Which setup would you run?

I currently run 4x 5870's 2gb versions in quad crossfire, but I have 3x MSI lightning twin frozrIII superclocked 480's laying around, I was wondering since the reviews say that the 480's scale better, do you think they would (on a real use situation) outperform the 4x crossfire in gaming? I read two reviews where it looks like majority of the games it shows the 3x 480's pulling about 10 fps ahead of 4x 5870's in crossfire, however the drivers for both nvidia and ATI are now a year more matured. I wish they would go back and cover older hardware with mature drivers to compare them again, seems only fair since most people are not early adopters.

Anyways I was wondering, what do the GPU's veterans think?

BTW, resolution coming into question is specifically 2560x1600.

Personally, I would stick with the 5870s because of more vRAM. Higher resolutions plus eye candy likes vRAM. Since you already have all the GPUs, would it take much just to test them yourself? I'd be curious in the results.

Neither?

For that res I would run a single 580. Seriously. What you have, while awesome, is 10 kinds of overkill outside of benching.

MattNo5ss said:

Personally, I would stick with the 5870s because of more vRAM. Higher resolutions plus eye candy likes vRAM. Since you already have all the GPUs, would it take much just to test them yourself? I'd be curious in the results.

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I would but it's such a pain getting 4x crossfire to work correctly, while it should be as simple as plugging them in and installing drivers, it's very very finicky and you get blue screens and unrecognized cards. Im still debating whether it's worth it.

EarthDog said:

Neither?

For that res I would run a single 580. Seriously. What you have, while awesome, is 10 kinds of overkill outside of benching.

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No way! For example I cannot play Metro 2033 with DX11 with all settings to max, I get only 8-9 fps (2560x1600). Even at dx10 its not up to par for steady gameplay.

When I play games on eyefinity at 7680x3200, most games hammer the cards so hard its ridiculous, even at the 5k res setting some games are laggy.

If 1920x1080 was what I was playing sure, not much is required to play at such a low resolution, graphic cards manufacturers must have been ecstatic when PC gamers unknowingly adopted the lower resolution gameplay, 1920x1080 resolution has been around for over 10 years!

4 GPUs my friend. The more VRAM the better for true high resolution gaming. Plus those 400 series Nvidia cards run super hot when you push them. I don't know if you use watercooling or not though. The 480s probably do scale better, but if it were up to me, I'd take the 5-10 fps hit and run with the cooler GPUs. 10 fps isn't worth the risks of overheating

heheh metro 2033 is brutal

Im sure if you werent playing on 3 screens those gpus would be ok, but I thought something like that would cut thru that game like it was nothing.. crazy!
I have no experience running triple monitors, so this is where I take a step back

You must be the most hardcore gamer i have seen so far. This is ridiculous...