Crossfire Power Question

[david1983]

Hi! I upgraded my computer last year and am now looking to add a second graphics card in Crossfire mode to boost performance. Firstly, before I do, am I right in assuming a second graphics card should increase the frame rate in games etc?

secondly, does my system have enough power to support a second card? The card I'd be getting is a Powercolor HD6850 PCS+ as I already have one of them.

The rest of my system is:

Antec HCG-620W PSU
Asus P5Q Pro Turbo motherboard
Core 2 Quad 9650 (3.0GHz)
Powercolor HD6850 PCS+
Asus Xonar DX sound card
Liteon DVD/RW

Will my PSU have enough power to run two HD6850s? I'm also hoping to get atwo new HDDs (one fast for OS & games and one slower for documents etc).

Thanks in advance for your advice! David

 

[striker410]

Your PSU will be just fine. It's a very high quality model, you shouldn't have any problems. Your CPU might bottleneck the pair though.

 

[ricardois]

If the psu is this one:
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Antec/HCG-620/1.html
Yes, this is indeed a good PSU and can handle a 6850 SLI it has 2 6 pin conectors, so you will not need any converters, and it can deliver its labelled wattage, but i recommend you running both video card, at default speeds, if you overclock them you can get to the PSU high usage, and this psu does have some instability on the voltage testings when at stress.

But yes psu should handle.

You motherboard does have 2x pci-e 16x slot that works in crossfire at (8x) so yes your motherboard also supports it.

about the cards make sure you match memory size, and when Crossfiring it is recommended to synchronize both with same frequencies avoiding some Crossfire problems, if they are both the same, you don't need to worry about that.

But it looks like it will work very well, and yes crossfire will improve performance, how much? this is relative, each game, each settings, each driver can change those values...