Do i need to crossfire?

crycec

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well ive got the following specs with a 20" monitor with a max resolution of 1600x900...

Phenom II X4 3.4ghz
2x 2GB Kingston DDR-3 1066
Asus 870 extreme 3
ATI HD 5770
PSU of 700watts
1 Tb HDD

Do i need to crossfire?

I play games like civ 5, Modernwarfare 2, stalker, medal of honor, dragon age and stuff like that and I wanna play them at my max resolution and max AA & AF... thanks
 
If you want to max AA & AF, more power may be required with some of those games.

Personally, I'd rather play with a single 5850 over a 5770 CF setup, even though the CF setup has more power by a little. CF setups have a lot of little problems, that can be annoying. Civ 5 required me to disable CF for example.

I guess the real question is this: "Do you get the performance you want now?"

If the answer is yes, then leave your system alone. If the answer is no, then perhaps another 5770 would do the trick or you could sell it and get a 5850 or 470 in it's place.
 
I prefer single card solution, but if your aren't satisfied with your system then you can add another HD5770 to get some performance increase, or you can sell your HD5770 and save a little bit to get HD5850, just like bystander said above...
 

Martin 71

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I totally agree. I had a 5770 and I went to a 5850, and it was easily a 75% jump over the old card.
 

kaspro

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I dont think its 75% more from 5770 to 5850

perfrel_1920.gif


it shows here its less than 50%, and i think if you add another 5770 and gave you more than 50% performance (which i was asking about)
i think the 5770 crossfire will be more powerfull as it also shows here in this review
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-5770,2446-5.html

But i dont know about the problems the people are talking about with crossfire for they have to disable it in some games...which is so wierd and meaningless, and i dont know if there's a way to resolve this?!!
 
Not all games are get benefit from dual cards (SLI/CF).
Besides, the OP monitor is just 1600x900, so a single HD5770 is more than enough to handle most of games with decent/high setting. The OP can go with single HD5850 so he can maxed out every games...
 


Some games experience some minor glitches from CF. Civ 5, as an example, causes occational areas to become blocking and sort of flicker (like a 1 inch area on the monitor). Elven Legacy caused the water areas to flicker. Dawn of War 2, doesn't take advantage of SLI/CF at all. When I play WoW, I like to play in windowed mode so I can monitor vent and read wowwiki guides, and CF/SLI doesn't work in windowed mode.

That's 4 games that I own and play that CF is not an advantage to me. That's a good chunk of my games.
 

Martin 71

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well, I went from bfbc2 45 fps to about 74... I'm not great at math, but I think that's about a 70% gain.
 

mother242

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If your playing those type of games only then the 5770 should be fine, i have a single 5850 and the only thing it struggles with (besides crysis of course) is GTA 4 with every thing maxed out. so if you got the cash get a 5850 you psu will handle it fine, but avoid crossfire if you can because it can make quite a few problems
 

Martin 71

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Gta 4 is an awful port though... don't blame your rig, blame the game.
 
I think it just comes down to whether the games you're playing are giving the performance you want or not...? Can you max settings? Is that important to you?

A second 5770 would help alot, in my tests it's from around 65-90% improvement depending on the game or benchmark by adding crossfire.

I wouldn't worry much about games not supporting it... I've been playing a lot of games with crossfire 5850s and I really haven't had many issues except for SC2 beta, but the official release is fine.

A second 5770 would also give you the power to upgrade to a 1080p monitor.