4850x2 +4870x2 quad crossfire?

Hello guys i'm new here.

A friend of mine overed me a very cheap hd 4870x2 2gb card.

I already have a 4850x2 in my system, my mobo supports another graphicard at x16

So i was wondering would a 4850x2 and a 4870x2 work in crossfire?

Greetings, Jeffrey

Hmm, not sure, but I think so. Personally, Id sell those off and get a single card. Those are pretty inefficient GPU's compared to whats available today. What resolution is your monitor?

I only run on 1280x1024 res.
I just can get that card very cheap that's why i'm asking it cheap preformance gain

Greetings, Jeffrey

There isnt a reason I can think of that the 4850x2 cant run anything at that tiny resolution.

Again, sell what you have, and get something more modern OR sell the 4850x2 and just run the 4870x2 alone. The resolution you play it is quite low and more CPU DEPENDENT than anything. Overclocking your CPU will help your FPS out.

We also dont even know what Power Supply you have and if it can even support running both cards. I wouldnt go less than 700W on a QUALITY PSU personally.

I got a 900watts in my system

I run a amd fx 6100 @ 3.5ghz atm.. can overclock easy to 4.0+

but could i run a 4850x2 and a 4870x2 in quad crossfire?

I already answered that in my first post. I'm pretty sure you can. However, you will also be wasting the potential of the 4870x2, you may also get a lot of microstutter, and 4 GPU's do not scale well.

Again, you run a very low, CPU bound, resolution. And its not worth it, IMO, for you to drop that 4870x2 WITH the 4850x2. Lots more heat, power consumption all for little gains.

Ok than i'l just use the 4870x2 alone.. and just if it's not enough il try if the 4850x2 works out if micro stuttering and very low gain i'l just stick to the 4870x2

thannks!

No problem. Like I said though. Id rather see you sell those cards and get a single card. Im sure you can grab a 6950, or GTX 560ti that would be PLENTY for that resolution. Less heat, less power consumption, less noise, less pain in the arse, etc.

According to the charts and specs from AMD, with enough amps on the 12v line, yes.
Out of curiosity, why haven't you just thrown it in and tried it?
An article about the 3xxx series prior to your card.
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphi...rformance-Preview/Power-Consumption-and-Initi

Voidbringer said:

According to the charts and specs from AMD, with enough amps on the 12v line, yes.
Out of curiosity, why haven't you just thrown it in and tried it?
An article about the 3xxx series prior to your card.
http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphi...rformance-Preview/Power-Consumption-and-Initi

Click to expand...

Becouse i don't have it yet will get it end of the week

EarthDog said:

4 GPU's do not scale well.

Click to expand...

Actually 4 GPUs scale pretty well. In fact the only benchmarks I've seen that show bad quad scaling on these cards can be pretty obviously traced back to a CPU bottleneck. 4 4870 GPUs scale so well that you're looking at 7970-GTX680 levels of performance. But the cards came out in 2008 where most reviewers were using stock-clocked Core2Quads or even Core2Duo chips. I've been through 2 CPU upgrades with these cards and each has resulted in significant GPU gains that I wasn't even expecting.

Mixing the 4850 GPUs in with the 4870 GPUs certainly will hold things back a bit, but should still work fine. Crossfire with these older cards is still well supported with current drivers and still regularly benefits from driver improvements and optimizations.

Many of the negative remarks I see thrown around in regards to this kind of configuration are a mix of misinformation and limited user experiences from years ago. As someone who actually uses a 4800 series quad-CF config every day (in addition to a 4850 crossfire setup) I can say with authority that you have absolutely nothing to fear in regards to at least trying this config out. I think you will be pleasantly surprised.

The sad news is, you cannot crossfire the 4850x2 (or any 4850) with the 4870x2.
Ive tried,(w/ a single 4850) even after googling answers that said it wouldnt work.

The drivers do not allow for it...period. It'll ask you if you want to enable crossfire,if you install both cards. But youll get an error in the CCC drivers saying you dont have the crossfire bridge connected.
You can crossfire a 4870, or 4890 1gb, with it or another 4870x2.

That said, Ill agree with EarthDog, 1280x1024 is absolutly NOTHING for a 4870x2. I game at 1080p and that stress's the card. It gets nice and toasty and all that...except source games. 200+fps at 70~80% usage on both gpus in a detailed scene if Im lucky.

To see this, download MSI afterburner, and run a game for a bit, your most stressful game, and then go back and look at the monitoring section in Afterburner, and you'll see the card probably didnt hit full load on both cores.
Or turn on On-Screen monitoring in afterburner, with FPS and GPU Usage, and even temps if you'd like and watch the "%" load on both cores in a game.

And...a 4870x2 draws enough power by itself. 475 watts or so:
http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2010-gaming-graphics-charts-high-quality/3D-Power-Draw,2495.html


This review gives you and idea of how the 4870x2 scales with higher resolutions.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4870-x2,2073-34.html
(Pages 34-36)

All that jazz being said....
Ive wanted to try 4870x2 (x2), but the heat, (oh man...the heat), noise,lack of DX11 features, and power draw shy me away from it pretty quickly. However, my issue is, a 4870x2 holds its own it most games. Its going to take a 7850 or higher from me to see any real improvement in the games that I do play.

