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Crossfire

Elusive

Elusive

Elusive

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Joined
6 Aug 2011
Posts
9
I've been pondering over what graphics card(s) to put in my new gaming pc.
I'm torn between a GTX580 or two 6870's in CF.
The last time I built a gaming PC (about 4 years ago) I was put off by the lack of drivers/support for crossfire, and the problems it caused back then.
I was wondering if that's all changed?
By the looks of the benchmarks, the two 6870's beats the GTX580 by a long way and for almost 2/3 the price.

If anyone could talk me over their experiences with crossfire (installation, support/drivers and performance) it would be a massive help.

Thanks in advance.
 
Go CF :-) Forget SLI

AMD run cooler and consume less power. This is exactly what you need for dual GPU.
I have nothing but praise for their drivers. Really improved over the years and possibly surpassed Nvidia now.
 
Thanks for your reply.
So you say the drivers are good now? No problems with games not being supported?

Another thing I'm wondering is, do I need a specially chosen mobo with respect to the space between PCIe slots?
I've seen picture of review rigs where the two cards are basically touching ie. this guru3d review which looks dodgy to me?

Thanks.
 
I've been running CF for only a few weeks and only tried a handful of games (BFBC2, Crysis 2 and Witcher 2) they all work flawlessly so far.

AMD release updates once per month to include the latest games and you can also download hotfixes as well as caps that get updated all the time http://www.rage3d.com/cap/

The slot spacing is very important. My cards are sandwiched so I had to remove the screw on the bottom card to let it lean at an angle so the top card can breath. I have 2 x Asus 6850. So get a mobo where there are 2 slots between the PCIe 2.0 slots e.g. something similar to http://uk.asus.com/Motherboards/Intel_Socket_1366/P6T_Deluxe_V2/
 
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Another great answer.
I'm being more and more tempted by the idea of two 6870's now :)
I'll have a look to see what I can find and I'll be sure to ask what you think :)

Thanks again.
 
I've been running crossfire for over a year now and cant really think of any issues i've had. In the early days I did have a few problems running crossfire with eyefinity in certain games but drivers seem to have fixed all the problems now.
 
I've got a hd 5870 and im in two minds about what to upgrade to as well. Dont know if i should upgrade to a gtx 580 or to get another hd 5870 and xfire them. I've been looking on the bay and hd5870 or going for about £160.00.
 
PSU and Mobo

I've been doing some research into the mobo and PSU options for setting up the 6870's in crossfire.
Firstly, I've been looking at the Asus P8Z68-V mobo as it has a good gap between the PCIe slots which run at x8/x8:
here it is on overclockers.
I got an idea of the space from this youtube video: Dual GPU setup. (I know they're GTX280's but they're dual width).

Secondly, the PSU I was looking at is here on overclockers. I've been thinking about this one as it has quad rails for the 4 6pin connectors that the two 6870's will need.

I was hoping you'd be able to give some feedback,
Thanks :)
 
Elusive said:
From what I've read x16/x16 doesn't give much (if any) advantage over x8/x8, especially for the premium it costs to get a board that supports it.

This article covers what I mean: x16/x16 vs. x8/x8.
Click to expand...

I know it's not much but I guess this is a decision you need to make. I wasn't willing to compromise at all. Also, I think on Tomshardware it was mentioned that CF takes a slightly bigger hit than SLI, altho not much. 5% at most
 
Given the price difference 6870 CF probably not a bad idea compared to a GTX580 tho in realworld performance and smoothness in games you'd see little difference the 580 may even be a bit smoother - being only 1gig VRAM tho doesn't somewhat limit the extra performance potential if your pushing up the resolution/settings.

As far as PCI-e link bandwidth goes you'll see pretty much no difference in performance between x8/x8 and x16/x16 especially if its PCI-e 2.0 x8 - maybe slightly longer load times if its PCI-e 1.0 but probably not enough you'd actually notice it without timing it.

Driver wise while its come on a long way I still wouldn't say it was on par with nVidia's drivers, I know more than a couple of people with 6950 CF who don't have the smoothest run tho it works fine for the most part.
 
+1 for CF, been running a 5970 for awhile now and not had any major problems - there were issues originally with drivers but 11.6 - 11.8 all seem pretty solid now.
 
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