Need advice: 2 x Sapphire HD 5830 in Crossfire on Corsair 650W TX Seri

[Andy_S]

Hi,

In short, my questions are:

1. Can I run two Sapphire HD 5830 1GB GDDR5 cards in Crossfire on a Corsair 650W TX Series PSU?
2. I'd read some users were having freezing issues with 2 x 5830's in Crossfire. Are they the minority or is this a common problem?
3. Finally, how do you know if a game is able to take advantage of 2 cards in Crossfire?

My setup is:
-LG W2486L 24-inch Wide LED LCD TFT Monitor. 2ms, Set at 1080p
-Asus CROSSHAIR IV FORMULA 890FX Motherboard
-AMD Phenom II X6 1055T 2.8GHz Crucial 4GB (2x2GB) DDR3 1333MHz/PC3-10600
-Sapphire HD 5830 1GB GDDR5
-Corsair 650W TX Series PSU
-OCZ 60GB Vertex 2E SSD 2.5" SATA-II Read 285MB/s Write 275MB/s
-Samsung HD103SJ Spinpoint F3 1TB Hard Drive SATAII 7200rpm 32MB Cache
-Antec 300 Three Hundred Case
-Samsung SH-B083L 8x BD-ROM with DVD±RW DL & RAM SATA Blu-Ray Drive
-Samsung SH-D163C 16x DVD-ROM CD-R SATA Optical Drive
-Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro rev 2

I dip in and out of gaming and have been out of games for a good 5 years (wife, kids and a naff off the shelf PC did that). I built this new PC with probably an hours research (busy life and a dead computer forced quick ordering!) having not looked at components for a good few years. Now I've got it I bought a couple of games and my enthusiasm has been rejuvenated!

I'm now interested in taking my graphics to the next level to get a smoother appearance at maxed out settings.

If I can't get away with the extra graphics card on the current PSU, I might knock it on the head as I've already spend a little more than I planned on the above machine!

I'm currently playing Mass Effect 2 and Call of Duty, Modern Warfare (which came free with the graphics card).

Thanks for the advice,

Andy

 

[notty22]

TH , did a similar build in their builders marathon series. Two 5830's, 650 corsair psu
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/overclock-cpu-gpu,2655.html

 

[Andy_S]

Interesting TH did this. I guess that as they've both made it, and overclocked it, shows the PSU can handle the power.#
Cheers,
Andy

 

[unknown_13]

U should have brought gtx 460 and then sli it to get gtx 480 performance.Anyway since u already brought it i believe ur psu is enough to crossfire them.

+1 to the 2 GTX460's. Absolutely no reason to buy 2 5830's when 2 GTX460's have such a great value.

 

[Mousemonkey]

+1 to the 2 GTX460's. Absolutely no reason to buy 2 5830's when 2 GTX460's have such a great value.

Other than the little fact of having a Crossfire motherboard.

 

[unknown_13]

Other than the little fact of having a Crossfire motherboard.

Oh, i didn't see that.... :lol:

 

[Andy_S]

Thanks all. I guess my setup is what it is and I'm not experienced enough to ever be totally sure I've made the right choices.
I'm just trying to get the most out of my kit, so I think I'll give the extra 5830 a punt.
Any users running this setup? I'd be interested to hear if anyone has encountered the freezing issues or had no issues with the current drivers. Also I'd be interested to know if the games I'm playing will benifit from a Crossfire setup before I part with £135.

 

[Mousemonkey]

Oh, i didn't see that.... :lol:

No worries, it happens to the best of us.

Thanks all. I guess my setup is what it is and I'm not experienced enough to ever be totally sure I've made the right choices.
I'm just trying to get the most out of my kit, so I think I'll give the extra 5830 a punt.
Any users running this setup? I'd be interested to hear if anyone has encountered the freezing issues or had no issues with the current drivers. Also I'd be interested to know if the games I'm playing will benifit from a Crossfire setup before I part with £135.

These days there are very few titles that don't use dual cards, be Crossfire or SLi.

 

[Andy_S]

These days there are very few titles that don't use dual cards, be Crossfire or SLi.

Cool. I'd like to think that the freezing issues are an early driver/ minority issue as so many people talk about setting these up in Crossfire. On that basis I'll just go for it.

Thanks

 

[unknown_13]

No worries, it happens to the best of us.

These days there are very few titles that don't use dual cards, be Crossfire or SLi.

Yes games have been optimized very well for sli & xfire support nova days. Don't worry 'bout that
And also the driver problems with xfire & the 5xxx series are long gone.

 

[Andy_S]

Best answer selected by andy_s.

 

[Andy_S]

Just in case any one else is thinking of doing the same as me, I've been running the two cards in crossfirex for a couple of weeks now. No stability issues and the graphics are very smooth with increased FRAPS. I had a couple of issues with Dirt 2 crashing/ freezing, but some recent driver releases solved those problems. I've not had a decent PC for years and I'm lovin' this now!

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey