this out.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSfifE2Domo

 

[Djentleman]

There isn't much of a performance difference between x16 x8 x4 configurations...
Check this out.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSfifE2Domo

 

[Djentleman]

Sorry about the double post.^
It was unintentional.