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Powercolor 5850 xfire with Sapphire 5850 Extreme

wozie said:
here,s link to a very good comparison for all cards save lot hassle looking at dif sites. ;)

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU11/206
Click to expand...

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/303?vs=292

Wow according to that benchamrk CF 5850 is a lot faster than a single 6970... hmmm Im starting to lean towards getting another 5850. A few probles Ive read about is the extra heat generated (my 5850 runs at 51C with 40% fan at peak so I should be OK) and driver issues where games dont supprt CrossFire until a patch is released a few weeks later or AMD release drivers.

What do you guys think? Shall I go for another 5850 or not?
 
Read this in another forum: My suggestion is to keep the single 5850 for a few months until the Southern Islands AMD gpus come out. No point upgrading right now as there's going to be a massive process shrink in 2 months that will basically blow away current GPUs. The top single-gpu Southern Islands card is slated to be in the same range as the 6990 but without CFX issues, uses less power and less heat, and costs about the same as the 580 currently.

I agree with this but personally I'll be getting this 5850 for £70 as I'm selling some stuff. Would running that Unigine Heaven benchmark be a realistic pointer to how BC3 will run on my current rig as it uses full tessellation? Also im never gonna play at resolutions higher than 1080 as my monitor doesnt go higher. I can currently play bad company 2 at this resolution with everything maxed and it runs at around 65fps so surley bc3 will need more gpu power... unless its very well optimised.

EDIT: Where is the Chase benchmark in Bad Company 2? I cant find it in the menus

EDIT2: Ran Unigene Heaven and here are my results:

3DMark11 results: http://3dmark.com/3dm11/1411155

Judging by them results BC3 wont run as I planned :(
 
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Running BF3 is the only way to see how BF3 will run. Benchmarks are a reasonable indication of system performance but how well BF3 will take advantage of tech remains to be seen. That said running their current Frostbite engine in BFBC2 will give as good an idea as anything.
 
stuartw_b said:
Running BF3 is the only way to see how BF3 will run. Benchmarks are a reasonable indication of system performance but how well BF3 will take advantage of tech remains to be seen. That said running their current Frostbite engine in BFBC2 will give as good an idea as anything.
Click to expand...

I noticed your 5850 is running a lot faster than stock, did you flash its BIOS?

Take a look here: http://3dmark.com/compare/3dm11/1215849/3dm11/1411155

That other person has same spec as me just OCed the i5 750 and 5850 and he got almost 2000 more 3DMark11 marks than me... hmmm might try overclocking. I've got till modnight to make a decision as the 5850 goes back up to £125 tomorrow
 
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After much deliberation I've decided to order one :) Will post results of benchmarks once its installed. Quick question should I run drive sweeper and install the latest ATI drivers again or will I be ok?
 
The 5850 I just bought will come with a PSU power cable, but I've also bought OcUK Value PCI Express 6-Pin to 4-Pin Power Adaptor for PCI-E Graphics Cards.. thats all I need to power it right?
 
elrasho said:
The 5850 I just bought will come with a PSU power cable, but I've also bought OcUK Value PCI Express 6-Pin to 4-Pin Power Adaptor for PCI-E Graphics Cards.. thats all I need to power it right?
Click to expand...

Bump... here's a good side view of my PSU and shows all the cables that came with it: http://www.legitreviews.com/article/371/2/. I really hope I have everything covered, want to to do some extensive benchmarking tonight.

The way Im looking at this is that I currently have two of those 4 pin to 6 pin cables going from my psu to my 5850. In order to power the second 5850 I will need 2 more 4 pin to 6 pin cables.... so on my psu I'll be using a total of four 4 pin connections right?... my psu also has two 6 pin connections could I not use two 6 pin to 6 pin connections? or are those for something else?

So the setup should look like this:

Where the number 4 means a 4-pin molex and 6 is 6 pin molex

I had a very bad experience with a PSU a few years ago hence all the questions, I want to make sure theres enough power going to the 5850s.

EDIT: Looks like the Sapphire 5850 xtreme comes with two 6pin PCI-E cables anyway so I should be good to go: http://www.bjorn3d.com/read.php?cID=2037&pageID=10442

I'll post the results from 3Dmark11. Unigin Heave, AvP Benchmark Tool, Dirt 3 Benchmark Tool, Bad Company 2 (don't know if it has a benchmark tool) and Crysis 2.

EDIT: This is the correct setup I believe:
powerfz.jpg
 
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DRUM ROLL PLEASE......

Installed the Sapphire 5850 Xtreme easily, the hardest part was the cable management afterwards. The setup is exactly like the diagram above.

First off some single 5850 benchmarks:



And now some 5850 Crossfire benchmarks:



The biggest gain was over doubling my Unigine Heaven score :) Also the massive boost in Dirt 3 is impressive. My 3Dmark11 went from P3597 to P6205, I never imagined it would go up that much!

The AvP benchmark kept exiting to Desktop in Crossfire so I dont have a result for that, but Im sure it would have been an improvement. The funny thing is, Bad Company 2 went from averaging around 65fps to 80fps, I was kinda hoping to be playing in the 90s (although it does change through gameplay anything from 75fps to 110fps!).

As for temperature, on load both cards hover around the 51C mark with their fans running at 40% so I've got room for overclocking (not that I need to lol). Overall I'm very happy with the upgrade and can't wait for Battlefield 3 (my new Unigine Heven score gives me confidence I'll be able to play BF3 maxed out at 1650*1050 at over 60fps)

Thanks to everyone for their advice :) and Overclockers for their brilliant service

P.S. Will test power usage under load and idle and report back
 
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