Two Radeon HD 5870s in Crossfire are faster than any of the cards being reviewed in that linked article. For reference, one is similar in performance to a Radeon HD 6950
Just wanted to chime in to say I use dual 5870s in my current gaming PC. One of which I won on this very site (Thanks MMORPG.com!). I get hundreds of frames per second in the games that I play including EVE, Path of Exile, RAGE, and Fallen Earth. Three of those are played at 2560 x 1600 while EVE I get often 150-300 FPS in space at 5120 x 1600 resolition.
Nothing wrong with Dual 5870s!
Dual 5770s here, and Crossfire support has always been good in intensive games.
Just look at any review site. Few really intensive games, the kind that would even come close to saturating the processing capabilities of a single 5870, don't get good Crossfire scaling. If I lack problems with two 5770s, than no one with two 5870s should be having even the slightest problem, unless they're gaming at something substantially higher than 1920x1200
Two Radeon HD 5870s in Crossfire are faster than any of the cards being reviewed in that linked article. For reference, one is similar in performance to a Radeon HD 6950
Just wanted to chime in to say I use dual 5870s in my current gaming PC. One of which I won on this very site (Thanks MMORPG.com!). I get hundreds of frames per second in the games that I play including EVE, Path of Exile, RAGE, and Fallen Earth. Three of those are played at 2560 x 1600 while EVE I get often 150-300 FPS in space at 5120 x 1600 resolition.
Nothing wrong with Dual 5870s!
I get like a max of 150 on 1440x900 so you can see why I'm perplex that everyone gets higher performance than me.
Anything over 60 is really overkill, but you can see where this would be an issue in more graphically intensive games. Where people are reporting 60-70 FPS, I'm getting like 30-40 in many cases. That's playable, but it gives me a disappointing feeling like I'm not getting my money's worth. I don't even want to get Skyrim on the PC because I'm afraid the game will chug on my system if I try to turn the settings up.
I know that ATI technically outperforms Nvidia on a lot of benchmarks, but the fact remains that so many games seem to have issues with ATI cards that require either patches or drivers from AMD whereas most games work well with Nvidia right out ot the box. Just look at the tech support boards of some games, and I think you'll see a pattern.
I get like a max of 150 on 1440x900 so you can see why I'm perplex that everyone gets higher performance than me.
Anything over 60 is really overkill, but you can see where this would be an issue in more graphically intensive games. Where people are reporting 60-70 FPS, I'm getting like 30-40 in many cases. That's playable, but it gives me a disappointing feeling like I'm not getting my money's worth. I don't even want to get Skyrim on the PC because I'm afraid the game will chug on my system if I try to turn the settings up.
I know that ATI technically outperforms Nvidia on a lot of benchmarks, but the fact remains that so many games seem to have issues with ATI cards that require either patches or drivers from AMD whereas most games work well with Nvidia right out ot the box. Just look at the tech support boards of some games, and I think you'll see a pattern.
Having owned many cards from both vendors over the past 3-4 years, I have seen a pattern. Both vendors have enormous problems that crop up with their cards from time to time.
At launch, Star Trek Online was literally melting GPUs, almost always Nvidia, and was also crashing on Nvidia cards. Nvidia completely broke anti-aliasing in Battlefield 2142 about 3 years ago, and didn't fix it for the next year that I owned my Geforce 8800. When Age of Conan first released (I played since early tech beta) it had massive problems with Nvidia GPUs. In fact, a quick search for that problem turned up a thread on these very forums (http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/180021).
If you think that by switching to Nvidia, you'll suddenly be in some error-free shangri-la, I've got news for you; Nvidia cards are just as bad as anyone's. In fact, on the whole, I've had vastly fewer problems with my Radeon HD 4870 and 5770s combined (despite the latter being a more difficult CF setup) than just my Geforce 8800GTS gave me.
One thing I will note though: Crossfire scaling is basically nonexistant at 1440x900. You'll need a 1080P screen if you want to get anywere close to the full performance of those GPUs, and honestly, if you're running a machine like that, I'd say you want a 1080P screen anyways.
