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Will I benefit fully from a pair of Radeon 5850's on my setup

Last response: in Graphics & Displays
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Hey guys, question for everyone. Any help is greatly appreciated.


My build as follows:

Gigabyte EX58a UD5 mother board

Intel i7 920 (standard, not overclocked yet)

Zalman 120mm CPU Cooler 9900

Windows 7 64 bit home premium

HP 25" 1080p monitor 2509m

Lifetime 12gig ddr ram 1333mhz

XFX Radeon 5850 black edition ( an overclocked version of the regular 5850 )

WD 1 TB Black 7200rpm HD

Antec 750 watt earth power supply

Antec 900 tower


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So heres my question:

I obviously have a single Radeon 5850 right now. Im thinking of going the crossfire route and buying another this week. Ive been reading the crossfire reviews and evidently, its doing a good job pummeling a lot of videocard setups. Even surpassing the almighty GTX295 in many tests.

My CPU has not been touched yet as I don't have the slightest idea how to overclock this thing. I want it in the 3.4ghz to 3.8 range sometime this month. I will probably have a professional do it for me as Im afraid to mess with it myself for the time being. Now, will my CPU bottleneck the performance of running these 2 badass cards in crossfire the way it sits right now ? Will the overclock of my processor to say, 3.8ghz, help tremendously with this setup ? I figure I have the proper cooling in my system to pull this off right now.

Any help is greatly appreciated.


Thank you,

Arbi

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Graphics card Authority

Adding a second video card will always be an improvement (as long as there isn't a terribad bottleneck).

And if there is a game you can't run smoothly with your setup at stock speeds, I'd think about OCing your CPU, not before. Also, I'm assuming you game on 1900x1200+ res.

Cheers!

Yuka said:
Adding a second video card will always be an improvement (as long as there isn't a terribad bottleneck).

And if there is a game you can't run smoothly with your setup at stock speeds, I'd think about OCing your CPU, not before. Also, I'm assuming you game on 1900x1200+ res.

Cheers!



Oops, yes I forgot to mention. I am using a 25" 1080p HP monitor and doing all my gaming at 1920x1080 res.

Thanks for the response buddy.
Graphics card Master

Here is some benchmarks of crossfired 5870's on an i7 920 system at various clock speeds: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-h...

Often times it is the CPU that's the bottleneck, as you see the OC'ed tests continue to give more FPS, but the i7 is quite capible of being OC'ed to high levels. You'll also notice that almost all single 5870 tests show very little improvements with OCing at higher resolutions.

Here is a guide for OCing an i7 from this forum: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/253365-29-core-overcl...

The memory OCing in this artical will not give much tangable increases in performance, but the CPU increases make very noticable increases in performance when you have a CF setup.
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Graphics card Authority

I would say you dont really need two 5850s right now for most games at the 1080 resolution. Unless you play those graphic demanding games (crysis ect) another 5850 would be good in maybe a year from now, maybe more depending on how much demanding newer games will be.

I agree with paperfox, and its true that crysis would be the only game that would be over-the-top demanding in graphics (but the game isn't so great anyways). One would be good, or crossfire'd younger versions (5750,5770)

Sorry for kind of repeating myself.

bystander said:
Here is some benchmarks of crossfired 5870's on an i7 920 system at various clock speeds: http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/video/display/radeon-h...

Often times it is the CPU that's the bottleneck, as you see the OC'ed tests continue to give more FPS, but the i7 is quite capible of being OC'ed to high levels. You'll also notice that almost all single 5870 tests show very little improvements with OCing at higher resolutions.

Here is a guide for OCing an i7 from this forum: http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/253365-29-core-overcl...

The memory OCing in this artical will not give much tangable increases in performance, but the CPU increases make very noticable increases in performance when you have a CF setup.


Thank you for the useful info buddy, I really appreciate it.

arcticking said:
No offense, but that card in crossfire would only be worth it if you were gaming on a monitor OVER 1920x1200. Crossfired HD 5750s or 5770s if your still not satisfied -_-.


I see what you mean but I already have the Radeon 5850, why would I go backwards? lol.

paperfox said:
I would say you dont really need two 5850s right now for most games at the 1080 resolution. Unless you play those graphic demanding games (crysis ect) another 5850 would be good in maybe a year from now, maybe more depending on how much demanding newer games will be.


I see what you mean. I do play the crysis series games but thats not all I play. I definitely play other games. Like Battlefield Bad Company 2 that releases tomorrow.

arcticking said:
I agree with paperfox, and its true that crysis would be the only game that would be over-the-top demanding in graphics (but the game isn't so great anyways). One would be good, or crossfire'd younger versions (5750,5770)

Sorry for kind of repeating myself.


No its fine, I see where you guys are coming from. I may just end up holding off. I mean the only place that even sells the XFX Radeon 5850 black edition is Newegg. Well, at least the only place I can find it and its sold out right now.
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