I recently went for a crossfire setup and I can wholeheartedly say it was an awful move to make. Gaming at 1900x1200 I was expecting a fair boost to FPS in most games, what I actually got was a temperamental, unstable and all round hideous experience.
Positives:
A few k more 3d marks.
Two cards look good sat in my case.
Slight FPS gain in most games.
E-peen bragging rights.
Negatives:
E-peen bragging rights, it's not big and it's not clever.
Cost for the performance is terrible, luckily my second 4870 was just under £100 so I can re-sell it.
Heat, these cards run hot, two together can heat a room.
Previously rock solid games are now crashing
Noise, for some unknown reason the fans on these two will not spin up in sync, so I end up with a constant whine. Setting fan speeds in CCC doesn't solve this as it only seems to influence the top card.
Power consumption is terrible, these cards have incredibly high idle power draw compared to their nVidia rivals.
FPS decrease in some games (Crysis I'm looking at you).
A few k more 3dmarks. I had never had any interest in synthetic benchmarks but was forced to install it as I couldn't tell if crossfire was working because of the abysmal performance gains.
Stuttering where there was none before, I assume this is due to the cards taking turns to render frames.
Graphical glitches and missing textures in areas where neither card running on their own would have any trouble whatsoever.
Final thoughts
I admit that some of the lack of performance increase is likely due to the 512mb vram on each card but this still fails to account for the rest of the issues.
I have always had my doubts over multi GPU setups holding any real world advantage (gaming at ungodly resolutions and benchmark scores aside) but of the two crossfire had always seemed to have been touted as more widely compatible and more stable than SLI. This is partly what drove me towards trying it out as my first foray into this strange world of dual graphics setups, thinking I'd be having a great laugh.
This isn't intended as a review or a dig at ATI, just my experiences. If you have any info which might help me tweak this setup so it actually seems to be doing anything that can be shown through real world performance it would be greatly appreciated, as right now I'm up for selling both 4870s and heading back to the green team once their new cards are out.
tl;dr
Crossfire was a massive let down.
Positives:
A few k more 3d marks.
Two cards look good sat in my case.
Slight FPS gain in most games.
E-peen bragging rights.
Negatives:
E-peen bragging rights, it's not big and it's not clever.
Cost for the performance is terrible, luckily my second 4870 was just under £100 so I can re-sell it.
Heat, these cards run hot, two together can heat a room.
Previously rock solid games are now crashing
Noise, for some unknown reason the fans on these two will not spin up in sync, so I end up with a constant whine. Setting fan speeds in CCC doesn't solve this as it only seems to influence the top card.
Power consumption is terrible, these cards have incredibly high idle power draw compared to their nVidia rivals.
FPS decrease in some games (Crysis I'm looking at you).
A few k more 3dmarks. I had never had any interest in synthetic benchmarks but was forced to install it as I couldn't tell if crossfire was working because of the abysmal performance gains.
Stuttering where there was none before, I assume this is due to the cards taking turns to render frames.
Graphical glitches and missing textures in areas where neither card running on their own would have any trouble whatsoever.
Final thoughts
I admit that some of the lack of performance increase is likely due to the 512mb vram on each card but this still fails to account for the rest of the issues.
I have always had my doubts over multi GPU setups holding any real world advantage (gaming at ungodly resolutions and benchmark scores aside) but of the two crossfire had always seemed to have been touted as more widely compatible and more stable than SLI. This is partly what drove me towards trying it out as my first foray into this strange world of dual graphics setups, thinking I'd be having a great laugh.
This isn't intended as a review or a dig at ATI, just my experiences. If you have any info which might help me tweak this setup so it actually seems to be doing anything that can be shown through real world performance it would be greatly appreciated, as right now I'm up for selling both 4870s and heading back to the green team once their new cards are out.
tl;dr
Crossfire was a massive let down.
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512mb wont cut it with all the goodies turned on at that res. I have a 30" dell and run a 4870x2 on its own at 2560x1600 andit runs ok, but i will be looking to replace it in spring with what ever is newer and better at the time.
