crossfire a viable solution?

[Kanifee]

I'm contemplating for the first time in my pc gaming life a dual grfx card setup, the tech from both the red and green camp seem to have come a long way since the early days and games seem to be supporting the setup a lot more universaly.

My main question is weather or not adding a second 5850 is a sesnible solution, certainly seems great money if I pick up a s/h eferance one like my exsisting card. I'm looking to cover my bases for atleast 12 months and at the minute mostly play cod black open, dead space 2, true 2 on release and those sorts of games in general, Res is 1920x1200 too.

Set up is.

QX9450 @ 3.5ghz
P5Q-e
4gb ddr2
Corsair HX520 PSU

Cheers

 

[hdpcgamer]

I'm contemplating for the first time in my pc gaming life a dual grfx card setup, the tech from both the red and green camp seem to have come a long way since the early days and games seem to be supporting the setup a lot more universaly.

My main question is weather or not adding a second 5850 is a sesnible solution, certainly seems great money if I pick up a s/h eferance one like my exsisting card. I'm looking to cover my bases for atleast 12 months and at the minute mostly play cod black open, dead space 2, true 2 on release and those sorts of games in general, Res is 1920x1200 too.

Set up is.

QX9450 @ 3.5ghz
P5Q-e
4gb ddr2
Corsair HX520 PSU

Cheers

You would certainly get a significant performance boost adding another HD 5850 to your setup. However, if those are the only games you mostly play, then adding another 5850 won't make much of a difference because you would be running COD Black Ops and Dead Space maxed out at 60+ anyway with just your single HD 5850.

The only games that would really benefit from a Crossfire set-up @ 1920x1080, would be games like Lost Planet 2, Crysis, Metro 2033, GTA 4 etc, where you'd get a decent bump in FPS.

Your Corsair HX520 should be ok adding another 5850 but if you plan to heavily overclock the 5850's then you may end up stressing your PSU.

I would personally keep the single 5850 until the newer games really start taxing the newer GPUs.