Is it worth it to upgrade from a 5850 at the moment?

[mriviecc]

For the most part I've been pretty happy with the performance I've gotten over the past year with my current build along with the current vid card that's in there now? Is it worth it to upgrade from my current 5850 at the moment? I have been thinking about adding a second monitor as I mainly use my rig for flight simulations and do play the occasional FPS.

 

[wolfram23]

The easiest upgrade would be a second 5850 for crossfire. The performance is very good. For single card upgrades, well, I don't think it would be worth it unless you get a 570, 580, or 6970. A second 5850 would obviously be a lot cheaper. There's all kinds of reviews on CF 5850s.

 

[mriviecc]

I was thinking about doing this, since the prices have come down with the HD6x cards now on the market. Could I lower my timings on my current 5850 (it a vapor-x edition card)to match default timings on a stock 5850 and run them in crossfire successfully?

 

[wolfram23]

Technically you wouldn't have to change anything, but really the best option would be to overclock the stock one. I have my two Sapphire 5850s running at 870 core 1200 memory no problem (stock voltage).

But yeah you can pair any two 5850s.

Here's some benchmarks I ran, so you can see what sort of improvements you might get:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/289809-33-single-5850-furmark-crysis-stalker-dirt

 

[mriviecc]

Best answer selected by mriviecc.

 

[mriviecc]

Technically you wouldn't have to change anything, but really the best option would be to overclock the stock one. I have my two Sapphire 5850s running at 870 core 1200 memory no problem (stock voltage).

But yeah you can pair any two 5850s.

Here's some benchmarks I ran, so you can see what sort of improvements you might get:
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/289809-33-single-5850-furmark-crysis-stalker-dirt

I'm sure this is a stupid question, but does the aftermarket brand matter when pairing two 5850's. Can I use my sapphire along with one from XFX for example? Thanks.. really appreciate it.

 

[wolfram23]

I'm sure this is a stupid question, but does the aftermarket brand matter when pairing two 5850's. Can I use my sapphire along with one from XFX for example? Thanks.. really appreciate it.

As far as I know yes you can. I don't think I've heard of there being issues from that.

The only wierd thing that can happen is if their clocks are different. I've heard that the "master" card (ie: one on top) will force the 2nd card to match it's clocks whether higher or lower. However, I'm not so sure it does that because I've set one or the other of my cards to different clocks and ran tests, and they didn't switch clocks at all.

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey