Can a second 5970 fit on my motherboard?

[Schizo]

Not for 2560 res with the eye candy cranked up.

thanks for that bit of info.

just thought the 5970 was a monster in terms of high res and high settings but it does not seem it is if you need 2 for higher res.

thanks for that.

 

[LauraJ]

Aaah! Now I'm not sure what to do now, especially as the card is on the delivery truck. Some people and sites say 5970 crossfire is better and a few say this 5870 trifire is. Would the crossfire be something that would be approved on with future drivers, games etc. supporting the two cards?

Thanks Kribby2006, hopefully whatever happens, whether now if we do keep this card or go onto trifire, octfire or whatever he will be!

 

[bhavv]

WTB LauraJ as wife.

You can haz kitchen, pots and pans, I can haz quadfired 5970s???

Awesome

Oh, ok, I'll also throw in a hoover plus a featherduster too. Still not enough? Window cleaning fluid too then?

 

[LauraJ]

WTB LauraJ as wife.

You can haz kitchen, pots and pans, I can haz quadfired 5970s???

Awesome

Oh, ok, I'll also throw in a hoover plus a featherduster too. Still not enough? Window cleaning fluid too then?

LOL! Sadly I've never been a fan of being indoors house cleaning all day, I'm more of the outdoors type of person. Such as when I go out jogging at 6am every day. Listening to an audio book is the key!!

 

[skotish|]

LOL! Sadly I've never been a fan of being indoors house cleaning all day, I'm more of the outdoors type of person. Such as when I go out jogging at 6am every day. Listening to an audio book is the key!!

This thread has been a breath of fresh air in this forum thanks

 

[Phoenixdancer]

Aaah! Now I'm not sure what to do now, especially as the card is on the delivery truck. Some people and sites say 5970 crossfire is better and a few say this 5870 trifire is. Would the crossfire be something that would be approved on with future drivers, games etc. supporting the two cards?

Thanks Kribby2006, hopefully whatever happens, whether now if we do keep this card or go onto trifire, octfire or whatever he will be!

when you have 2 5970's they suffer from MASSIVE micro stutter, where a game running at 45 fps looks like its running at 20fps. so hence un playable.

trifire doesnt do this as bad.

 

[LauraJ]

This thread has been a breath of fresh air in this forum thanks

No problems, I aim to please!

when you have 2 5970's they suffer from MASSIVE micro stutter, where a game running at 45 fps looks like its running at 20fps. so hence un playable.

trifire doesnt do this as bad.

Reading up it says that Window's still doesn't allow more than 3 GPU's to render at any given point of time. This special surprise seems to be much harder then I thought. Spending the near £700 was the easy bit though... Would this improve in the future? Unless he has all of the speed checking stuff out (which he doesn't) would he even truly notice the difference?

 

[Duff-Man]

It's constantly changing in terms of driver performance. It is true that you get diminishing returns as you add more GPUs into the mix, but a dual-5970 "quad-fire" setup is still extremely powerful, whatever you way look at it. Given that you have the card I would say just let him try it out and see what he thinks. If he wants to try a "tri-fire" setup instead (5870+5970), then you can always send the 5970 back. I'm sure it will be okay though.

You will always get 101 different opinions on these things. There is rarely a straightforward answer.

 

[LauraJ]

Thanks Duff-Man. As you know I'm not extremely computer literate, and after reading a ton of messages on the topic in various sites and forums, there doesn't seem to be a definitive winner out of the two. Some are saying that because of the 5970 being essentially 2x5870's underclocked a trifire is better, but some say that it's still better in the long run to have the 5970 crossfire because it has four cores....

And I can't seem to find one site that has a review on whether a 5970+5870 or 5970+5970 is better.

If you hear a bang that will be from my head popping. You know there's an old Amstrad in the roof from about 25yrs ago that will still turn on no problems. Now we've got foot long graphics cards, drivers that do or don't seem to work, greater power supplies, cooling issues, and whether certain cards can get you that 1 second faster!

