Having trouble picking Crossfire...

[P2Mc28]

I'm building a machine for a friend, and I've more or less got it down to which video card now. Here's what I'm looking at currently:

MSI GeForce 260, factory OC'd (Core 216)
Sapphire Radeon 4850x2

Now, for just $5 more... logically, the 4850x2 just sounds ... well, vastly superior. But I just have this deep-seated fear of multi GPU, I suppose. Especially since the system isn't mine.

It's not going to be on a 30" monitor, it's not going to be running the latest and greatest games. At most, I envision it running Diablo III whenever that surfaces. Right now tho, it's going to be a Counter-Strike: Source box. Hell, I know even the 260 is overkill. The thing is, though, this is going to be his computer for the next 5-6 years. He's had his current machine for ages. An Athon XP 2700, I think. It just recently died on him.

So... anyone wanna slap some sense into me and say get the Radeon?

 

[TheInternal]

The main reason I'd go with the HD 4850 in crossfire: you can get two of em passively cooled for some silent gaming.
I think the benchies indicate around a 30% to 40% performance of 2 x 4850s over a single 260.
That and your e-peen feels bigger if you can say "yeah, I have two GPUs in my computer"... and who knows, maybe they'll eventually want to power 4 monitors.

I personally have no experience with crossfire, but have been running dual passively cooled nvidia geforce 7950 GT cards in SLI mode for around 2 years now. I think I've heard crossfire implementation isn't as robust as SLI, but I may be mistaken.

If you have the power supply and motherboard for it, I don't see why you'd not go with the Crossfire. For the last few months, all the reviews I've read have been showing for the dollar that AMD is being damn competative in the GPU wars (perhaps making up for their currently less positive showings in the CPU wars).

If you like your computer silent and want to game at 1920x1200+ resolutions, 4850s are the highest end GPU you can get stock with a passive cooler.

 

[toyota]

if he doesnt play demanding games then why pay for a high end card that will never get utilized? it would make more sense to buy a 4830 or 4670 now and then in 2 or 3 years just sell that and buy whatever card is decent for under 75-100 bucks then. much cheaper in the long run plus a $100 card in 2 to 3 years would easily beat a current $250 card while also having newer features and technology.

 

[vj8usa]

Originally posted by: toyota
if he doesnt play demanding games then why pay for a high end card that will never get utilized? it would make more sense to buy a 4830 or 4670 now and then in 2 or 3 years just sell that and buy whatever card is decent for under 75-100 bucks then. much cheaper in the long run plus a $100 card in 2 to 3 years would easily beat a current $250 while also having newer features and technology.

I second this suggestion. Getting a cheaper card like a 4670 also has the added benefit of reducing the system's power consumption, which will save even more money in the long run.

 

[P2Mc28]

Originally posted by: toyota
if he doesnt play demanding games then why pay for a high end card that will never get utilized? it would make more sense to buy a 4830 or 4670 now and then in 2 or 3 years just sell that and buy whatever card is decent for under 75-100 bucks then. much cheaper in the long run plus a $100 card in 2 to 3 years would easily beat a current $250 card while also having newer features and technology.

The thing being, though, that he'll never sell the card. If he does ever upgrade, the old card will just sit in a closet somewhere. I know the man, he's not even building it, I am. He's giving me money and say "return with a computer."

That being said, he has on a couple occasions upgraded his GPU and memory on his own before. Haha.

Basically, this system needs to a) run CS:Source very well, and b) run Diablo III as well. Now, I'm not thinking DIII will be anything demanding. I mean, heck, I played it at BlizzCon, and it ran beautifully... what did those things have, 8800 GTs? Certainly nothing more than that...

So... yes, perhaps you're quite right, and I'm aiming way too high. I was thinking I would build him a system with equal power as mine (I'm running a 4870 1gig, that GeForce is about $20 cheaper in addition to being factory OC'd, but then that 4850x2 was just $5 more... which is where this dilemma was borne from)

And I don't think idle power costs are going to be anything to sway the decision one way or another. Man I don't really feel like I'm getting closer to a solution yet... I was so certain people would just say "gogo 4850x2 it's so good for the price and powerful and blah blah blah"

 

[dguy6789]

I think it's a waste to get a dual gpu card that only has 512MB of memory per card.

 

[zerocool84]

Originally posted by: dguy6789
I think it's a waste to get a dual gpu card that only has 512MB of memory per card.

But for the price it's the best performing.

If that guy is really onlt ganna play CS:S then no need for a video card so powerful.

 

[Jacen]

The 4850x2 sounds like a bit more card than he needs but I won't bash on it as it runs super smooth.

The 4670 is probably the more "logical" choice unless the guy really doesn't care how you spend his money.

 

[AndroidVageta]

Originally posted by: P2Mc28
... I was so certain people would just say "gogo 4850x2 it's so good for the price and powerful and blah blah blah"

Go go 4850x2!!!


Might as well get the best if he's just throwing money at you. Nuff said.

