Two HD 5870's would be faster than a single HD 5970?

ambam

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Someone said having Two HD 5870's in CrossfireX would actually be slightly faster than a single HD 5970? Is this true?

The HD 5870's have come down in price quite a bit since they were first released. Most models are now below $400. If I were to buy Two HD 5870's which brand would you recommend?

Some brands like Sapphire and MSI offer better coolers, factory overclocking, free software.

I was looking at this GIGABYTE HD 5870 with a 2oz copper PCB and Two cooling fans and a slight overclock.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125326&cm_re=hd_5870-_-14-125-326-_-Product

Is an 850W PSU enough for Two HD 5870's in CrossfireX? Should I go for a 1KW?
 

ambam

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So having Two of the GIGABYTE HD 5870's linked in the OP would be maybe 10-15% faster than a single HD 5970?

What PSU would you recommend for Two HD 5870's? I've got a Corsair TX850 850W. Is that enough?

Should I wait until December for the HD 6xxx series? Or buy these graphics cards now?
 
Probably about 10% faster. The 850TX will be plenty to handle two 5870s, a good 750W unit could do it. If you need the GPU power now i would get it now, not wait until december, we have no idea how the 6xxx series will perform relative to the 5xxx series so it might or might not be worth the wait.
 

ambam

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Will the Core i7 quad cores bottleneck the HD 6xxx? Do we have to wait until the 6-8 core sandy bridge to properly run the 6000's?
 
A CPU limit with any modern CPU will be pretty insignificant, the performance difference between an i5 760 and an i7 980X isnt very much, adding more cores certainly wont reduce it any farther. You definitely dont need to wait until Sandy Bridge comes out, there are many i3's that would be able to handle 8x/8x crossfire with only a minor performance hit.
 

ambam

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When games start using Six and Eight cores/threads, will hyper-threading of quad cores like the current Ci7 lineup bridge that gap?

A core i7 will not bottleneck the next generation of GPU's like the HD 6xxx and GTX 5xx? Even in CF/SLI?