I get like a max of 150 on 1440x900 so you can see why I'm perplex that everyone gets higher performance than me.
Anything over 60 is really overkill, but you can see where this would be an issue in more graphically intensive games. Where people are reporting 60-70 FPS, I'm getting like 30-40 in many cases. That's playable, but it gives me a disappointing feeling like I'm not getting my money's worth. I don't even want to get Skyrim on the PC because I'm afraid the game will chug on my system if I try to turn the settings up.
I know that ATI technically outperforms Nvidia on a lot of benchmarks, but the fact remains that so many games seem to have issues with ATI cards that require either patches or drivers from AMD whereas most games work well with Nvidia right out ot the box. Just look at the tech support boards of some games, and I think you'll see a pattern.
Having owned many cards from both vendors over the past 3-4 years, I have seen a pattern. Both vendors have enormous problems that crop up with their cards from time to time.
At launch, Star Trek Online was literally melting GPUs, almost always Nvidia, and was also crashing on Nvidia cards. Nvidia completely broke anti-aliasing in Battlefield 2142 about 3 years ago, and didn't fix it for the next year that I owned my Geforce 8800. When Age of Conan first released (I played since early tech beta) it had massive problems with Nvidia GPUs. In fact, a quick search for that problem turned up a thread on these very forums (http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/180021).
If you think that by switching to Nvidia, you'll suddenly be in some error-free shangri-la, I've got news for you; Nvidia cards are just as bad as anyone's. In fact, on the whole, I've had vastly fewer problems with my Radeon HD 4870 and 5770s combined (despite the latter being a more difficult CF setup) than just my Geforce 8800GTS gave me.
One thing I will note though: Crossfire scaling is basically nonexistant at 1440x900. You'll need a 1080P screen if you want to get anywere close to the full performance of those GPUs, and honestly, if you're running a machine like that, I'd say you want a 1080P screen anyways.
So, what you're saying is, get a 1080P monitor and I should have higher framerates?
Otherwise, I'm not saying that every game seems to favor Nvidia but rather most games I own or have had an interest in. I do think it is fair to say that Nvidia's drivers are a bit more reliable though.
So, what you're saying is, get a 1080P monitor and I should have higher framerates?
Otherwise, I'm not saying that every game seems to favor Nvidia but rather most games I own or have had an interest in. I do think it is fair to say that Nvidia's drivers are a bit more reliable though.
You'd need negative crossfire scaling to have an actual higher framerate. No, more than likely you'll just get a huge resolution increase for a small or even nonexistent performance hit. Nevertheless, a system like yours should have a much beefier monitor attached to it.
I'm not sure why you get such bad framerates in everything; by all indications your system shouldn't have any problems at all.
And if you think Nvidia drivers are reliable, then consider than in 2007, a third of all Windows Vista crashes were causes by Nvidia drivers (twice as much as Ati drivers caused).
So, what you're saying is, get a 1080P monitor and I should have higher framerates?
Otherwise, I'm not saying that every game seems to favor Nvidia but rather most games I own or have had an interest in. I do think it is fair to say that Nvidia's drivers are a bit more reliable though.
No, I think he's saying "What's the point"... if your at that low of a resolution, either your way CPU limited, or you don't have something configured properly. I don't think Crossfire is even worth the power, heat or hassle at that low of a resolution (and tbh I don't think it is at 1080p either).
And I wouldn't call nVidia's drivers any more reliable. For the last 2 years or so they both have been on about a 30-day release schedule and have been putting out pretty good drivers.
As far as games favoring AMD versus nVidia - most of the new releases this year so far have actually favored AMD. Now we are getting a couple of recent releases that will probably favor nVidia (RAGE and Batman), but a lot of big budget titles have been heavily AMD favored, some even giving lower tiered AMD cards better performance than higher-tiered nVidia cards (Dragon Age 2, DEHR, F3AR, Dirt3 ... not to even mention Bitcoin mining). Now maybe the tides will turn with more recent releases, but so far 2011 has been more or less owned by AMD.
