No, it's not a moral dilemma. It's just a dilemmaMoral Dilemma...Or Is It?
Save yourself the headache of an x2 card / Crossfire setup and grab a 6950.
Driver support for the 4870x2 is poor and so is the scaling.
You'd have less grief and overall smoother gameplay from a single card than a tri/quad setup, even if it's 'outperformed' on benchmarks.
So you think I should forego the 5770's altogether?No, it's not a moral dilemma. It's just a dilemmaMoral Dilemma...Or Is It?
Save yourself the headache of an x2 card / Crossfire setup and grab a 6950.
Driver support for the 4870x2 is poor and so is the scaling.
You'd have less grief and overall smoother gameplay from a single card than a tri/quad setup, even if it's 'outperformed' on benchmarks.
$185/ not a bad price, but as I said the screaming deal is gone....The cheapest option would be a Ebay 4870 or 4890... I was going to get another 4890, but the wife's card died so I upgraded everybody....2 4870's would be about equal to a 5770 pair with only one card to buy....Graphics Card Hierarchy Chart : Best Graphics Cards For The Money: April 2011 Only the 6990/5970/6970 being faster.....
You can crossfire the same series/ the faster card just runs at the slower card's speed....
Honestly? Yes.
Before I went to a single 580, I've had 4850, 4890 and 5970 crossfire setups and the 'raw' FPS may have been there, but overall it wasn't worth the trade off in choppy gameplay and glitches.
Games that work well with crossfire are the exception and not the rule. Crossfire scaling on the 5xxx series is also pretty poor.
Plus some of the 'crossfire fixes' that AMD implement are to simply disable GPUS, so for those games you're back to using a single card anyway.
So according to the hierachy chart, both the 6950 and X2 are proper upgrades for me at this juncture. However, the X2 is one tier higher (which I have absolutely no reason to doubt when raw power is factored) and is only bettered by the 5970 and 6990, neither of which I can actually afford without having to bring in a second party. The 6970 is the only other card on par with the X2...at least according to the chart. So, it seems the X2 would be the biggest bang for my buck.$185/ not a bad price, but as I said the screaming deal is gone
You can crossfire the same series/ the faster card just runs at the slower card's speed....
Which brings me to this...
...It seems you're essentially telling me that even at it's ridiculously cheap price, the X2 is still an unwise purchase? I can do without DX11 until I've properly upgraded my entire rig later this year...but for the money it seems like a practical no-brainer to me. I'm not being argumentative or anything but there's the possibility that the 6950 won't flash, and if it does there's the possibility that the performanced was capped off for a reason. Whereas with the X2 it's a surefire thing.
At least it's narrowed down now. Appreciate all the help...now there's the home stretch; do I spend $130, $140-something for the X2 or do I slap on an additional $120+ for the 6950?
Now what in the world gave you that idea?
It's running at 2.7 right now but I can do at least 3.3, I just need to remember what settings I used...
I have a X2 that would do a easy 3.8 on air stock voltage, stock cooler/ but the X4 I'm running now has a fit at 3.6( a .2 overclock) so you can't always count on overclocking....but 3.0 or better would be a big help, just keep in mind those big numbers are usually backed with a i7 at 4.0 or better
I just noticed the 5850 was a Gigabyte card/ not good /reviews stated a lot of people had to flash the card....void the warranty, or live with a dog of a card....
I guess you will have to jump on the X2 or it will be gone soon...if not keep a eye on the Egg sometimes a great deal will show up.....just not any around now
It's not really the best tbh.
But only when it works. TDU2 was one of those games where the 'fix' was to disable GPUS.
Whereas with the X2 it's a surefire thing.
Ultimately it's your choice - a cheap stop gap that will give you a noticeable boost here and there, yet not at all in others vs spending more for an improvement overall.At least it's narrowed down now. Appreciate all the help...now there's the home stretch; do I spend $130, $140-something for the X2 or do I slap on an additional $120+ for the 6950?
Realistically, how long will it be before you upgrade everything? - If it's only a few more months, then stick with your original idea. You can get a taste of CF for yourself. YMMV.
If it's longer than a few months, spending a bit more now will still give you considerably more performance than you do now with less annoyances overall for a longer period of time.
Crossfire is great - when it works - but from my prolonged personal experience with it, the cons outweigh the pros.
And regardless of 6950/4870 TRI-Fire, your cards will benefit from a CPU OC.
Only going to be for a few months. At the absolute earliest I'll start the overhaul come September or October, at the absolute latest it'll be toward November or December. I've only messed around with CF once and that was with the 1900XTX - right after ATI released the CCC/3200 chipset that enabled software CF.
I'm going to pair it with my 4870 and I already know of a few games in my collection that will benefit from the additional headroom. Once I get this thing stable at 3.3G again I should be golden until it's time for the overhaul.
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