4870X2 + 4870 or just 4870X2? 4870/9550 build video too

[Essenar]

The scaling of the 4870X2 in crossfire isn't a very powerful performance venue. My friend is on the final rounds of his build, and right now he has a 4870.

He's weighing a 4870X2/4870 tri-fire versus just a 4870X2.

The up-side for me is that if he gets a 4870X2 solo, he's going to sell me his 4870 for 4850 price because I vastly helped him with his build.

The up-side if he goes with a tri-fire build is that if it scales well, he'll get some very nice performance.

His other option was getting another 4870, but the 4870X2 has better performance than two 4870's, at least that's what we think until we see 1gb 4870's.

The thing is, if the 4870 1gb's perform the same, one has to weigh the cost of a 4870X2 versus two 4870 1gb's, not to mention the added power consumption and heat levels.

How do you guys feel?

Btw, this is our build Youtube video.

Before you say it, yes I know the music is very annoying. It's my first time making a video. Next time there will only be music between chapters, or very light environment music. Maybe like some electronica in the background but a lot lower volume so it's barely audible.

Also, about the quality: I recorded this with my Palm Centro cell phone. We're going to use his digital camera for the next video. And hopefully by the time we start doing hardware reviews, we will have an actual studio camcorder. (I'm a film major)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b-6xEfCu1E

[Jaym14]

Nice, Just left you a comment. Youtube name = Freethinker1 :beer:

I'm currently decided what upgrades I'm going to make. Either 2 4870 Overclocked black editions OR 2 4870X2's

[dbp_inSOMNiak]

If he goes for Tri-Fire, won't he be limited by the 4870's 512MB ram vs the X2's 1GB* ram?

*1GB per gpu, 2GB total.

[DaPoets]

I think it scales down to the lowest amount of ram... He would be limited unless something has changed that I'm unaware of w/ the 4000 series cards. My old 1950's once had different ram sizes and it always went down to the lower ram amount when crossfire was used.

[iamcanadian7]

I pretty positive that the 512 card would limit the ram usage.

Nice choice of music ATR, rock on:attn:

[Essenar]

Sounds like he'll have to go solo 4870X2 then, maybe dual 4870X2's. He's beginning to get more modest so I wouldn't be surprised if he stuck with a single 4870X2 at this point. I told him in the beginning the first bug bites the hardest, after that you have a little more power controlling your trigger finger.

I did tell him the CPU is where you can save most of the money because of how much CPU over-clocking scales. But that was AFTER he already bought his 9550. I could've saved him more by going Q6600 + water.

From what I've seen, the price difference between Q6600 and Yorkfield processors doesn't show benefits until you touch the 9650 which can hit 3.8-4.0 on water, where the Q6600 is limited to usually 3.6 on water.

[OBLIVIONLORD]

9650 can do 3.8 -4.0 on air. You can increase it's multi to 10 and oc the fsb to 400.

There are also a good portion of people doing 3.6 on the 9450. However the chipset used to achieve 450fsb x8 is the more limiting factor. The p45 and x48 are the 2 best chipsets to use to get the best possible success rate of 450fsb with the quads.