i'm thinking of changing my HD4870 1Gb to a single slot HD4870X2 2Gb solution as it looks like its gonna be the best option for higher res stuff for around £200

 

my question is... will any pci-e x16 single slot board support one of these or does it have to be a crossfire board?

 

if it's any use I have an Asus P5QC board

TIA

hi mate,

 

I was crossfiring 2 HD4870's before upgrading. Personally although i always wanted to do crossfire it works out more expensive as you would ideally want to upgrade two cards at a time. I found that a HD4870x2 would be a better setup as you can just slot them into any PCI x16 lane.

 

I love crossfire however you need to make sure you have an X48 board minimum to get both lanes at x16 mode otherwise they half to x8 each lane in crosdfire mode.

 

Then there is the heat factor........ second card will always run toasty.

 

i have two cases for two gaming rigs.

 

one i built for my wife which is

 

 

and also got the Coolermaster HAF932 for my own gaming rig upstairs

 

 

even with these cooling the cards on their own from 80 degrees to a more friendly 40-50 degrees crossfire still gets toasty for one of the cards. you are better off getting a single card as it saves more money in general. PSU, CASE, MOTHERBOARD etc.

 

i purchased 2 HD5870's from a company a while ago and one was faulty out of the box. after realising one runs great i just got a refund luckily fot the second one and stayed with one.

 

since then i had sold my other cards to my mates and was missing my crossfire (looks cool) and so i left the HD5870 in wifes pc and bought a HD4890 on the cheap.

 

Personally i wouldnt buy the HD4870X2 as you might aswell save up a tiny bit more and get a next gen card that will support DX11.

 

one HD5870 runs the same as 2 HD4870's anyway as it has double the stream processors.

 

i could go into more depth as i am a pure ATI gpu fan and always dream of getting the next big one. but i will leave that up to wether you want info :)

 

one thing worth noting is that the newer cards run eyefinity really well. I am only dual monitor downstairs but i want to add a third and have them side by side so my flight simulator has extra view :)

Edited January 1, 201015 yr by damien

i'm thinking of changing my HD4870 1Gb to a single slot HD4870X2 2Gb solution as it looks like its gonna be the best option for higher res stuff for around £200

 

my question is... will any pci-e x16 single slot board support one of these or does it have to be a crossfire board?

 

if it's any use I have an Asus P5QC board

TIA

 

ps. that is a good board as it also supports 1600FSB so you can overclock with more headroom.

 

i have a Q9550 stock downstairs and a Q9400 upstrairs overclocked to 3.00 with the help of the extra FSB

HD5870 is reference but my HD4890 is non reference and knocks off 20 degrees easily from reference and also pre overclocked from 750 mhz to 950 mhz

 

if you do go 4870x2 try to get a non reference for the extra cooling and reliability

reference HD4870X2 is around £300 for cheap (reference cooler)

 

or for 20-30 quid cheaper you can get the next gen card which supports more features and with crossfire (future) you get double the power of the HD4870x2

I was looking at the HD4890 as i've also read they run a lot cooler. Next gen cards are mega bucks may go with the 4870x2 if I can get it at the right price(was looking at a used one about the £180 mark). Looks like I could get about £90-£100 for a used 1gb 4870 if I sell mine failing that if the hd5870's are good might wait till they come down in price a little

 

Speaking of cases I just swapped my case 2 days ago from a silver soprano to a black one below. The card I have now is a powercolour with a heatpipe cooler which would probably clock a bit more than stock but not tried it. I suppose I could download the crysis bench tool to see what it can do stock and clocked. I've also not tampered with the cpu clocks I have same chip as you to a q9550. I had a q6600 before this one but the board was not fussed on it :turned:

 

Just had a read here http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3643&p=1 at the HD5870 really does look like a top card. Must start saving

Edited January 1, 201015 yr by 8ace

I was looking at the HD4890 as i've also read they run a lot cooler. Next gen cards are mega bucks may go with the 4870x2 if I can get it at the right price(was looking at a used one about the £180 mark). Looks like I could get about £90-£100 for a used 1gb 4870 if I sell mine failing that if the hd5870's are good might wait till they come down in price a little

 

Speaking of cases I just swapped my case 2 days ago from a silver soprano to a black one below. The card I have now is a powercolour with a heatpipe cooler which would probably clock a bit more than stock but not tried it. I suppose I could download the crysis bench tool to see what it can do stock and clocked. I've also not tampered with the cpu clocks I have same chip as you to a q9550. I had a q6600 before this one but the board was not fussed on it :turned:

 

Just had a read here http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3643&p=1 at the HD5870 really does look like a top card. Must start saving

 

i looked at the Q6600 as they have a 10x multiplier and overclock godly.. but because of that fact they have increased in price and hard to find.