Comments
Dual 5770s here, and Crossfire support has always been good in intensive games.
Just look at any review site. Few really intensive games, the kind that would even come close to saturating the processing capabilities of a single 5870, don't get good Crossfire scaling. If I lack problems with two 5770s, than no one with two 5870s should be having even the slightest problem, unless they're gaming at something substantially higher than 1920x1200
I get like a max of 150 on 1440x900 so you can see why I'm perplex that everyone gets higher performance than me.
Anything over 60 is really overkill, but you can see where this would be an issue in more graphically intensive games. Where people are reporting 60-70 FPS, I'm getting like 30-40 in many cases. That's playable, but it gives me a disappointing feeling like I'm not getting my money's worth. I don't even want to get Skyrim on the PC because I'm afraid the game will chug on my system if I try to turn the settings up.
I know that ATI technically outperforms Nvidia on a lot of benchmarks, but the fact remains that so many games seem to have issues with ATI cards that require either patches or drivers from AMD whereas most games work well with Nvidia right out ot the box. Just look at the tech support boards of some games, and I think you'll see a pattern.
Having owned many cards from both vendors over the past 3-4 years, I have seen a pattern. Both vendors have enormous problems that crop up with their cards from time to time.
At launch, Star Trek Online was literally melting GPUs, almost always Nvidia, and was also crashing on Nvidia cards. Nvidia completely broke anti-aliasing in Battlefield 2142 about 3 years ago, and didn't fix it for the next year that I owned my Geforce 8800. When Age of Conan first released (I played since early tech beta) it had massive problems with Nvidia GPUs. In fact, a quick search for that problem turned up a thread on these very forums (http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/180021).
If you think that by switching to Nvidia, you'll suddenly be in some error-free shangri-la, I've got news for you; Nvidia cards are just as bad as anyone's. In fact, on the whole, I've had vastly fewer problems with my Radeon HD 4870 and 5770s combined (despite the latter being a more difficult CF setup) than just my Geforce 8800GTS gave me.
One thing I will note though: Crossfire scaling is basically nonexistant at 1440x900. You'll need a 1080P screen if you want to get anywere close to the full performance of those GPUs, and honestly, if you're running a machine like that, I'd say you want a 1080P screen anyways.
So, what you're saying is, get a 1080P monitor and I should have higher framerates?
Otherwise, I'm not saying that every game seems to favor Nvidia but rather most games I own or have had an interest in. I do think it is fair to say that Nvidia's drivers are a bit more reliable though.
You'd need negative crossfire scaling to have an actual higher framerate. No, more than likely you'll just get a huge resolution increase for a small or even nonexistent performance hit. Nevertheless, a system like yours should have a much beefier monitor attached to it.
I'm not sure why you get such bad framerates in everything; by all indications your system shouldn't have any problems at all.
And if you think Nvidia drivers are reliable, then consider than in 2007, a third of all Windows Vista crashes were causes by Nvidia drivers (twice as much as Ati drivers caused).
No, I think he's saying "What's the point"... if your at that low of a resolution, either your way CPU limited, or you don't have something configured properly. I don't think Crossfire is even worth the power, heat or hassle at that low of a resolution (and tbh I don't think it is at 1080p either).
And I wouldn't call nVidia's drivers any more reliable. For the last 2 years or so they both have been on about a 30-day release schedule and have been putting out pretty good drivers.
As far as games favoring AMD versus nVidia - most of the new releases this year so far have actually favored AMD. Now we are getting a couple of recent releases that will probably favor nVidia (RAGE and Batman), but a lot of big budget titles have been heavily AMD favored, some even giving lower tiered AMD cards better performance than higher-tiered nVidia cards (Dragon Age 2, DEHR, F3AR, Dirt3 ... not to even mention Bitcoin mining). Now maybe the tides will turn with more recent releases, but so far 2011 has been more or less owned by AMD.