HD 5850 - To Crossfire? Or not to crossfire...

As someone with CF 5850s, it's totally worth it (playing 1920x1080).

I went from high settings to being able to max out any game so far (well the only exception being Metro 2033, all settings maxed except AAA instead of 4xMSAA but most cards can't handle it with DoF).

As for games supporting it, basically all games released in the last few years support CF. It's actually more of whether AMD supports the game, because you need to install Crossfire App Profiles, the most recent one added Dragon Age 2 and Crysis 2 profiles. Basically as soon as new AAA titles come out on PC they release a new CAP.

I did some of my own benchmarks when I got my 2nd card...
http://www.tomshardware.com/forum/289809-33-single-5850...

They are nice, but crossfire setups can be headache inducing.

^+1.

Get another 5850, game, be happy.

Hey guys great, great posts. Thank you so much wolfram - that's great input and I've decided to buy another card!

Now I'm wondering if you guys could give me some tips about a certain PSU I want to buy.

I have an Ultra 750W ATX power supply:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/ite...

AKA only 2 PCI-E 6 pin connectors and no Crossfire support or 80+ Certification.

I want to get the Ultra X4:

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/SearchTools/ite...

What do you guys think? Everyone hates on Ultra, but mine has been great so far. I know I'd rather have a Corsair too, but I'm on a tight budget here.


Is 750W enough to power my rig?

750 watts should be enough, and two 5850's will give you high end performance.

750W is more than enough. I'm using a Corsair 750TX with everything overclocked plus a GT240 for PhysX and a sound card and 2 HDD in RAID0 and an SSD and my case has 6 fans on top of the 4 combined fans for gpus and cpu... according to all the PSU calculators I need 708W with the safety factor and all that jazz (cap ageing and such). So yeah... 750W is fine. 5850s are actually extremely efficient cards.