 

my HD5870 is a good card and you would love it. they have a lower power draw and so keeps heat down better.

 

Stock HD4890's actually run hooter than HD4870's and are damn noisy :(

 

i went with powercolours HD4890 for the second rig and it is very cool and overclocked by a massive 200 mhz out of the box, i havnt overclocked it further yet but with the coolermaster case keeping it as 50 degrees under load compared to stock 80 - 100 degrees i might see if it overclocks more.

 

i personaly think second hand cards are dodgy. i know a certain make carries over the warranty up to 3 times so that used buyers still get warranty.

 

i think this is XFX and has 3 years..... but their cooling is pretty much the same as reference and the types of fans they use are like vacuum cleaners.

 

i reckon you should save up the extra money, wait for price decrease or get a £100 X48 board (DFI LAN PARTY) my second x48 board looks the nuts and has good heatsinks. and buy a second 4870 as they scale well.... only problem is you need a 700W PSU to be safe (can find you one really cheap which has worked very well for me)

 

 

personally if you run a 1680x1050 a 1gb HD4870 is more than enough with that cpu to run crysis maxed out until you have the dosh for a 5870

Edited January 2, 201015 yr by damien

That card went for £190 delivered after so looks like I'll have a wait for th 5870's to drop a little. I was looking to run crysis(just got it the other day after watching a steam HD vid of it..I thought it was just like far cry before that but found out it has aliens and I like aliens lol) at 1920x1080 on high but frames drop a little low at times and I get motion sickness then:hurl: I read turning motion blur off helps that a bit. So for the time being will wait unless a x2 bargain comes along.

Mate Crysis will test even todays highest spec PC's. I used to run it on 2x8800GTX's (when they were top dog) at 1650x1050 and it was fine with most settings on high, then I got caught up with the alien section slow down crashing issue :hammer: I always drop motion blur, as its just a gimmick, that annoys me. Crysis also didn't like running on PC's with more than 2GB, but there's probably a patch for that now.

 

I think you're wise waiting for the new ATI card comming out, but I can't comment on that as the last ati I had was the Mach64! (A great card back in the day:cool3:) Been an NVidea user since the Gerforce 256 came out.

Edited January 3, 201015 yr by Steams
oops

Mate Crysis will test even todays highest spec PC's. I used to run it on 2x8800GTX's (when they were top dog) at 1650x1050 and it was fine with most settings on high, then I got caught up with the alien section slow down crashing issue :hammer: I always drop motion blur, as its just a gimmick, that annoys me. Crysis also didn't like running on PC's with more than 2MB, but there's probably a patch for that now.

 

I think you're wise waiting for the new ATI card comming out, but I can't comment on that as the last ati I had was the Mach64! (A great card back in the day:cool3:) Been an NVidea user since the Gerforce 256 came out.

 

I've used a lot of both vendors over the past few years nvidia tnt2m64, geforce2gts, ati9800se(with Ati softmod this card rocked and was v. cheap), nvidia 7600gt,nvidia7900gs,nvidia8800gt,nvidia9800gtx,atiHD4870 that I can think of lol.

 

I have no preference only on which card is gonna perform best for my hundread or so quid. i put the new crysis patch on when i got the game as bugger all worked with 1.0 ver I couldn't even set the options in the menu:nuke: I'll give it another run later on with a few settings changed around

If you turn it to 1680 you will run fine. I'm playing that res and everything was fine until the last level which was due to dx10 being buggy. My system also has 4gb ram. Only think is the 4870 and 4890 don't like crysis on AA x 8 but x2 is fine and no slowdowns.

For the last level where people get problems just force DX 9 mode and all is well