GotNoRice said:

Actually 4 GPUs scale pretty well. In fact the only benchmarks I've seen that show bad quad scaling on these cards can be pretty obviously traced back to a CPU bottleneck. ........etc

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Hey man, Ive seen your sig here and over at [H], and Ive always been curious, can you post a screen shot, in say like BF3 with the MSI afterburner on-screen status like I described above? You might finally settle my curosity of dual 4870x2's.
And how do you deal with the heat? Ive taken my card apart twice, new TIM, cleanend everything and even at 60% fan speed in CCC,(the highest I can tolerate with the card to the very right of my mouse)
My card gets rather toasty....and LOUD sometimes.

Angry said:

The sad news is, you cannot crossfire the 4850x2 (or any 4850) with the 4870x2.
Ive tried,(w/ a single 4850) even after googling answers that said it wouldnt work.

The drivers do not allow for it...period. It'll ask you if you want to enable crossfire,if you install both cards. But youll get an error in the CCC drivers saying you dont have the crossfire bridge connected.

Click to expand...

I had 4850 crossfire first, upgraded to a 4870x2, and then quickly to 2x 4870x2. During the time that I had the 4870x2 I did tests adding in one of the 4850s and it worked fine and as expected. It's possible that it no longer works but when I tested it ~2 years ago it definitely did.

This review gives you and idea of how the 4870x2 scales with higher resolutions.
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-4870-x2,2073-34.html
(Pages 34-36)

Click to expand...

Anyone using these cards today isn't going to be using 3 and a half year old drivers and similarly old CPUs. That's a long time and there have been a TON of driver improvements since then. CAPs didn't even start to come out until 10.2.

I know you also used to be able to actually disable crossfire on the 4870x2, now you have to disable Catalyst A.I to disable crossfire on it.

And good point on the drivers. You have any idea what your system pulls from the wall during a gaming session?

Angry said:

Hey man, Ive seen your sig here and over at [H], and Ive always been curious, can you post a screen shot, in say like BF3 with the MSI afterburner on-screen status like I described above? You might finally settle my curosity of dual 4870x2's.
And how do you deal with the heat? Ive taken my card apart twice, new TIM, cleanend everything and even at 60% fan speed in CCC,(the highest I can tolerate with the card to the very right of my mouse)
My card gets rather toasty....and LOUD sometimes.

Click to expand...

I've taken apart the cards and re-applied paste, etc a year+ ago but mainly now I just use my air compressor. Regular compressed air (in a can) isn't powerful enough to get the dust that gets trapped in between the two internal heatsinks but an actual air compressor gets the job done nicely.

I have a custom fan curve set in Afterburner:


I have the fan hit 100% at 80C because once my warmest GPUs get beyond that point I will begin to get artifact. The GPUs can handle more heat than that, but I believe it's actually the VRMs that are fairly sensitive to heat. With these settings, the fans are quiet during idle. When I'm in a game I'm also wearing headphones so I'm not particularly concerned about the noise at that point.

The MSI Afterburner OSD doesn't want to display for me for some reason. It's probably just an option somewhere that needs to be checked but since I use my G15 LCD to monitor my Afterburner data it's not something I've messed with much. I'll see what I can do about generating some useful BF3 data one way or another though.

Angry said:

And good point on the drivers. You have any idea what your system pulls from the wall during a gaming session?

Click to expand...

That is about the worst I'll see in a game like BF3 during multiplayer in a situation when both the CPU and GPU are getting hit hard. 600-800w is common for games that aren't particularly multithreaded and/or aren't hitting the GPUs hard. My highest measurement was 1173w during Furmark+Burntest.

Both my cards are pre-overclocked models, and I have both matched to the speed of the faster card at 800/950 (stock is 750/900).

My card is clocked stock, as it doesnt like to overclock very well at all, and last time I did overclock it hard during a benching session, it started to artifact (with fan @ 100%) and kept on even after. I took it out, left it for a couple of weeks put it back it in with intention of getting ready to bake it in the oven, and it was fine, has been since.

I just dont bench it anymore. I also ended up setting a 80mm fan on the back of GPU2 to keep the back of the card cooler, it was getting to hot to touch. And I have pretty decent front to back air flow in my case with fresh air from the front directed right at the intake of the card.

What version of afterburner are you using? I have to use CCC to get fan adjustment. Latest afterburner doesnt even give me the option.

My card idles around 37C GPU1, 38C GPU2.

I usually just pull the card apart when it needs cleaned.


BTW, killerp8, Sorry for hi-jacking your post, although it is semi related.

Angry said:

What version of afterburner are you using? I have to use CCC to get fan adjustment. Latest afterburner doesnt even give me the option.

Click to expand...

I use version 2.2.0 Beta 15, downloaded about a week ago.