6850 Crossfire on a 4ghz E8500 system

wangman

Distinguished
Dec 15, 2010
14
0
18,510
Was holding out for the 69XX series but from what I can see in the reviews bang for buck CF 6850s are where its at

Am currently running an overclocked 4870 1gb with a E8500 @ 4ghz with 1600mhz DDR3 ram

Was hopeing to get another year or so out of the CPU before I went a whole new sandy bridge setup

Was wondering if the E8500 is going to be a major bottelneck with these 2 cards?

Games I play are @ 1920 x 1080 and I like the eye candy turned to full or as high as I can crank it and get ok FPS

Titels I play/ want to

Modern warefare 2
Fallout new vegas
Hawx 2
Bad company 2
Starcraft 2

Wondering if anyone has tried out the E8500 with CF 6850s

Cheers

Stu
 

wangman

Distinguished
Dec 15, 2010
14
0
18,510
Oh one more thing to throw into the works, at the moment I can pick up factory oc 5850s for $246 each so thats $492 for the pair

otherwise factory oc 6850s are $226 each so $452 for the pair

Just so you all know im in Australia and we seem to pay more than those of you in the US even though our $ is pretty much the same @ the moment

One other thing to considor my PSU is is a Thermaltake 750W

at the moment my 4870 heats up my room like an oven in summer, im guessing that a pair of the 6850s is going to run cooler than a pair of 5850s

Im thinking that a single 5850 should beat single 6850, but it seems that the 6850s scale a lot better than the older 5850s in CF which is why im thinking that the 6850s may be a better choice?
 

wangman

Distinguished
Dec 15, 2010
14
0
18,510
On a side note 6870s go for around $290 - 350+ down here

I figure the overclocking headroom/price of the 6850 makes up and then some for the performance gain of the 6870 when ill be paying at least $128 more for 6870s without that much gain if the 6850s oced
 

Yes,OC'ng the 6850 will give you roughly the same performance of 6870(with a good cooler)
 

wangman

Distinguished
Dec 15, 2010
14
0
18,510
Ill be going the Gigabyte 6850 which has a pretty sweet cooler setup, dont know if ill crack the 1ghz but 900 should still be sweet enough particually when running 2 of them in crossfire.

malmental im going ATI cus my board only supports CF not sli, Nvidia 460 starts @ $188 and goes up to $296

Best prices in AUS for hardware are usualy gamedude.com.au or umart.com.au I usualy go to Umart as they are closer to where I live