Considering video card options for a gaming rig - 5870, 5870x2?

[CalcProgrammer1]

Get a 5870 with the reference cooler. The reference cooler is the one that ATi designed and works very well. I have my 5870 at max clocks (900/1300) and with the fan at 50% it stays around 60-61C full load. The reference cooler looks like the Batmobile as referenced by this picture:

I got the Diamond HD5870 and it works well, but any manufacturer that has the reference design will work as they're all the same card. Some of the other cards that don't use the reference design have different power/voltage controllers and sometimes these aren't as good.

This is the one I got, looks to be the cheapest 5870 with reference design:
Newegg.com - DIAMOND 5870PE51G Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFire Supported Video Card w/ATI Eyefinity

My i7 930 is at 4.1GHz with a Corsair H50 self-contained water cooler. It stays around 60C as well and my case is the Antec Nine Hundred, a pretty good case in terms of airflow. I have a side fan blowing out which takes some of the heat off the GPU.

 

[LetJimiTakeOver]

If I was you I'd go for the 5870 V2. The card that I have.

It's apparently 17% cooler than the reference design, which allows for safer overclocking/longer card life. And it's only 10$ more than the card Calc suggested. And just noticed you can get a 20$ rebate. So works out 10 cheaper overall.

It also looks better IMO

Newegg.com - ASUS EAH5870/2DIS/1GD5/V2 Radeon HD 5870 (Cypress XT) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card



Also, Calc I have a question for you. Did you notice much of a performance difference after your card was OC'd? The reason I ask is because I haven't overclocked anything yet and when playing Crysis my FPS drops to the late 20s in places. And I'd really like to keep them above 30. Playing on max settings, with 8xAA and at 1600x900 res. BTW.

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

I think the reference design looks better, it's a full enclosure and I like how it hides the PCB entirely except for the PCIe connector. That cooler may have more airflow due to the full vent but you sacrifice a DVI port to get it and if you want a full Eyefinity setup that one limits you to single-link monitors (not a huge deal since few people will ever Eyefinity 3 dual link monitors, but it's something to consider). Plus I don't like the idea of stressing the HDMI port with a bulky connector with a DVI cable and heavy cord hanging out of it.

The other thing is does it have the Volterra voltage regulator? Apparently that part of the original reference design is the only one that allows voltage changes for more overclocking.

As for the overclocking it isn't a huge difference but it seems to have sped up folding a bit. I did it whenever people were running the Final Fantasy Online benchmark just to see if I could compete with the GTX480 but it did slightly improve my score. I need to run 3DMark again. As for gaming I usually game while folding which kind of messes with FPS, if I'm playing for a longer period of time I'll turn it off to get the best frame rates.

 

[LetJimiTakeOver]

Yes it has a voltage tweak option which allows you to bring the voltage up to 1.35v. It's done within a piece of software called Asus SmartDoctor.

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

Looking at my Folding@Home run right now the overclocking seems to have made a significant increase. I was doing 1% every 2 minutes but right now it seems to be running 1% a minute. I think it's a smaller work unit that I'm running right now but it's still noticeably faster. In the past 14 minutes it has done 14%. I need to re-run Crysis with these settings but I really don't play Crysis, just ran the demo for graphics testing, mainly play Team Fortress 2 and Oblivion on 3 monitors.

 

[LetJimiTakeOver]

Cool. Let us know if it makes a difference in game.

 

[706]

What do you mean by single link or dual link monitors? In order to eyefinity 3 monitors do I need one in each dvi port and another in the HDMI port, or do you use some sort of 2 to 1 or 3 to 1 DVI plug? If so, does such a plug come with it? I don't know if I would use it as my standard set up but I would like to at least try eyefinity sometime.

The larger vent is rather tempting. I'm an Aussie so I can't order from newegg, but I'm sure I can find these models down here for an alright price.

 

[CalcProgrammer1]

To do Eyefinity you ABSOLUTELY MUST have one monitor on the DisplayPort connector. If your monitor doesn't have a DisplayPort input (most don't) then you need an active adapter. An active adapter converts a DisplayPort signal into either VGA or DVI.

For instance, most monitors support DVI, HDMI, and VGA. I have 3 such monitors (Dell ST2210) and want to connect all 3 to my 5870. The best solution is to connect 2 of them with DVI cables and use an active adapter for the third. The HDMI port cannot be used if the 2 DVI ports are in use because the HD5870 can only generate 2 DVI/HDMI/VGA signals at a time. The third signal generator only outputs DisplayPort signals and thus you need an adapter.

I chose a VGA adapter because they're only $20-25 while a DisplayPort to DVI (active) adapter costs over $100. A passive adapter will not work as it does not use a DisplayPort signal.