Replace 5770 or SLI

[Dave777]

My sons both have home made PCs with identical 5770s in. They both want 24" monitors to replace their poor 19" ones now!

To enable games at 1080 resolution I was looking at upgrading their GPUs. Would the next logical/cost effective step be to buy a 6950 for one PC then SLI the 5770s in the other? My research seems to suggest both are good options to play at 1920x1080.

I built them with help from here with this in mind!

They have AMD Phenom 550X2 CPUs running with 4 cores unlocked.

Cheers

Dave

 

[BaNksY IV]

Hi,
The 5770 is powerful enough to run 1080p any fairly decent frames per second.
What games do they play?

 

[shuzzbutt]

xfire/sli gives you most fps for your money but it also brings with an inconsistent experience which varies wildly depending on what you play and how decent the latest profiles are.

IMO, a single card will provide you with a smoother gaming experience. I've recently installed a gtx 560ti in my htpc and gaming has been smooth and hassle free whereas whilst my gtx 275's in sli were good, they didn't always give me as smooth a performance as my fps counters would have me believe.

 

[Freddie1980]

The 5770 is wasted on a 19" screen its still very much a very capable video card so I wouldn't be in rush to go crossfire on them just yet. Get the monitors and see how there games play at 1080p and if everyone is happy you don't have to splash the cash just yet.

BTW you can crossfire those with the 6770's, but the 6770 has to be the top/master card.

 

[MoodyB]

Personally having run 5770 crossfire for a while, I'd say avoid it if you want a quiet life.

If you can get £45 each when selling the 5770's 2nd hand then I'd go for 2 6870's to replace them with. That should come out at the same cost as a single 6950 but with the advantage of less hassle than a crossfire setup could cause you or one of your sons.

 

[HouR]

I have crossfire 5770s (saphire egg coolers) and my friend has a 6950 2gb and we get very similar gaming experiences.

My 5770s are quiet as my HDD is the loudest item in my case (Samsung F3).

My only current issue with crossfire is I have to alt tab out and then back into skyrim when its loaded to get it working correctly - Unknown why and as it takes 3 secs I cant be bothered to look further for a fix.

I dont tend to buy games at first release to save some cash so issues with crossfire tend to have been removed by the time I play something.

I play BF3 at default HIGH settings in multiplayer and it runs 40-70 fps on all maps.
Skyrim runs at 40+ fps from what I have played so far and is completly maxed out.
Res is 1920x1200.

I dont think either would be dissapointed with the new setup - The one with the crossfire will just need to work a bit harder on some occasions to get the most out of the cards.