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Crossfire 5870 or 5970 single card?

Jay85

Jay85

Jay85

Soldato
Joined
22 May 2010
Posts
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Minibotpc
I've been thinking about crossfiring since i got my new board and i honestly don't know whether to invest in another 5870 for £150's or sell my current 5870 and buy a 5970 and save myself the hassle of crossfire bridges and any other problems that crossfiring brings...

Obviously having 2 cards together will bring my heat but is it worth doing?


What would be the best advice at the moment?


Also does it matter if your first card is a revision 1 card and the second card being a revision 2 with a revised cooler i.e. the XFX one that overclockers sell right now.
 
Get another 5870, maybe second hand even. 5970 still are a Crossfire setup, just on one pcb.

Edit: board revisions don't matter
 
Infact its the opposite.

Its cheaper and easier to deal with two xfired 5870 rather than a 5970, as the 5970 has slower clocks, and would have to be ovclocked to reach the level of 2 5870's.
 
xfx' 5870's i've seen cheaper than that, so tempted to buy one to go with my xfx be 5970.
 
Ah so i was wrong, that's good to know! I've been looking at 5970 prices and they're still in the £420+ mark so i guess it's not worth getting one just yet.


Does anyone know of any issues with crossfiring 5870's that i should know about? I wanna be absolutely clear on what's ahead before i do any purchasing so theres minimal fault/human error.
 
HNR1 said:
xfx' 5870's i've seen cheaper than that, so tempted to buy one to go with my xfx be 5970.
Click to expand...

There cheaper for a good reason, their reliability is diabolical (there was a thread on this a day or so ago failure rates on XFX 5870 were as high as 10%) and couple that with all the complaints about their RMA service I would pay a bit more and find another brand (Sapphire or Gigabyte for example)
 
I thought it was too good to be true...

The next ones up are about £200-£250 in which i might aswel sell my 5870 and buy 2 6950 cards!
 
i've got 5870 xfire.

just make sure you have a long enough bridge (they don't always come with the cards), enough room to fit both cards in (length and space between slots) and your mobo won't be at 1*pcie when xfired.

oh and you will need half decent case cooling. it'll get warm in there.

performance increase is very good, tho cost wise you should look at 6950's to compare.

jobe
 
I know my mobo runs at x8x8 speed when in crossfire which is fine but a nice increase would be nice as i heard x8 and x16 isn't as bad as it sounds performance wise. I have a fast RPM fan blowing over the GPU's so shouldn't be a problem and also a large 200mm exhaust fan at the top.

I doubt OCUK will be stocking any other 5870's anytime soon though.
 
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