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ATI Crossfire? Or GTX2x5?

linktoinsanity

linktoinsanity

linktoinsanity

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In a few months time, when I have the money I was thinking that I may upgrade my reliable 8800GT to a newer card. The only real question is to what? I was thinking two ATI 4870s to make use of my Crossfire Capable motherboard and was wondering whether Crossfire is as good as it's made out to be, or whether I would be better off just buying a single Nvidia GTX285/295?

I had an ATI card in my pc many moons ago (AGP 9700 Pro) and had lots of driver problems and my work pc has 2x 2600HD Pro (not in crossfire) which also has lots of problems relating to the graphics, so anyone who can put these fears to rest would be appreciated too. Also I hear some games have problems with ATI, is this true?

Thanks,
Matt.
 
At the moment I would go for the 4870 X2 card - no crossfire needed. But as you've said "in a few months you'll have the money..." then it's deffo a case of wait and see as the new ATI releases are due in April (although it's looking like the upcoming 4890 will be a higher clocked 4870 with few, if any, architecture mods - there's loads about this in other threads).

As far as drivers go I've not had any probs other than in Far Cry 2 where ATI released a hotfix driver specifically for that game. Other games (Crysis) are 'optimised' for nVidia but tbh at the level of card you're looking at I doubt there'll be any probs at all - Crysis runs just fine on my single 4870 rig running latest driver catalyst v9.2.:)
 
I'm in the same situation as you, xfire mobo with a 8800GT in it. I think I will wait until next month and see what the new cards are like, and if there not that much better and the price of the current 4870 will drops, ill get a 4870 and another in the future.
 
People in general will have driver problems, it's just one of those things that happens. I've had driver problems with everything at some point in time. A lot of the time it's down to user error, no offense intended, but user error doesn't mean you don't know what you're doing, just that you've made a mistake somewhere along installing windows and its drivers, I've had driver problems due to user error on a few occasions.

Crossfire is very good, and its scaling is getting constantly better.

You will get a lot more performance with crossfire 4870s or a 4870X2 than a GTX285 and the GTX295 isn't even worth looking at in my opinion due to its very high price premium for barely any increase in performance.

One of my moans about the GTX295

There's different reasons as to why you might choose 2 4870s in crossfire or 1 4870s X2.

With 2 4870s you have the option of running up to 4 screens as standard, whereas on the X2 you can only run 2 screens on the standard models.

The 4870X2 should consume less power than 2 4870s though, and takes up a lot less space. You also need more power connectors for crossfire 4870s. 4 versus 2 cables.

The actual performance is pretty much the same, so it's about how much it will cost and what your prefer to be able to do with your PC in terms of display out puts and the power consumption and so on.
 
Just been looking at the 4870X2s (thanks for the info, I hadn't even thought about them) but two 4870s would be cheaper and would make use out of my current motherboard's (also DFI Timmy) Crossfire capability. I would also like to move over to ATI anyway this time, being cheaper and supported in tandom on my motherboard. Also as much as I like Nvidia, I'd prefer to have experience with both. And you're right, kylew the only GTX I'd probably look at would be a GTX285 as I don't think the GTX295 performance warrants the price either.
 
Mattf121 said:
Just been looking at the 4870X2s (thanks for the info, I hadn't even thought about them) but two 4870s would be cheaper and would make use out of my current motherboard's (also DFI Timmy) Crossfire capability. I would also like to move over to ATI anyway this time, being cheaper and supported in tandom on my motherboard. Also as much as I like Nvidia, I'd prefer to have experience with both. And you're right, kylew the only GTX I'd probably look at would be a GTX285 as I don't think the GTX295 performance warrants the price either.
Click to expand...

I would say that the GTX285 doesn't warrant its price either, considering 4870X2s or 2 4870 1GBs are very close to them in price.

