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Should I Crossfire my 5850?

fireisdangerous

fireisdangerous

fireisdangerous

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St. Neots, cambs
I currently have the HIS R5850 iCooler V Turbo 1024MB, and am thinking about getting another one off a well know auction site ;). if I can get it for under 130 I think it would be a good deal.

Question is would it improve my fps? I have a 24inch screen running at 1080p. core i5 650 + 8gb corsair vengeance ram. I mainly play mass effect 3, fallout, left for dead but i want to play crysis 2/ batman 2 and mass effect 3 with the best visuals without having to shell out 300.00 od quid on a new gpu and take a losss on my 5850.
 
fireisdangerous said:
I have always been under the impression that you had to xfire the same card, but if thats not the case then thats greats news. Whats the scaling like with 2 5850's and which games do you see the best results?
Click to expand...

Scaling isn't as high as the 6-series, but then given the price of the 5850s it's a moot point.

At 1080p they are powerful enough to max most games with 4x AA at stock clocks.

The games I run:

Just Cause 2
Batman Arkham Asylum
Blur
Mass Effect 2
Dead Rising 2
Risen
Borderlands
LOTRO
 
fireisdangerous said:
Question is would it improve my fps? I have a 24inch screen running at 1080p. core i5 650 + 8gb corsair vengeance ram. I mainly play mass effect 3, fallout, left for dead but i want to play crysis 2/ batman 2 and mass effect 3 with the best visuals without having to shell out 300.00 od quid on a new gpu and take a losss on my 5850.
Click to expand...
Don't bother...firstly your 5850 should still be plenty fast enough if you can overclock it, secondly your CPU (dual-core) at stock speed would be a limitation for something as fast as a xfire 5850 anyway (especially for console ports that require at least 3 cores to run well).

Also, I got a strong feeling that the 2nd PCI-E x16 slot for your current motherboard only runs at x4 lanes...
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
Don't bother...firstly your 5850 should still be plenty fast enough if you can overclock it, secondly your CPU (dual-core) at stock speed would be a limitation for something as fast as a xfire 5850 anyway (especially for console ports that require at least 3 cores to run well).

Also, I got a strong feeling that the 2nd PCI-E x16 slot for your current motherboard only runs at x4 lanes...
Click to expand...

I have an i5 650 quad core, P55A-GD55 motherboard (http://www.msi.com/product/mb/P55A-GD55.html) and from the specs the 2nd lane should run at x8
 
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Marine-RX179 said:
Hate to break this to you, but i5 650 is a dual-core with HyperThreading (whereas i5 750/i5 760 is a Quad-core)...have you fallen victim to Intel confusing i3/i5/i7 labelling?

i5 650 spec here:
http://ark.intel.com/Product.aspx?id=43546
# of Cores 2
# of Threads 4

i5 650 is just a i3 530 with higher default clock speed...
Click to expand...

my mistake i have the Intel Core i5 750, i loose track of the different numbers. You had me worried there for a second though!!
 
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fireisdangerous said:
my mistake i have the Intel Core i5 750, i loose track of the different numbers. You had me worried there for a second though!!
Click to expand...
Right right. So looks like you have a i5 750 and a x8/x8 Crossfire capable board...so crossfire does seem worth considering now (I'd overclock the i5 750 than leaving it at stock speed though).

I myself only just upgrade to a 5850 over Christmas along with a BenQ G2222 1920x1080 LED monitor. I've managed to overclock it to 975MHz/1100MHz, but found that I don't even need it for most game I play, so I just using another overclock profile of 835MHz/1100MHz for most games I play.

I'm planning on using this card for 2 years, then upgrade to 2nd gen 28nm GPU graphic card or something like that.

So the question remains...do you NEED another 5850? Is your 5850 struggling at the moment? Graphic card will be moving from 40nm process onto 28nm process from next gen onward, so you have to think about if it is worth you to invest another £130 on a 5850 (and do remember that 5850 has weak tessellation performance).
 
Marine-RX179 said:
Right right. So looks like you have a i5 750 and a x8/x8 Crossfire capable board...so crossfire does seem worth considering now (I'd overclock the i5 750 than leaving it at stock speed though).

I myself only just upgrade to a 5850 over Christmas along with a BenQ G2222 1920x1080 LED monitor. I've managed to overclock it to 975MHz/1100MHz, but found that I don't even need it for most game I play, so I just using another overclock profile of 835MHz/1100MHz for most games I play.

I'm planning on using this card for 2 years, then upgrade to 2nd gen 28nm GPU gphic card or something like that.

So the question remains...do you NEED another 5850? Is your 5850 struggling at the moment? Graphic card will be moving from 40nm process onto 28nm process from next gen onward, so you have to think about if it is worth you to invest another £130 on a 5850 (and do remember that 5850 has weak tessellation performance).
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply, ive tried to overclock the cpu many a time but have always failed or lost intererst dude to lack of skill , the cpu is cooled by a corsair h50 and i have the silverston raven 02 v1 so everything runs super cool so there is no reason not to overclock.

What did u use to overclock the gpu? the card doesnt struggle at all i just fancied getting another!! the lure of new toys is to strong.


If i can get the 2nd 5850 super cheap then i might do it if not just wait for the new batman and mass effect games to come out and see how it performs.
 
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