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2x 4870x2 in Crossfire?

Benny

Benny

Benny

Associate
Joined
30 Nov 2005
Posts
513
Location
London
Just bought ARMA 2 and it plays pretty bobbins on the below spec. Now I have been chewing over the idea of buying another 4870x2 and having a crack at crossfring them. Is this a wise idea or am I just asking for trouble?

Now I know the motherboard could do with an upgrade as the other PCI-E channel is ony going to run at x4. I'm just asking what peoples opinion would be having 2 of these power hungry cards running in Crossfire. Guess another PSU would be required too. BUT just for arguments sake.......would it be worth it? Would I see a justifiable amount of performance?

Lets say it is, do both cards have to be identicle or could I opt for the cheaper Asus 4870x2?

ASUS P5B Deluxe WiFi AP
Hiper 730 Watt Type M ATX v2.2
Intel Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83mhz 1333 FSB
ATI Powercolor 4870x2 2gb
Kingston HyperX 8GB (4x2GB) DDR2 PC2-8500C5
150gb WD Raptor X
150gb WD Velociraptor
X-Fi Fatal1ty FPS Edition
Vista Business 64bit
Dell Ultrasharp 2407WFP 24"

Cheers

B
 
Well you would need 2 slots that both keep the x16, no doubt.

Although its abit tricky i cant really see 4 cards doing much good.
I know someone who CF'd a 4870 with his current 4870X2, which actually decreased his performance.

They should both be clocked to the same speeds if you do go through it, or else you'll be asking for microstutter :)

underclocking/overclocking em will be fine.
 
You can add another brand of board, no restrictions there. Unless you game at a res like 2500x1600 I'm not certain that you'll get a decent enough return for your cash.
 
I'd say any game that runs poorly on a 4870x2 won't show much signs of improvement with another as it's probably poorly optimized, or just doesn't like Crossfire/multi-GPU.
 
The 4x lane will be a severe bottleneck. 8x8 might be ok but 16x4 would be a waste of time. Clock ur quad to at least 3.5GHz and install Winodws 7 RC and u should get a big boost over current speed and Vista which seems to do worse than W7 and XP in ArmA II.
 
I wasn't aware you could use a different card either way it is an expensive experiment if it doesn't actually give you an increase in performance.

I'm happy with the cards performace in most of the games I play but I have another game which doesn't run too well. Men of War, love the game but performance wise it is up and down. Stuff like COD4-5 solid as a rock 90+ FPS at 1920x1200 all bells and whistles on full whack. Left 4 Dead level dependent but I would say an average of about 130-150 FPS. NO AA dont need it at 1920x1200 IMO. BF2142 again solid as a rock, maybe not always so on 64 player servers but that is expected.

....


B
 
As has been siad above, your mobo would need 2x16 lanes - your PSU would need upgrading to a good quality 1000W or higher - Your CPU would need a good overclock so as not to bottleneck.

The other thing is the HEAT - even watercooled you would want them both on a separate loop to your CPU - on air you would be cooked and deaf within an hour :P

Two different cards is fine

You may have to play about with your PCIE settings in BIOS and you would see little, if any increase at lower res. These need 1920x1200 and above to show their potential - they also eat AA and AF with no performance hit.

:D
 
Dont do it! Ati's drivers are good for the 4870x2 on its own but when I added another a few months back it caused all manner of problems including decreased performance and unstable games, had to return it ask ocuk...lol
Yeah a new psu would be needed as you would be running very close to the max watts.
Clock that quad up to 3.6-4 and it should add a bit more to your current card, but there are very little increases seen with 4gpu's
 
im not sure arma 2 supports crossfire at moment

edit : i wouldn't waste so much on 1 game, it has loads of bugs and i would just wait for more patches. its not hardware problem its games problem badly coded etc etc
 
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leave it, it won't be worth the extra cash.

overclock your cpu in the meantine, it's begging for it.
 
Yeah I think your right, confirmed what I was thinking really. I knew my board wouldn't really be up to much for x-fire. So another board new PSU stacking up to be quite a handsome sum. Think I will leave it. As for ARMA2 it is a darn fine game. Does need some patching though. Think will just save my beans and do a full upgrade next year.

Thanks for the input guys

B
 
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