2 4870s are £20 more than a single cheapest GTX285 on OCUK's shop which is very poor pricing considering how much faster 2 4870s are over a single GTX285. It's quite a large amount, coming up to 80-90% faster in games that scale very well.
 
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Surely the X2's never did live up to the promise of transparent multicore use?
Ie they are still xfire, and only work in games written specifically for them?
 
It's not so much the games have to written specially, as the drivers have to written specially. Look at any reviews of multi-gpu graphics cards and you'll see big improvements from multi-gpu in 99% of modern games.
 
reflux said:
It's not so much the games have to written specially, as the drivers have to written specially. Look at any reviews of multi-gpu graphics cards and you'll see big improvements from multi-gpu in 99% of modern games.
Click to expand...


Which is why I'm always such a negative ninny about multiGPU.......all the modern games run just fine for me as it is, the only things I have that need more horsepower are ancient.....FS2004, MSTS, that sort of thing. But even stuff like Rfactor, GTR2, Race07 doesn't work with xfire or sli. That's why I am miffed with ATI, I believed their hype about transparent multicore operation, and felt let down to find it's just good old only-works-on-the-very-latest-games Xfire.
Same with multicore CPU's.....if current trends continue (and there is currently a working group trying to ensure they do not), we'll be sitting with hexidecicore chips in a couple of years.....but it'll still be one 2.3GHz core working and 15 picking their noses.
 
Multi-GPU will be good if they can ever implement a hardware solution which doesn't rely on driver patching/profiling.

Until then I'd rather stick to a single GPU solution, it's just a shame that AMD seem to have thrown in the towel in that department so cards like GTX280/GTX285 remain expensive.
 
mmj_uk said:
Multi-GPU will be good if they can ever implement a hardware solution which doesn't rely on driver patching/profiling, until then I'd rather stick to a single GPU solution it's just a shame AMD seem to have thrown in the towel in that department so cards like GTX280/GTX285 remain expensive.
Click to expand...

You may as well say.
GPU will be good if they can ever implement a hardware solution which doesn't rely on driver patching until then I'd rather stick to a Games Console.

Sound Chip/card will be good if they can ever implement a hardware solution which doesn't rely on driver patching until then I'd rather stick to a Games Console.

A PC will be good if they can ever implement a hardware solution which doesn't rely on driver patching until then I'd rather stick to a Games Console.

Software will be good if they can ever implement a hardware solution which doesn't rely on driver patching until then I'd rather stick to a Games Console.

Windows will be good if they can ever implement a hardware solution which doesn't rely on driver patching until then I'd rather stick to a Games Console.

I do see your point, its just that its really not any worse than other things on the PC.
 
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Another question actually, rather than starting a new thread, I thought I'd revive this one. What Nvidia card does an ATI 2600HD Pro compare to? I have two in my work machine, which aren't too good with performance, so I'm just checking quite how old the things are. If they're really old then I probably have nothing to fear with the 4870, but as I'm not as confident with ATI as Nvidia (ignorance to ATI rather than brand loyalty to Nvidia) I'm not sure and want to check with someone who knows...
 
I'm surprised nobody has asked you what resolution you are intending to game at? Recommending a 4870x2 for someone that wants to play games at 1280x1024 would be a bit silly for example.

As for the ATi 2600 pro, they were never the best of cards and are probably comparable to a Nvidia 8600GT ie pretty rank. ;)
 
coupe69 said:
I'm surprised nobody has asked you what resolution you are intending to game at? Recommending a 4870x2 for someone that wants to play games at 1280x1024 would be a bit silly for example.

As for the ATi 2600 pro, they were never the best of cards and are probably comparable to a Nvidia 8600GT ie pretty rank. ;)
Click to expand...

Thanks for that reflux and coupe. 1280x1024 at the moment, but I'll get new monitors in due course. Probably wont bother with a 4870X2 and it'll be a coupole of months before I go for a 4870.

As I said though, thanks for the input guys.
 
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