Can't figure out which graphics card to get

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nVidia has SLI but you have to make sure your motherboard is compatible. Intel's chipsets usually support both CrossFire and SLI, but AMD's chipsets are CrossFire only. To run SLI on an AMD processor you need a motherboard with an nVidia chipset (these are SLI only, they do not have CrossFire support).

As far as the HD5830 goes, Cypress is the high-end ATi chipset used in the 58xx cards. It is the processor behind the 5830, 5850, and 5870 as well as the 5970 (which has 2 Cypress chips). The Juniper is the next highest which powers the 57xx cards. Most manufacturers make chipsets for product lines and not individual products because of quality control issues in the manufacturing process. If only 70% of the Cypress chips that come off the manufacturing line have all 1600 shader processors working, normally they would have to discard the other 30%. However, they have devised lower product line models to use these "defective" chips. They simply use a hardware mask to disable the defective shaders and sell it as a lower model. This means that a 5830 has the exact same chip that the 5870 has only with some parts disabled. In some cases you may be able to "unlock" these extra units with a BIOS modification or other hack and make your 5830 into a 5870. To be fair, this also applies to nVidia GPU's as they do much the same thing with their product lines.
 
nVidia has SLI but you have to make sure your motherboard is compatible. Intel's chipsets usually support both CrossFire and SLI, but AMD's chipsets are CrossFire only. To run SLI on an AMD processor you need a motherboard with an nVidia chipset (these are SLI only, they do not have CrossFire support).

As far as the HD5830 goes, Cypress is the high-end ATi chipset used in the 58xx cards. It is the processor behind the 5830, 5850, and 5870 as well as the 5970 (which has 2 Cypress chips). The Juniper is the next highest which powers the 57xx cards. Most manufacturers make chipsets for product lines and not individual products because of quality control issues in the manufacturing process. If only 70% of the Cypress chips that come off the manufacturing line have all 1600 shader processors working, normally they would have to discard the other 30%. However, they have devised lower product line models to use these "defective" chips. They simply use a hardware mask to disable the defective shaders and sell it as a lower model. This means that a 5830 has the exact same chip that the 5870 has only with some parts disabled. In some cases you may be able to "unlock" these extra units with a BIOS modification or other hack and make your 5830 into a 5870. To be fair, this also applies to nVidia GPU's as they do much the same thing with their product lines.


Wow thats pretty awesome, I never knew lower models were made like that and the part about unlocking the extra units makes me anxious to do it but I bet it theres a pretty high chance the card would stop working. Learn something knew everday :eek:. But still can't wait for more benchmarks on the new 460 that came out..another card to add to my list of which graphics card to get =\.

Also SLI vs crossfire which one is the better choice?
 
SLI vs Crossfire...they're pretty much the same. One's for nVidia and the other's for ATi but it really depends on the GPU's either way. The technologies employed are pretty similar, both SLI and CrossFire have different frame rendering modes (alternate frame rendering, split frame rendering, etc) and work with multiple GPU's.

As far as motherboard support goes CrossFire may be better if you are going with a budget build, SLI is only available on AMD boards if they have an nVidia chipset. If you're going with an Intel CPU then both CrossFire and SLI are supported on most boards, but with AMD CPU's the standard boards only support CrossFire. Both technologies employ a "bridge" connector that goes between the tops of the graphics cards and increases the bandwidth between them.

As far as the unlocking of units goes, it's really a game of luck. Your card may have a perfectly good chip that has been locked or you may unlock a bunch of defective units. In most cases you will see errors in gaming with the defective units and can simply disable them again to fix it, but there's always some risk involved with modifications. I unlocked some extra units on my friend's 8400M GS laptop card and gaming showed some improvement but not much. The hardware tweaks are easier on nVidia boards because of RivaTuner.
 
Hey tenki, just thought I'd say that I had ordered my 5870 woop! It does better than the 480 GTX in Crysis and 3dmark so i'm happy about that and it consumes way less power and doesn't make so much heat, GL with choosing your card ;)
 
SLI vs Crossfire...they're pretty much the same. One's for nVidia and the other's for ATi but it really depends on the GPU's either way. The technologies employed are pretty similar, both SLI and CrossFire have different frame rendering modes (alternate frame rendering, split frame rendering, etc) and work with multiple GPU's.

As far as motherboard support goes CrossFire may be better if you are going with a budget build, SLI is only available on AMD boards if they have an nVidia chipset. If you're going with an Intel CPU then both CrossFire and SLI are supported on most boards, but with AMD CPU's the standard boards only support CrossFire. Both technologies employ a "bridge" connector that goes between the tops of the graphics cards and increases the bandwidth between them.

As far as the unlocking of units goes, it's really a game of luck. Your card may have a perfectly good chip that has been locked or you may unlock a bunch of defective units. In most cases you will see errors in gaming with the defective units and can simply disable them again to fix it, but there's always some risk involved with modifications. I unlocked some extra units on my friend's 8400M GS laptop card and gaming showed some improvement but not much. The hardware tweaks are easier on nVidia boards because of RivaTuner.

Nvidia and ati are more alike than I ever imagined, lol. I guess I'll probably just stay with crossfire and forget about nvidia, especially since I'm on a budget and really want crossfire. As far as modding/ modifying I think I'll stay away especially since I have really bad luck lol.

Hey tenki, just thought I'd say that I had ordered my 5870 woop! It does better than the 480 GTX in Crysis and 3dmark so i'm happy about that and it consumes way less power and doesn't make so much heat, GL with choosing your card ;)

Congrats on picking =D, hope it works flawlessly for ya and thanks for the luck =]!
 
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