Two 4870's in crossfire or 4870X2

Besides the price, would you say the performance increase is about the same?

The reason I ask this, I heard that the X2 really just utilizes 1g since it's dual gpu. That's why I was thinking the memory would be better used if I bought two 4870's..

Memory
Memory Clock 3.6GHz ( 900MHz DDR5 )
Memory Size 2GB
Memory Interface 512-bit
Memory Type GDDR5


confused

They "have" 2Gb, but since each GPU has to have the same copy, they only have 1Gb of memory for practical/performance purposes. The same is true of 2+ cards in crossfire, too, though. The VRAM is copied for each GPU/card, so you have as much memory as is on the lowest card (as far as performance is considered).

yes, its 2 gigs on the card. but its 1 gig per pcb, the card companies just advertise it as 2 gigs because technically there is 2 gigs on the board, just not both used together....its like dual core CPUs, generally they are used as an individual core, not as a core added with the previous one (2.0 ghz dual core doesn't = 4.0 ghz, its equals 2.0 ghz and 2.0 ghz.)

Just like the 9800 GX2 says 1 gig, but its actually 512

Usually when I'm faced with this, I wait.
Such as get the 1 gig 4870 if that's good enough, then wait a year for a much better card - better than a 4870 X2. This will stretch your dollar.
If you need the X2 power now, then just get a X2 rather than two (1 gig 4870s). I think the X2 uses less power and only 1 PCIe slot.
So, basically the X2 or two 4870s are expensive.

Get one 4870. If you really need two, get a second one, not a 4870X2. That way, if you run into compatibility or driver issues, you have the option of [temporarily] taking one of them out.

haha thats so funny you bring that up... i have been researching and created topics dedicated to finding out if my 650 watt psu can hold up to cf 4870's and in my case it can... check a bunch of my threads for tons of that info.