Which grapics card setup? 4850 CF vs. others

[hhahaahyea]

EDIT: i accidentally changed the poll and it erased all the results the 4850X2 was winning, with the 4850s in crossfire in second and the 4870 in third.
so please vote! thanks!



i'm thinking of getting a 4850 crossfire setup, recently posted and found a great motherboard for it.

but with the 4870X2 and the 4850X2 (?) coming out soon, what do i do?
prices will drop and the 4850X2 will probably run better than 2 4850s in crossfire.

i'm looking to spend around $350 on my cards
i can save some money on a motherboard if i don't go the crossfire route, but will the 4850X2 be a lot more than 2 4850s?
or would it actually be cheaper?



also does anyone have any new news on the 4850X2, becuase i have seen anythign definite.
i hear the 4870X2 should be out in about 2 weeks...


Thanks

 

[rilez]

what kinds of games do you want to run? Crysis?


I would go for the 4870X2. it will be more than enough for crysis. with one 4870 pulling 30 average FPS, I can just imagine what processors on one card can do. And even if you don't want to run crysis it will run games like UT3, COD4, and HL2 very very smoothly. I'm not sure if it will be under 350$. If not, go for the 4870 which is once again the best bang for your buck. Might not perform as well in crysis but it will be fine UT3, COD4, GoW, HL2... etc.

 

[hhahaahyea]

well at the moment i have one 4850 that got around 30 fps in crysis on very high settings. the 4870X2 will be around 500 dollars though, which is too much. i'm more interested in the 4850X2, whenever that will be.

and my 4850 is on a pcie1.0 motherboard which is bottlenecking it somewhat. and i can already max out cod4 with one 4850. so i'm not too worried about that...

 

[WR2]

and my 4850 is on a pcie1.0 motherboard which is bottlenecking it somewhat

How did you figure that out?

 

[Slobogob]

How did you figure that out?

It's not the newest, hottest and fastest, so it must be bottlenecking.

On a more serious note, i second that question.

 

[hhahaahyea]

i looked at a bunch of reviews of pcie2.0 x8 vs x16

i learned there is some benefit between 2.0 x8 vs 2.0 x16
it isn't double, but maybe 10-15 fps depending on the games.

also i learned that pcie2 x8 = pcie1 x16.
someone else on the forums told me before that he has more than 10 GB/sec (forget the numbers exactly) bandwidth with his 2.0 motherboard.

so basically i came to the conclusion that i should get a pcie2.0 motherboard that runs crossfire in dual x16. it's not that much more money and soon drivers/games will support/require it, so why not? it'll last me longer.

it's like if you buy a car and you get a 6 speed and you only use the first four gears.

so it comes down to...
what card?
vote please!

 

[dos1986]

Start off with the best single card you can afford, then take it from there.

Dont get webbed into the multi gpu.

 

[hhahaahyea]

yeah that's what i thought...but the 4800 series scales pretty well.

does anyone know anything about release dates/prices for the 4850X2?

 

[WR2]

i looked at a bunch of reviews of pcie2.0 x8 vs x16

i learned there is some benefit between 2.0 x8 vs 2.0 x16
it isn't double, but maybe 10-15 fps depending on the games.

also i learned that pcie2 x8 = pcie1 x16.
someone else on the forums told me before that he has more than 10 GB/sec (forget the numbers exactly) bandwidth with his 2.0 motherboard.

so basically i came to the conclusion that i should get a pcie2.0 motherboard that runs crossfire in dual x16. it's not that much more money and soon drivers/games will support/require it, so why not? it'll last me longer.

You maybe drawing the wrong conclusions from the PCI-2 x8 x16 CFX comparisons when it comes to just a single card.
Did you see any reviews of a HD 4850 on PCI-e 2.0 x16 vs HD 4850 on PCI-e 1.0 x16?
What resolution is your monitor?

 

[hhahaahyea]

1440x900 is the most i can support at the moment.

because i had an 8600 GTXXX before, which sucked.

but it can't hurt to get a 2.0 x16/x16 motherboard. it's only around 50 dollars more.
i'm tired of buying shoddy motherboards and not being able to upgrade my graphics card to anythign decent in 2 years w/o upgrading everything. had this problem with the agp to pcie jump when i was building really cheap systems.
but i'm surprised at how ridiculously little the bandwidth mattered.
that was good to know.


EDIT:i'm not sure if my board is pcie1.1 or 1.0, though, now that i think of it. but it couldn't hurt to get a solid motherboard becuase...


in the next year who knows how pcie 2.0 will be used, right?

mostly i'm concerned with what graphics card to get now.

 

[aevm]

Can you wait until the 4870X2 is released and reviewed and we know its price?

My two favorite options at this point would be:

4870X2 ($?) + GA-EP43-DS3L ($100)
4850 (two of them) ($320 total, plus 2*shipping) + GA-X48-DS4 ($225)

The first version has a lot less features in the MB (no RAID, for example) but it will be faster. And who knows, it might be cheaper too. Wait and see.

I'm voting against the 4850X2 just because I have no idea when it will show up. Also rejecting nVidia cards at this point because they have major quality issues. Let them fix those first.

Edit: I'm not voting, because you don't have an option in the poll for (4870X2+cheap MB with one PCI-E 2 slot). That will be your best option, if the 4870X2 is under $500.

 

[WR2]

+1 for aevm's solution
or if you already have a PCI-e 1.1 x16 motherboard you can even skip the motherboard upgrade for now.

 

[hhahaahyea]

the 4870X2 is aimed at around 500 dollars (i've read on multiple websites and seen some reviews in which it crushed the GTX280) which is just too much for me at the moment. i tried to keep the poll full of cards that won't be more than $350...

but i'm mostly interested in the 4850X2 or the 4850 crossfire route.

i like the motherboard aevm recommended previously
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813130136
for the crossfire idea.

does anyone have any updates for the 4850X2??

 

[WR2]

What motherboard and CPU are you using now?

 

[hhahaahyea]

right now i have an 5600+ X2 on a ECS 6100PM-M2

kinda crappy motherboard, but i got the cpu/mobo for 100 about 3 months ago so it was a good deal.

looks like just a pci-e 1.0?
http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Products/ProductsDetail.aspx?detailid=857&CategoryID=1&DetailName=Specification&MenuID=1&LanID=0

 

[WR2]

It's an AM2/AM2+ motherboard so its almost certain to be PCI-e 1.1
Yes its a budget motherboard - but your CPU isnt that bad.
[:wr2:2] I think a X2 5600+ @ 2.9Ghz and 4850 would be a decent match for your 1440x900 monitor.

In any case if you give the 4850 a test run and you find you're not happy with the performance - you can move the 4850 over into what ever MB you happen to get.

In short - there is no down side to getting a 4850 now and holding off on the MB for a bit longer.

 

[hhahaahyea]

yeah haha that's exactly what i did.

my 4850 ran crysis on very high at around 30fps.

i returned it though because i found it cheaper online, so i'm waiting until i can sell my comptuer to upgrade it all, which is when i'll be going for a 4850X2 or crossfire setup.