EDIT:

After finding a German site (never a English one to be found), alas it does indeed appear that 3x5870's are indeed better then 2x5970's in most cases ranging from 3-20fps. So I don't know what to do now, I guess hat and see what he says. If we were to change and buy a 5870 instead, which appear to be a lot cheaper then the 5970's (even though they have the same ammount of MB's) as the one I saw the:

Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5870 2048MB "Eyefinity 6 Edition" GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card

is nearly £100 cheaper then the Sapphire ATI Radeon HD 5970 2048MB I bought. So all we would have to do then is place that one in like we would have of the 5970 with the brige connector and it would go into trifire instead of quadfire then?

 

[Duff-Man]

I would go for a regular 1024Mb 5870, if you choose to go down that route.

The 5970 has 2048Mb of memory, but this operates as two lots of 1024 in parallel. That is, each GPU sees and has access to 1024Mb of memory, and everything stored in that memory is mirrored for the other GPU. So, although it's true that the 5970 does indeed have 2048Mb of memory onboard, it in fact only has access to a frame buffer of size 1024Mb (head exploding yet? )

Anyway, if you add the 2048Mb version then the extra memory will not be used, so a 1024Mb version would be sufficient. And yes, although I've never used a tri-fire setup myself, it should just be a case of plonking the 5870 down next to the 5970 and connecting them up with the bridge connector.


One final thing though, just in case you weren't confused enough The 5970 that he has right now is not quite clocked the same as a 5870. So, it is slightly slower than a 5870-crossfire setup (725Mhz vs 850Mhz). By default, if you add another 5870 it will run at the speed of the 5970 (725Mhz) rather than the 5870 speed (850Mhz). Now, you almost certainly can overclock the 5970 to 850Mhz if you like, in which case you would have the same performance as a "true" tri-fire 5870 setup, but I get the impression that's not something he's interested in / comfortable with?

It's never a straightforward thing when it comes to computers I'm afraid I'm honestly not sure what the best thing to do would be. I think I would probably just stick with the card you have ordered and see what he thinks about it... A quad-fire setup will be extremely fast.

 

[LauraJ]

Head exploding yet? It already has! Could I get some cleaning fluid with all of those other stuff bhavv?

In the end though, will there truly be much difference between the two? And wouldn't Windows and that make the 4 cores of the 5970's work better then the 3 of the trifire set up? I'm sure a barely noticeable change would matter to him.

 

[Duff-Man]

All four cores will certainly be used.

I suspect that the quadfire setup will give better performance than the 5970+5870 setup. Every time you ad an additional core, there is some overhead associated with getting them all to work together, but the quadfire setup should still come out ahead in most cases though.

 

[LauraJ]

All four cores will certainly be used.

I suspect that the quadfire setup will give better performance than the 5970+5870 setup. Every time you ad an additional core, there is some overhead associated with getting them all to work together, but the quadfire setup should still come out ahead in most cases though.

Ah fantastic, thanks Duff-Man! In the end it looks like I'll just keep the 5970 one then when it arrives. I'm sure you wouldn't notice the difference in speed between the cards in a blind test anyway. And in the future I'm sure they'll have optimised the four cores more (well they should have anyway! ).

I may have to tell him sooner rather then later about the surprise though, as after talking on the phone not too long ago with him he mentioned about getting another 5970 for his computer in the near future. He got a bit suspicious when I said whether or not he thought about getting a 5870 to do trifire. I think he was thinking how on earth does she know about that stuff?!

Just a darn nuisance that I don't know when I'll be getting the PSU. I should have just got it from Amazon too and just paid the ten or so pounds more it was. I am pretty impressed that after ordering the two on Sunday, I'm getting the graphics card from Amazon on the Tuesday.

 

[Duff-Man]

I may have to tell him sooner rather then later about the surprise though, as after talking on the phone not too long ago with him he mentioned about getting another 5970 for his computer in the near future. He got a bit suspicious when I said whether or not he thought about getting a 5870 to do trifire. I think he was thinking how on earth does she know about that stuff?!

Ha! I'll bet... He's probably sat at his desk wondering what the hell is going on! Always good to throw the odd head**** at people

At least you know now what upgrade path he was thinking about taking, and that you made the right (same) choice.

Regarding the PSU, if you don't get a delivery confirmation by the end of tomorrow, I would cancel the order. Besides... That power supply can be found for around £223 from a couple of places. I can't say where (it's against the forum rules), but on a completely unrelated note, google product search is your friend All these places will do reliable next-day delivery.

