Wanted: A good Crossfire configuration, don't need the biggest and baddest

H2SS

Honorable
Mar 27, 2013
10
0
10,510
I have been out of the upgrading game from sometime, please help. I want to update my machine with a Radeon Crossfire config. The machine will need to run reliable, not overclocked with the following:
The specs:
AMD Phenom II X4 965
Gigabyte GA-MA790GPT-UDH3
8GB DDR3 1666
Raidmax rx-520xp PSU
liquid cooled
The mb has PCIE 16X 2.0. From what I understand 2.0, 2.1 and 3.0 are all backward compatible and 3.0. So does it matter if I go above a Radeon 59xx (pcie 2.0) card?
I want to turn this PC into a reliable media PC with the capability to play games like Sim City Deluxe 2013 and the odd 3rd person shooter (Crysis 2) at max settings. It would also need to support 3D display at 1080p on the EPSON 3110.

Thanks for any and all help
OldNoob
 
Solution
D
Without a huge budget and a multi monitor setup or high resolution single monitor you are almost always better off with a single more powerful card over an Sli or Crossfire setup. Multiple cards are not supported by all games and can cause micro stuttering. With a stock clocked PII 965 I would go with a single HD 7950/7970 or GTX 670.
For a GPU I would go with atleast a Sapphire 7950. The 3D support is better on the 7xxx cards and if I remember correctly fully supports HDMI 1.4a 3D out. Even running on a PCI-E 2.0 you would be fine. One of my rigs is running a FX-8350 with a Crossfire Sapphire HD 7970 setup and it smokes everything else I have including my i5 3570K SLI GTX 670 rig I built this year. Really sad considering the intel rig cost more than ether of my FX rigs but that seems to be the way it is when you go intel/Nvidia.
 
D

Deleted member 217926

Guest
Without a huge budget and a multi monitor setup or high resolution single monitor you are almost always better off with a single more powerful card over an Sli or Crossfire setup. Multiple cards are not supported by all games and can cause micro stuttering. With a stock clocked PII 965 I would go with a single HD 7950/7970 or GTX 670.
 
Solution