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Need a little reasurance on getting XFIRE

Wiry

Wiry

Wiry

Associate
Joined
27 Apr 2011
Posts
547
Location
Nottinghamshire
Ok guys, So I have an ATI Radeon 5850 and am planning on crossfiring it with another 5850. Will I need to get any different drivers and what have xfired members had with crossfiring the 5850 with another 5850? It'll only cost me around £100 to get another card so it's well worth it! Nearly double the FPS and it'll sure last me at least another 18 months!! I'm not buying it from OCUK, but from a mate who has not overclocked it in any way! I can't wait to get it, but i was wondering what problems people encounter when crossfiring two cards... Also, my motherboard is a MSI GD55 P55 Motherboard, and It has a PCI-E x16 2.0 slot and a PCI-E x16 1.0 slot. The upper 2.0 slot is being used at the moment, but would a 1.0 slot be sufficient :confused: Cheers in advance...WIRY
 
You won't necessarily need any other drivers, just make sure you've got the latest (11.5a at the moment) along with the latest CAP (Catalyst Application Profile, 11.5 CAP1 at the moment). The only problems you may experience are new games that don't have Crossfire profiles yet, which could result in two cards having lower performance than one until AMD releases a profile. :)

The PCI-E version doesn't really matter, no worries there.
 
Realistically, you won't see double the frame rate by crossfiring a pair of 5850...it would be more like 50-80% gain depending on the games; whereas 6000 series, it's not uncommon to get 70-100% scaling on crossfire.
 
You'll fps will be around 10-15% lower when running 2x5850's at x16/x4 compared to cards running at x16/x16, so still a decent boost over a single card.

What psu & cpu do you have ?
 
MoodyB said:
You'll fps will be around 10-15% lower when running 2x5850's at x16/x4 compared to cards running at x16/x16, so still a decent boost over a single card.

What psu & cpu do you have ?
Click to expand...

Is that with Gen2 x16 & Gen2 x4 or Gen2 x16 & Gen1 x4 ?.
 
So what do I get? I am the same, confused with the slots on my board. Yes, the link above is my mobo "Final8y"
 
As much as I want to get another 5850 and XFire them, the amount of hassle people of have, after reading many articles, I think I might just opt with either a NVidia 570 or an AMD Radeon alternative! Although crossfire 5850's may be better performance wise, I think my motherboard would only be using it in x4 gen 1/2 and this wouldn't give me the full benefit, therefore the benchmarks with the 5850 XFire vs GTX580, aren't correct when you take my MSI MoBo into account! Cheers for help guys, what card would you recommend, for a worthy upgrade over a 5850? Seeing as though they sell for about £100, lets say I have £270, when the 5850 has sold.
 
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