 

[LauraJ]

Ha! I'll bet... He's probably sat at his desk wondering what the hell is going on! Always good to throw the odd head**** at people

At least you know now what upgrade path he was thinking about taking, and that you made the right (same) choice.

Regarding the PSU, if you don't get a delivery confirmation by the end of tomorrow, I would cancel the order. Besides... That power supply can be found for around £223 from a couple of places. I can't say where (it's against the forum rules), but on a completely unrelated note, google product search is your friend All these places will do reliable next-day delivery.

I know! Isn't it great?! He'll be there thinking, "Now how on earth did she know about that?!"

I think I may have to take your offer up on that one sadly. I've tried their number and if it isn't engaged all the time it just rings. I still haven't got a reply back yet after sending them an email too. That's the problem with companies on ebay, I got it I think for £227. At least with companies like Amazon you know they are legitimate and safe to use. And I've found there support team to be very good in the past.

I just hope that graphics card arrives soon, in this day an age I wish they could at least give you an estimate on when it will arrive so at least you can go out for a period of time and not waste your day.

 

[Phoenixdancer]

All four cores will certainly be used.

I suspect that the quadfire setup will give better performance than the 5970+5870 setup. Every time you ad an additional core, there is some overhead associated with getting them all to work together, but the quadfire setup should still come out ahead in most cases though.

not so /

I went from a Tri-fire setup to a Dual 5970 setup..

I lost 4k in Vantage and my performance was crap and games were no longer smooth.

Sold one and now only useing one 5970 and its allready smoother then Quadfire

 

[LauraJ]

not so /

I went from a Tri-fire setup to a Dual 5970 setup..

I lost 4k in Vantage and my performance was crap and games were no longer smooth.

Sold one and now only useing one 5970 and its allready smoother then Quadfire

Oh don't say that! I thought everything was all sorted after Duff-Mans message! Especially as I've been sitting around all day at home waiting for it to arrive. The hub is no more then forty minutes from my house and now they say it will arrive just before seven tonight.

 

[Marine-RX179]

Oh don't say that! I thought everything was all sorted after Duff-Mans message! Especially as I've been sitting around all day at home waiting for it to arrive. The hub is no more then forty minutes from my house and now they say it will arrive just before seven tonight.

Well, at this point I only got this to say now...make sure your hub have time to thoroughly test the Quad-fire set-up, and if it is not working to satisfaction, notify the etailer you want to return the 5970 under DSR within 7 days...so at worst you'd only lose the postage/delivery cost for sending it back. Considering he was already having driver issue with just a single 5970, I don't want to imagine what Quad-fire is gonna be like...but of course I'm hoping that it will work ok.

 

[LauraJ]

Well, at this point I only got this to say now...make sure your hub have time to thoroughly test the Quad-fire set-up, and if it is not working to satisfaction, notify the etailer you want to return the 5970 under DSR within 7 days...so at worst you'd only lose the postage/delivery cost for sending it back. Considering he was already having driver issue with just a single 5970, I don't want to imagine what Quad-fire is gonna be like...but of course I'm hoping that it will work ok.

Thanks for that.

Well the new 5970 arrived and after putting it in to check if it fits and all that it does. I wedged two pieces of a rubber washer in between for air flow as you suggested bigjimmyauk.

One thing that concerns me though is I put the cables and bridge in and turned on the computer to quickly see if it said crossfire was enabled and then to immediately turn it off. Everything booted up fine (and the fans weren't that loud) I clicked to go onto the ATI settings to see if were there and it wasn't (it wasn't and we haven't ever had the crossfire setting/tab in our ATI control center) I then received a error message, & then proceeded to get a black screen.

I turned off the computer and pulled the plugs & bridge out of the card and have turned the computer on. Everything has come back on fine but now all (I think) of the fans are going faster and louder then normal I think.

What have I done wrong?!


EDIT: Sorry guys no need to worry (thank god!) I took the card out and everything is now okay. How or why it made everything go ballistic I have no idea (you guys of course probably do and are moaning at me right now ) The weird thing is everything was quiet when I had power going to both cards, but it was only when I took the power out of the second card the fans when crazy.


I think I'll leave computers to the other half...