hd4870 and hd6990 question

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keffit

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Jan 15, 2012
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I have an old single HD 4870 1Gb card running on my GAX48DS5 gigabyte board with an intel Q9550 and 750w psu. I have been offered a cheap 2nd hand 6990, which is a welcome upgrade, but

1) Is it going to cause me compatibility issues with older games being a dual card (warcraft 3, heroes 3, aoe2 era games) I have never run sli or crossfire so I am unfamiliar with the side effects.

2)Is it possible to run both cards on the board at the same time? Separately, not in crossfire. As in, have the 6990 as the default, swap to 4870 if it hiccups and wont play something?

3)Is my older tech (cpu/board/ram) going to hamstring the dual card and make it run crappy. In addition to the huge size, and the heat and noise this thing is supposed to put out, am i better off with a single gpu card upgrade instead.
 
Solution
Kari
previously you could disable the second gpu on a dual card via the graphic driver for those few games that had issues with crossfire and run them with just a single chip, it would make it perform like a 6970, but it would run smoothly anyways. Recently they say amd has removed this functionality from the control center, but you can still overcome this by running the games in windowed mode (borderless window will work as well) to get the same effect. The card will only use 1 chip to run stuff in windowed mode by default.

Also amd is preparing to release a driver that will fix alot of crossfire related performance problems later this month.

but for 50AUS I'd say it is a good deal considering you have the psu to run it.
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spentshells

spentshells

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Apr 1, 2006
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How cheap is the 6990? Yes it will be held back by the cpu the 6990 is still a gaming monster but you could overclock the cpu as much as possible to lessen the impact.

If a game does not support crossfire then you are limited to a 6970 which frankly isn't that bad at all.

if the price is right buy it and learn a little something. with that gpu the benefits of learning to overclock the cpu will be limitless as there is so much gpu to handle.

If you do get the 6990 there will be no need to keep the 4870.
 
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K

keffit

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Cheaper than $50 in Aus? Not many. But the Single GPU simplifies things, yes. Thankyou for answering my question with a question :)
 
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keffit

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Ah. So there will be issues with what games I can play on it. My pc is built to be flexible.. That limitation is unwelcome. It is however set up to be overclocked and previously I did have it running that way. The learning process is certainly worth it.

Need or not, could I swap between cards on the fly? (assuming they run together at all)
 
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MC_K7

MC_K7

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1) No compatibility issue. However, Crossfire and SLI can create problems sometimes (not as stable as a single card).

2) No. You need to have cards of the same generation and model. And even if that was possible, I don't why you'd want to do that with the 6990 being so powerful, it would be like attaching a Toyota Echo to a Ferrari, lol! And the 6990 is already crossfire, adding the 4870 would be like a 3rd card, and your PSU would probably not handle it, 750-Watt is the minimum to run a 6990.

3) Yes, your CPU is going to bottleneck the card, this is why I would suggest you overclock the CPU too to minimize the bottleneck effect. I don't think it will make the card run "crappy" as you said, but just not unleash it's full potential that's all. Personally, I don't like dual-card solutions like the 6990 or the 790, because of the heat and noise, etc... If I were you I'd pick a single card instead.
 
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keffit

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Same gen and model is for crossfire. I don't want to run Crossfire. I'm aware the 6990 is effectively running in crossfire on its own. I have two pci-e slots, can i have the 6990 in one running as default output, the 4870 in the other but not active unless i want to swap over to it from the 6990 if it isnt handling software too old for it. Is that possible?

I agree about the duals. I never would have bought one new. It is only because it is being offered 2nd hand very cheap that it is being considered.
 
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Kari

Kari

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Jun 16, 2004
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previously you could disable the second gpu on a dual card via the graphic driver for those few games that had issues with crossfire and run them with just a single chip, it would make it perform like a 6970, but it would run smoothly anyways. Recently they say amd has removed this functionality from the control center, but you can still overcome this by running the games in windowed mode (borderless window will work as well) to get the same effect. The card will only use 1 chip to run stuff in windowed mode by default.

Also amd is preparing to release a driver that will fix alot of crossfire related performance problems later this month.

but for 50AUS I'd say it is a good deal considering you have the psu to run it.
 
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Solution
K

keffit

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Jan 15, 2012
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That is very useful information, thankyou :D
 
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K

keffit

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lmao. Worry not, it's not a scam. They upgraded to two 7990's recently and thought I might be interested in the 6990 card ;) The hdmi adapter is going to cost me more than the card by the look of things.
 
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