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2x5870 or 5970 ???

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see if you can nail a couple reference 5850's

they are faster than 5970 and as fast as 5870's when you OC them.

key WORD is REFERENCE, I ran both mine at 850/1200 stock volts.
 
he has a point if you dont mind ocing your cards do that im planing on getting a 2nd 5870 and over clocking them later.

edit: plus i would say the 2 seperate cards will run cooler and last longer vs the 5970. i had a 4870x2 which was a great card but ran hot and died in 2 years ( which was last week ) which was a bummer because i was waiting for the next seiries of dx 11 cards to come out but crap happens...
 
Simple logic: 2 cards running at 16x PCI-E each, or one card with dual GPUs running at 8x PCI-E each. A PCI-E slot is only capable of 16 lanes. So when you use a bridged dual-GPU card, they're only getting 8 lanes each. The only time a dual-GPU card makes good sense is when you're running more than one.
 
If anything, I'd say the 2x5870s over the 5970. Even though tomic888 has a point about getting a second one in a few years, currently only some games take advantage of multiple GPUs, don't know if or when that'll change, and correct me if I'm wrong on this but I think on the 5970 the GPUs had to be underclocked & undervolted to stay within the 300w PCIE power spec. This means if you don't upgrade or a game only uses 1 GPU, the faster 5870 would be better.
 
Ilden said:
Simple logic: 2 cards running at 16x PCI-E each, or one card with dual GPUs running at 8x PCI-E each. A PCI-E slot is only capable of 16 lanes. So when you use a bridged dual-GPU card, they're only getting 8 lanes each. The only time a dual-GPU card makes good sense is when you're running more than one.
Click to expand...

Do you have anything that shows a bottleneck? There is an enormous amount of bandwidth in a x16 PCI-e lane and even a x8. AFAIK, there isn't a single card capable of saturating that much bandwidth.
 
One 5970 + 5870 best option there is now, better tahn 2 5970 since trifire scales way way better!
 
Devourment said:
One 5970 + 5870 best option there is now, better tahn 2 5970 since trifire scales way way better!
Click to expand...

Yup Tri-fire supposedly scales the best,

x16 vs x8 pciex shows a 1-2% performance difference

and even x4 shows only a 4% ish difference at top resolutions,

when you start using a 40" LCD or eye-finity at massive resolutions then the x4 and x8 start to suffer,

There's a review of scaling in games and benchmarks out there on t'interweb .. think I may have posted it here or on xtreme.

the PSU needs to be meaty !! :attn:
 
I posted this very thiing on another thread and wass told one 5970 would be better. But I am going to be doing a liquid cooled system so I want to overclock and from the looks from what a few of you have said. The 5870s would be a better choice and I am thinking that now.
 
I would go with the 5970 tbh, unless your planning on running eyefinity in which case two 2GB 5870's are probably your best bet. And I know its an ati forum, but you should look at Nvidia too, especially if your planning on putting the cards under water.
 
I will be wanting to run eyefinity. 3 Asus 24 inch monitors with a res of 5760x1080p I believe. I believe that is the best setup for multi-monitor setup right?? Or can you run a better multi-monitor setup with a nvidia setup.
 
D-Wade88 said:
I will be wanting to run eyefinity. 3 Asus 24 inch monitors with a res of 5760x1080p I believe. I believe that is the best setup for multi-monitor setup right?? Or can you run a better multi-monitor setup with a nvidia setup.
Click to expand...

Nvidia will do 3 monitors as well, granted you need 2 cards as opposed to just the 1 required for eyefinity, but you were planning on two anyway. In addition Nvidia will let you do 3D across 3 monitors. Maybe worth looking into.
 
I see plenty of benchmarks where CF HD5870 beat a single HD5970 in every game.
That's strange considering that CF HD4870 were equal to HD4870X2 in performance.

That said, there is no performance loss between X16 and X8 lanes - it's just a marketing trick. CrossFire will run on X58 just as fast as in P55.

Yojo - maby i did not understand, but in your sig you wrote that you own a 52 inch monitor? What?
 
There is a performance difference, but it is small. On a 5870 it is a 1-2% difference.

The 5870 cores on the 5970 are downclocked for heat and power consumption reasons, if they left them at full speed they would have violated PCIe spec.
 
Artas1984 said:
I see plenty of benchmarks where CF HD5870 beat a single HD5970 in every game.
That's strange considering that CF HD4870 were equal to HD4870X2 in performance.

That said, there is no performance loss between X16 and X8 lanes - it's just a marketing trick. CrossFire will run on X58 just as fast as in P55.

Yojo - maby i did not understand, but in your sig you wrote that you own a 52 inch monitor? What?
Click to expand...

Its because the 4870x2 was an actually 4870 on a card crossfire, whereas the 5970 is two full 5870 cores, albeit clocked down fairly considerably, so that lower voltages could be used and the card wouldn't go over the 300w max consumption that is PCI-E specification. Now being a pair of full fledged 5870 cores, the 5970 is fully capable of overclocking to those speeds, ATI actually encouraged it by releasing a tool to bump the power up to 5870 standard voltage and see what you can get.
 
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