HD 4870 CF on P35 -- P45 --X48 Chipset - OCF Testing

I would like to throw in that I switched from a P5B with 16x 1.1 to my P5Q Pro and saw absolutely zero increase in gaming performance with my 4870x2. So no, you still don't need a 16x slot for a dual gpu card.

Also, this all was online game play. Not benchmarks.

mastrdrver said:

I would like to throw in that I switched from a P5B with 16x 1.1 to my P5Q Pro and saw absolutely zero increase in gaming performance with my 4870x2. So no, you still don't need a 16x slot for a dual gpu card.

Also, this all was online game play. Not benchmarks.

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does the p5q pro support 16x lanes?
both cards together have to run 16x ..
not one at 4x and one at 16x, it dosent work like that..
both cards need 16x, i know the asus rampage runs crossfire, at 16x properly..
its just sad, i sent my crossfire card back, because i got so ************** at the entire crossfire concept..
you pay double the $$, you should get double the frame rates period..
when you buy two cars , you get your money worth..
when you buy two hot dogs, you get twice as full..
when two girls jump in the bed with you, its twice the pleasure.
the concept should be the same and its clearly not ..
not worth the cash either..

if crossfire had a 20 fps consistant gain i still would not be worth it to buy 2 or 3 or 4 gpus @ 300$ price range.

Ekko said:

does the p5q pro support 16x lanes?
both cards together have to run 16x ..
not one at 4x and one at 16x, it dosent work like that..
both cards need 16x, i know the asus rampage runs crossfire, at 16x properly..
its just sad, i sent my crossfire card back, because i got so ************** at the entire crossfire concept..
you pay double the $$, you should get double the frame rates period..
when you buy two cars , you get your money worth..
when you buy two hot dogs, you get twice as full..
when two girls jump in the bed with you, its twice the pleasure.
the concept should be the same and its clearly not ..
not worth the cash either..

if crossfire had a 20 fps consistant gain i still would not be worth it to buy 2 or 3 or 4 gpus @ 300$ price range.

Click to expand...

Sounds like you got burned by the lack of scaling found in Crossfire/SLI setups. I think you need one of the Hydra 100 chips

lol..i think ill just wait until u can see a substantial fps gain like i was saying ..other wise whats the point of getting it ? to say you got it ?
thank for the read..it was a interesting one..

Ekko said:

other wise whats the point of getting it ? to say you got it?

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For synthetic benchmarks drrr

lol..
risc technology has been around well since the begining ..this should be good..risc really does know what they are doing

Ekko said:

......

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Not both but, 16x 2.0 with one card, 8x/8x with two physical cards. None of that 16/4 crap like on the p35. Never really had an instant where I played a game that didn't support crossfire. Even if I did, there is that crossfire profiles utility out there to force it.

Pay twice the money get twice the frame rate? What, you think this is vintage 1999?

I have played: COD4, COD WaW, Burnout Paradise, Crysis SP Demo, (no comments), GTA IV, BF2, and probably a couple others I can't think of. Other than obviously Crysis demo and to some degree GTA IV, I spend 99% of my time playing online.

Never once did I experience any fps increase because of the board swap. Never did I realize that I can now up my AA to 8x, or any other setting for that matter, after changing boards. All this while playing 1920x1200 all the time.

Do you want to know what upgrades I made where I about crap myself cause of such a noticeable difference in fps of my game play? Three times:

First moved from 1950 Pro to 4870x2 (was trying to play at 1920x1200)
Then moved from E6420 to Q9400
Lastly moved to Vista x64 from XP x86 for primary OS with 4gb memory for both

Those three are the only times that I was able to increase detail level because I saw a noticeable increase in fps during game play.

The video card is obvious.

The processor even when both were oc to 3.2ghz, the quad allowed me to play all COD4 mp with 8xAA without any low dips in the frame rate because of shooting. After the quad: with vsync on, all in game settings turned up, and using Cat for 8XAA/16xAF my fps never moved from 60. Before with the dual they would dip to low 30s on Creek and Overgrown when shooting someone.

The x64 OS allowed COD WaW and GTA IV to smooth out because they started using more memory. WaW started using ~800mb more (~2.3gb total) and GTA IV increased ~500mb.

This is why I question those who saw your fine with a dual over a quad and wonder myself what change I would see with 8gb of memory over the 4 I have. Right now I can use up 2gb just scrolling through the internet with the sidebars (Everest & a cooler gpu one that uses RT use up the most) that are up on Vista. Win 7 is much better, but by launch I'm sure it won't be far behind even though it will do a better job.

I'll just tell you right now I don't care too much about benchmarks cause you can't play them. I did do Vantage before (win 7 x64) and after the board swap, the scores are exactly the same and even are my 3dmark scores. Given what I've read, I've been thinking about putting my tuner card into the other 16x slot as it should force 8x/8x just to see if there was something I've missed. The hardest thing I had trouble finding when I saw looking at p45 vs x48: Everyone had the benchmarks to prove something, but where are all the people who played games? I ran across 2 that said get the p45 and now I'm making a 3rd that I know of that will say the same thing.

After my horrific experience with crossfire I'm no longer interested in doing so further.
The last thing I did was purchase the x48 rampage formula in hopes to crossfire it
after seeing the results on toms hardware and various other places that were legit.
I chose to not even purchase anoter card to test.
Now the 5870's are among us and I'm interested but that's it
just interested in results.
Until I see a fps gain there's no point in dropping any more cash for crossfire
that's my final opinion.

Nice info been looking for these. And also you may need to update these scores for more recent driver updates..

brown_dog said:

Nice info been looking or these. And also you may need to update these scores for more recent driver updates..

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Thanks and good suggestion, however it takes along times to run these especially on three boards etc, I will put that on my long list of things to do

Brolloks said:

Thanks and good suggestion, however it takes along times to run these especially on three boards etc, I will put that on my long list of things to do

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Yeah, websites which review crossfire usually were using old drivers like the catalyst 8.1 havent seen any reviews on crossfire that are using 9.xx drivers.

Hey great thread. (a bit late)
is there any chance to see the 5800 series on a pci-ex.1.1?
i wonder if there will be a noticeable hit in FPS for a single card.
no hurt in performance in 4870 and gtx 275 for single cards.(cpu oc)

Ekko said:

does the p5q pro support 16x lanes?
both cards together have to run 16x ..
not one at 4x and one at 16x, it dosent work like that..
both cards need 16x, i know the asus rampage runs crossfire, at 16x properly..
its just sad, i sent my crossfire card back, because i got so ************** at the entire crossfire concept..
you pay double the $$, you should get double the frame rates period..
when you buy two cars , you get your money worth..
when you buy two hot dogs, you get twice as full..
when two girls jump in the bed with you, its twice the pleasure.
the concept should be the same and its clearly not ..
not worth the cash either..

if crossfire had a 20 fps consistant gain i still would not be worth it to buy 2 or 3 or 4 gpus @ 300$ price range.

Click to expand...

I have an existing 4870. Planning to add another one a refurbished only about $120 bucks.
I cant say I payed double for the two cards since prices of 4870 have been lowered drasticaly. I would get a crossfired 4870 close to a 5850 performance by just adding 120 bucks.

5870's take a 1-2% performance hit in pcie2.0 8x, which is equal to pcie 1.x 16x in speed. You'll be fine.

Thanks for the reply.
2% hit is really good. no need for a new mobo.

Anyone have an idea of how much of a hit 4890s would take on a 790XT board instead of a 790FXT board? (8x dual vs 16x dual)...

If only I had thought more about it... just sold a 4890 that could have been my crossfired one!!

Great thread (as I believe I've stated earlier).