crossfire.........thinkin????

[bonga]

hi,i am planning to buy another board , the intel dp45sg, a crossfire supported extreme series board,
as usual i want gaming on 17" wide screen

wud crossfire be better in this case (for playin gta 4,far cry 2,assasins creed)
i am askin of a geeral view of crossfire or sli,is it valueable ?does it give a good increase in performance???(of the games listed)

let us consider hd4670 1gb


first if i run a game on this card (gta 4) it wud give about 30 fps (mediam settings)
secondly if i run gta4 on hd4670 (in crossfire) wud there be a marked increase???

how much increasd performance,30%,50%?????




and one more thing abt CF,i have heard that the pc does not detect the cards runing in CF,wat shud one do to overcome it?(specially gpu-z)in gears of war there was no increase in performance with CF of hd 3850

 

[philbar71]

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-EP45T-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

dont go with intel boards, they tend to suck.

ad for crossfire, if you could spend a little more on a 4770 that would def be worth it. but since you are on a 17" ONE 4770 will work wonders.

and depending on CPU with a 4770 it is possible to get 30FPS on GTA IV. my rig maxes it out and the framerates averag about 40-60 depending where i am, and sometimes the FPS will dip in to the 20's

 

[Drizzt]

Honestly, with a 17" monitor your either not going to see a big improvement from crossfire, or you may even see a decrease from having a single card. Crossfire is at its best when at 1920x1200/1980x1080 and above.

Invest in a bigger and better monitor before going crossfire, if you choose to at all.

 

[baron5]

DPG is right, crossfire is useless at low res, maybe a few 5-10 extra frames in ideal situations.
The 4670 is at the lowest end for gaming budget cards, it might play medium-low on GTA IV, since i haven't played the game I'm guessing it just has poor optimization from a bad console port. Now im not sure what cpu your using but since you want both motherboard and cpu for a reasonable price you want to go with some good budget parts.
The gigabyte EP45-UD3 is a great board which is about 119 on newegg, also try pikcup a 4850 with a good rebate, the sapphire version can be had for 99 plus a further 12% off with the code supplied. Sorry i couldn't get links newegg wont load for me.

Also philbar that mobo is good but it has ddr3 and theres no real reason for him to go ddr3 especially if he has ddr2 now. I'm guessing you were just looking the EP45 series and forgot to add the non ddr3 board.

 

[philbar71]

^ whoops, your right. linked the wrong board. my bad.

Newegg.com - GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P LGA 775 Intel P45 ATX Intel Motherboard - Intel Motherboards

and a 4770 would be perfect for your resolution,

Newegg.com - XFX HD-477A-YDLC Radeon HD 4770 512MB 128-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

or for a little moar bit moneys, Newegg.com - XFX HD-485X-YDFC Radeon HD 4850 512MB 256-bit GDDR3 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card - Desktop Graphics / Video Cards

 

[Inked]

Couldn't you OC the 4770 and have it be better than the 4850 and run cooler and use less power?

 

[baron5]

The 4770 actually has a relatively high idle power consumption, but for gaming cases yes you could probably overclock it to beat a 4850 at stock, it already matches it at stock in some cases. Overclocking results seems to be limited because reviews have been using CCC to overclock so how far it will go im not sure. But keep in myind the 4850 overclocks quite well too, its prob better to grab a 4770 i guess, if your gonna spend extra that you would go a 4870 or something.

 

[zmatt]

I wouldn't recommend going multi card on a monitor as small as that. You should be fine with a 4850.