4870 standard and a x2 running in crossfire

[lawrie34]

hi guys, i have just ordered a new system and it will arive in roughly one week.
origionally i was looking at 2 4870's in crossfire, but i decided to hold off and purchase one in order to see some oficial stats on the 4870x2.

I was origionally planning to sell the standard card and just running the 4870x2, but now that i have the system comming, and available funds i was thinking about buying the new card and running it in crossfire.

how will the two different cards run together, will there be a significant increase over the single 4870x2. Also im running a zalman 850w psu, will this be enough?

 

[San Pedro]

Hard to say. There hasn't been any tri-crossfire benchmarks using an x2 and a regular 4870.

What resolution are you running? That much horsepower will be greater appreciated at higher resolutions.

 

[lawrie34]

truth be told im currently running a couple of 20" monitors, but i am really thinking about upgrading to a single 24", mainly just for a size increase. I have always been having the res slightly lower aslong as i can hammer the detail way up. im thinking the single 4870x2 will be sufficient, either that or i could buy another 4870 and crossfire. hard decisions..

 

[lawrie34]

anymore feedback on the orginal Q would be greatly appreciated if anyone knows much about this yet

 

[The_Blood_Raven]

If I remember correctly, a 3870 and a 3870 X2 in crossfire scaled well enough to actually justify the cost of the 3870. I know it is a different architecture, but I doubt the drivers for it will be worse, rather I believe they may be even better.

 

[ovaltineplease]

4870 should work fine with the 4870x2 by all rights - the only thing you should consider is whether the clocks match on the 4870 to the 4870x2

So you might need to do a tiny OC on your 4870 to match it, but it should be a non issue to do this I would think.

 

[lawrie34]

so would it recognise it as three seperate cores, or would it scale down the greater of the cards to the other's level?

 

[atomicWAR]

i run two systems with tri crossfire though be it with the old 3800 series with an X2 and a standard 3870. i get get really goood scores and frame rates at high res with all the eye candy i imagine the 4800 will be the same story

 

[lawrie34]

for the res i will be running to begin with, I think the one card will be sufficient, but if the tri-fire is a good fit i think i would upgrade for the larger monitor. does anyone know a release date of the x2?

 

[ovaltineplease]

it'll count it as 3 gpus.

 

[lawrie34]

im getting a zalman 850w psu, will that be beefy enough to run the two cards?

 

[Annisman]

I've got the Zalman 850 W Power supply and have been wondering the same question. It is a VERY nice power supply, Zalman really did a great job on it, but I know that the power req. of the 4870 and the 4870X2 will be quite high. The Zalman 850 W is 9800GX2 "Quad SlI" certified, so it certainly can handle alot. Hopefully it will maintain Tri Xfire. Anandtech just did a review on the 850, which ended up being a quite favorable conclusion. Also, Anandtech just reviewed some low,mid,and high range Power supplys and the Zalman 850 is considered a great buy for the high end users. I have seen alot of Zalman power supply haters on these forums and I have no idea why. Try the dam thing before you bash it, I love mine.

http://www.anandtech.com/casecoolingpsus/showdoc.aspx?i=3359&p=4 This is the link to one article, I am having trouble getting the other one to work.