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What GPUS's money no object

Flanno

Flanno

Flanno

Soldato
Joined
18 Jun 2005
Posts
3,434
So I have presold both my 5870 PCS+ cards as I want somethig more powerful.

I'm running an EVGA Classified and the gpu's are currently in slot 1 and 3 with a long asus crossfire bridge between them. There is a pci-slot between and I have an asus essence st pci there. Idle temps on my gpus'a are 26 and 34 degrees.

What should I buy ?

Options I am considering are 2 :

1. Up to 3 Saphire 5870 2GB Toxiccards. I know the extra framebuffer means squat for 99% of current games.

or

2. 2 XFX 5970 BLack Edition

I've read all the reviews and everything on these forums and from what I can see :

- 4 gpus's don't scale so 2 5970's is beaten by 3 5870's in a lot of cases

- Having 3 5870's means the 2 top gpu's will be blocking each others fans which could cause a problem for cooling, especially the toxic cards which run a middle 92mm fan and don't exhaust all the heat

- If I go for 2 XFX 5970 BE cards, I will have decent cooling but what are the chances of hitting 5870 core speeds on both cards. The plan would be to run at stock settings in windows 7 and when gaming use Afterburner to switch to a 3d profile.

Lookiing forward to your input.
 
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According to this review, the GTX 480 3 way SLI is in the running. It has some wins over 5970CF and 5870 x3 depending on game and resolution. However, with 3 GTX 480s there are obvious problems with heat, cooling, noise (if keeping stock cooling), price and availability compared to the ATI options.

Personally, I would suggest triple 5870 - they seem to perform better that 5970CF overall.

Are you planning on watercooling the cards you do get?
 
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2 x 5970? Although you might as well go grab a hydra chipset to take advantage of all the cores?

Why the need for so much power btw? What resolutions you running.
 
Thanks for the input:

Ruling out 480's over noise to be honest.

No watercooling. Spec as in sig. 980X running at stock speeds right now.

Running an 800D.

I've replaced the rear exhaust and bottom intake with 2 Noisblocker silentpro 1700rpm fans which are running off the mobo headers. HD fan is stock.

Rear fan reversed as an intake

H50 running in push pull with Akasa Apaches in rear top position. Also running 2 more apaches as exhausts.

Temps seem fine. EVGA-Eleet shows cpu at 29 to 33 degrees. Which ties in with RealTemp. Vreg 36 and System 21. Northbridge used run at 55-60 until I added to Noiseblocker 60mm fans to top of heatsink. Now runs at 35. When gaming, cpu hits 55 degrees max. GPU's hit about 65 degrees if really pushing it.

I think running 3 cards (besides meaning have to ditch my PCI Xonar Essence) will mean major temp issues.

So I guess my question is whether 2 Saphire Toxic 2GB 5870's at 925mhz+ will outperform 2 XFX 5970 BE's assuming I can get each card to overclock past stock 725mhz.

From the reviews I have read, the extra 1gig ram on the Toxic 5870 only matters when framebuffer is limited which only happens on Metro and Crysis at 2560x1600 with max eye candy.
 
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Thanks. I've sold both my 5870's now. Like I said, money isn't a factor with this purchase. And while 2 GTX480's would be an option for some, the noise and heat puts me off. I'd buy 2 XFX 5970 BE's in the morning if I knew I could run them at 5870 speeds. But then it bugs me that they are releasing 4gig versions of these cards soon. On the other hand, it's been shown on single monitors no matter what the resolution the extra framebuffer memory does squat, unless running games like Crysis at 2560 plus.

Bottom line

2 Sapphire Toxic 5870 2GB

or

2 XFX 5970 BE
 
I would probably say 3 5870's. Triple crossfire scales the best with current technology and you are getting everything you pay for.

My problem with the 5970 is in it's 5850 clocks, sure you can overclock but as money isn't a real issue for you, 2 seperate 5870's will yield better results.

Throwing the 3rd one in to give you that bit of extra power, I'm sure the 2gb frame buffer will prove it's use in months to come, I imagine you are one who likes eveery slider to the max!

Regardless enjoy whatever you buy mate.
 
Thanks for the replies. Yes, I think 3 5870 Toxic 2gb wil give best performance.

But....it means 2 cards on top of each other. Not sure how well the toxic (which is just a souped up vapor-x) will cope. As the 1st and 2nd card's 92mm fans will be smothered. It will also mean having to to ditch my Asus Essence SR PCI sound card which currently runs in the pci slot between both gpu's, and having to go back to my sucky X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty Pro in the top pci-e 1x slot.

So realistically my options are be happy with 2 5870 Toxis 2gb card, or buy 2 XFX 5970 BE's and hope I can overclock the nads out of them, which may not be possible on an 800d even if I have pushed the aircooling to the limits.
 
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A thought just came across me...would the i7 980X overclocked to 4.4GHz (max on air cool) be able to keep up with 2x XFX 5970 BE without bottlenecking it (since games still uses only 4 cores max, and realistically i7 980X is not that much faster than a i7 930 overclocked to 4.3GHz for gaming...unless game start using 5th and 6th cores as well)?

If that does happen may be really have to consider watercooling and overclock the CPU to even higher clock?
 
..... I have two hosts with 3x 5800s installed. In my experience, the 5870 Vx perform poorly (v.hot) when sited in adjacent slots - they need to be the bottom card if mixing with non-Vx 5870s. Whilst I like the 5870 Vx on a well spaced motherboard - for cards running in adjoining PCIe slots - they don't exactly suck, but the cards that do (exhaust to rear) are better!

Just my $0.02 worth!
 
I wouldn't go with more than 2 GPUs, as I think the scaling becomes poor after that. As much as i'm loathed to recommend it, i'd say two GTX480s is the way to go.

It'll be hot, noisy, and you'll need a monster of a PSU. I personally wouldn't go near such a setup without watercooling.
 
Wait until the Omni comes out then you can have an H50 like setup for your GPUS, then 2 or even 3 480s wont be an issue as they'll be single slot. Same would work for 3 5870s. Below is the 240mm version for sli/xfire but you only need 120mm rad per gpu and with the 800D you have plenty of space. Will cost a bomb but money is no object so what the hell

omni_case.jpg
 
Tute said:
I wouldn't go with more than 2 GPUs, as I think the scaling becomes poor after that. As much as i'm loathed to recommend it, i'd say two GTX480s is the way to go.

It'll be hot, noisy, and you'll need a monster of a PSU. I personally wouldn't go near such a setup without watercooling.
Click to expand...

Can't remember what his name was but some guy from guru3d forums purchased four and did some benchmarks, if i recall correctly then three gpu's was the sweet spot based on his benchmarks.
 
If your running 2560x res then personally I'd say 3x GTX480 - even tho thats expensive and uses a lot of power. The heat and noise aren't really a factor IMO as you can work around that with a good case and airflow or aftermarket cooling.

My general rule of thumb for average overall multi GPU scaling, 2 cards = +60-70% increase over 1 card, 3 cards = +30% increase over 2 cards, 4 cards = +10% increase over 3 cards.
 
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i would wait for 6870s to hit in the following months and just run 2 of those they will prob kill the 5970 solo.
 
you have two 5870s anyways why not just get a 3rd and watercool them the 2gig cards didnt really show any performance improvement and even when games do the chip isnt going to be fast enough to handle complex grahpics.. so u might as well wait for 6870 or 5890 or w/e comes.
 
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