Would 4 ATi 5850's in one computer be worth it?

[gtothegrizzle]

I have a Asus M4A79 Deluxe motherboard that supports 4x PCIe 2.0 x16 slots. I'm guessing that splits it up to a quad x8. Since the 5850's are dropping in price. Would it be worth putting in four 5850's in one computer or just 2 5850's would be enough? Are there any real benefits for using 4 GPU's and would anyone know what kind of PSU you would need to power it?

Thanks,
~GE

 

[4745454b]

Here is a thread on the matter.

http://www.overclock.net/power-supplies/960961-850w-enough-quadfire-5850-a.html

I agree with the scaling issues. What would be horrible is if you have a game with zero or horrible scaling like GTA4 or pre patched WoW, forcing you to use only a single 5850. You might want to consider something else.

 

[megamanx00]

Not really, since quad crossfire doesn't provide much over tri-crossfire, but it would be cool ^_^. First of all your motherboard has the last two PCI-E slots close together so you cant use 4 without using some kind of extension on the last slot (which would be a major pain). 5850s are dual slot cars at the minimum after all. You also have to consider that if you wanted to put that setup in a case you would need a better case. You would also need a monster PSU of at least 900W assuming you don't stress test them with furmark or something ^_^. I suppose you could get by with a good 800W PSU that had enough connections, but I wouldn't expect it to last long. I would recommend at least a 1kW PSU.

Just stick with two 5850s, game, be happy.

 

[4745454b]

If two 6950s is to much, I'd consider getting three 68xx cards. While the 6850 is slower then the 5850, when you CF them the 68xx scales better so three 6850s might perform better then four 5850s. You also won't have the issues Megaman mentioned.

 

[gtothegrizzle]

Yeah I'm between a rock and hard place with this...I bought my 5850 a year ago to this month and i'm starting to feel the current games out set on high settings are taking a toll on my card. I looked into pairing a 5870 & 5850 crossfire, but i read somewhere that would just downgrade the 5870 performance. Any advice on what you would do?

 

[4745454b]

Any advice on what you would do?

Not without system specs.

My general advice is that if you need to upgrade, upgrade. Two 5850s might be what you need, or you might need to sell your card and just go with a 6950. Depends on if the games you play scale well, your screen resolution, rest of system, etc.

 

[bazicdude]

Can't really hand you advice without knowing what you're using..

What resolution are you running? CPU?

 

[purple stain]

Usually you will only see a 8% improvement with the 3rd card depending on which card it is.Like it has been said before the 5850's are starting to become really cheap,while they are still very powerful i don't see the need to waste money in an already aging technology.

BTW you cannot tri-fire or quad crossfire with the 6850 or 6870.Thats part of AMD's marketing scheme to get people to buy the 6950's.

 

[gtothegrizzle]

Can't really hand you advice without knowing what you're using..

What resolution are you running? CPU?

Asus M4A79 Deluxe motherboard
Visiontek Radeon HD 5850 1GB DDR5 PCIe
AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition
ULTRA LS600 600W ATX POWER SUPPLY
Corsair XMS3 4GB PC10666 DDR3 Dual Channel 1333MHz

 

[gtothegrizzle]

1920X1080 resolution

 

[4745454b]

You'd need a new PSU no matter what CF setup you'd get. I still think a single 6950 is the way to go, but CF'd 6870 might be nice to.

 

[purple stain]

Get a 6950.Then when you have the cash get another one and so on and so on.You can tri-fire quad-fire with the 69xx series.Scaling is already good with crossfire on the 6xxx series.I'm curious how well it will be with tri-fire etc.

 

[4745454b]

6950 is better then a 5870. The 6870 is close to the 5870, so the 6950 must be higher. (not even considering the flashing, OC.)

 

[megamanx00]

Just get a second 5850 and Over Clock both cards. That should give you a nice boost. Since you already have a 5850 it doesn't make sense to get two newer cards since there won't be much improvement over two 5850s especially at 1080p where your CPU is more likely to be holding them back.

 

[jjb8675309]

lol hell no, drivers are bad enough for 2 cards... you really think 4 will run together well!?? I don't think so it will be a stutter/flicker/badhuefest

 

[jjb8675309]

and then down the road when you are fed up the steaming pile of gpus then you have 4 of them to sell/get rid of... before moving onto a new gpu config, also the third card in a trifire setup is usually refered to as a "nipple" basically the scaling will suck once you get down to adding the fourth card not to mention how little the third will be utilized with 5 series scaling abilities (which were not quite up to snuff with the 6 series)

 

[gtothegrizzle]

Thanks for all the recommendation peeps. I've got tough choice here to either upgrade to 69XX series card or a short term fix by adding another 5850. One thing i know for sure right now...I'm completely broke haha :-(