• Welcome to Overclockers Forums! Join us to reply in threads, receive reduced ads, and to customize your site experience!

Whats better? one vs 2(Xfire)

Overclockers is supported by our readers. When you click a link to make a purchase, we may earn a commission. Learn More.

nward32

Registered
Joined
Feb 22, 2010
Im trying to figure out what would be better. Im definatly on a budget and want the most bang for my buck. I need some help figuring out which would be overall better.

Would one card this class:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814150464

be better than running two cards of this class:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121365

My graphics card right now is badly outdated and my computer bogs down on some games but my cpu and memory are under 50% load so i know its just my video card bottle necking the entire system. Any insight would be great. thanks!
 
I would go with the single 5770 as the 5450 is more of a htpc solution. I have a single 5770 oced, and it does well with new games. Dirt 2, and bad company 2 play at highest settings with 4xaa and 4xaf at 1600x900 with framerates of 40+ fps. You can always add a second 5770 in the future.
 
I agree, go one HD5770. You don't need to buy a factory OC'd card, as you can do that yourself.
 
I'm pretty sure you could run four 5450's in crossfireX and the 5770 would still eat it for lunch, the 5450 is pretty much the ultimate HTPC solution and was never intended for gaming.
 
I'm pretty sure you could run four 5450's in crossfireX and the 5770 would still eat it for lunch, the 5450 is pretty much the ultimate HTPC solution and was never intended for gaming.
here is probably a bad question, but what does HTPC stand for?

thanks for the great feedback. i guess i was just thinking more 2 gigs of video ram might be better. thanks
 
HTPC = Home Theater PC

When you SLI or Xfire the vRAM from each card isn't added together to get total vRAM. If you have 2x 1GB cards, then you still only have 1GB usable at any one moment. The physical RAM chips on each card are used, but only 1GB is addressable.
 
here is probably a bad question, but what does HTPC stand for?

thanks for the great feedback. i guess i was just thinking more 2 gigs of video ram might be better. thanks

If your using a higher res then yes more vram would help but at lower res's you won't see a performance increase. But like I said before, many games don't support xfire. So if you go the 2 x 5450 route you'll be using 1 GB sometimes anyway.
 
lol! let me run that passed my wife. haha. thanks for explaining that stuff though. i have kinda fallen out of the know in some of the latest tech. on a side note, i overclocked my current card using AMDs software to try and sqeeze some more frames out of it, but it crashed once i loaded a game. it was kinda funny.
 
Back