 

[dguy6789]

Just keep in mind that ATI crossfire cards do not work with every single game. You have to update drivers as new games come out to get the game to work with both gpus. If this guy eventually gets new games and doesn't update his drivers, he'll only be playing them at half speed.

 

[Creig]

Why not simply explain the differences to him and let him decide for himself? The 4850x2 is much faster, but will most likely require more frequent driver updates than the 260 to retain optimum performance in newly released games.

 

[novasatori]

if you do get a 260 i vote for the 199.99 AR evga card on newegg

here

hey plus its got free ship

edit
oh wow and knock and extra $23 off with:
10% off with promo code MMCHVGA, limited offer

So $176.99 AR

not bad heh, wish I didn't get mine 2 weeks ago

 

[SSChevy2001]

If your going to go 4850 X2 then just pay the extra and get the 2GB. The only thing is the fans are noisy, so you might want to replace the 2 fans. Also of course it's multi-GPU so your going to have to fiddle with renaming exe to get CF on new release titles. Other than that it's a really nice card.

$245 AR
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001K...ref=pd_sl_378pw7oktw_e

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: Creig
Why not simply explain the differences to him and let him decide for himself? The 4850x2 is much faster, but will most likely require more frequent driver updates than the 260 to retain optimum performance in newly released games.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3517&p=14

Our one caveat with AMD remains driver issues. We are happy with Catalyst 9.2 as it competes with the 8.12 hotfix in terms of stability and performance (and it offers more multiGPU support for recently released games). NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 260 core 216 offers good competition for AMD, and driver support issues don't do AMD any favors. Drivers are even more important when it comes to SLI and CrossFire. SLI enjoys much better support from NVIDIA than CrossFire does from AMD. Because of AMD's driver issues, we often have to wait when new games come out to enjoy proper CrossFire scaling with them. And when hotfixes come out it takes more than a month (usually more like two) to fully integrate changes into a WHQL driver.

 

[Steve325]

get a single HD4870. I just picked one up for $134.99 after MIR

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: P2Mc28
Now, for just $5 more... logically, the 4850x2 just sounds ... well, vastly superior. But I just have this deep-seated fear of multi GPU, I suppose. Especially since the system isn't mine.

As others said, if you get an X2, get the 2GB version. Still, since it won't be you using and troubleshooting the system on a daily basis, going with the single-GPU solutions still make more sense. CF and SLI do look great on paper as you stated, but those graphs and averages are rarely accurate when it comes down to actual user feedback.

Derek said the 4850X2 are now being supported officially, which is certainly a good thing but CF/SLI support is always something that can make or break performance on these parts. Its particularly frustrating when there is no multi-GPU solution for new games, so if your friend is someone who typically buys the latest and greatest that's something to take into consideration.

That 1GB 4850X2 reminds me a lot of the 9800GX2 where it looked great on paper but people simply couldn't get rid of them fast enough once a similar, higher performing single-GPU single-card solution was available. If he's going to keep it 3-4 years, "future-proofing" for a little bit extra could extend the life of that part a year or more.

 

[P2Mc28]

Thanks everyone! I think I'll talk to him about aiming just for CS and saving a bunch of money or going for broke and get the 4850x2.

A couple things though:
Microstutter on dual-GPU systems. What is this exactly? I mean, it SOUNDS like it's something that would effect first person shooter / twitch gameplay the most.
Is a 4670 more powerful than a 8800gt (the card he's using in a borrowed system atm)?

 

[toyota]

Originally posted by: P2Mc28
Thanks everyone! I think I'll talk to him about aiming just for CS and saving a bunch of money or going for broke and get the 4850x2.

A couple things though:
Microstutter on dual-GPU systems. What is this exactly? I mean, it SOUNDS like it's something that would effect first person shooter / twitch gameplay the most.
Is a 4670 more powerful than a 8800gt (the card he's using in a borrowed system atm)?

youre building this system for him and you dont know if the 4670 is as fast as an 8800gt? :Q lol. no the 4670 is a quite a bit slower than an 8800gt/9800gt. you should probably go with a 4830 since that only costs 20 bucks more than a 4670 and is a little faster than an 8800gt/9800gt.

 

[nitromullet]

This may be a pretty broad generalization, but IMO if someone needs someone else to help to pick out parts for a build they are not a very good candidate for any multi-gpu setup (Crossfire or SLI).

 

[chizow]

Originally posted by: P2Mc28
A couple things though:
Microstutter on dual-GPU systems. What is this exactly? I mean, it SOUNDS like it's something that would effect first person shooter / twitch gameplay the most.

On a technical level, microstutter is the result of irregular frame time differences between displayed frames. To help visualize, 60 FPS with a perfect frame time cadence would be 16.67ms between frames (1000/60).

With multi-GPU, the timing between rendered frames is unbalanced between the GPUs so that there is a short delay between 2 frames followed by a long delay to the 3rd (rendered by the first GPU), followed by another short delay. Without getting overly technical, the perceived smoothness may look more like the longest delay even though the actual FPS (number of frame times within any 1000ms sample) may end up being much higher.

Typically microstutter is less noticeable with higher FPS, particularly above your monitor's refresh rate, as higher FPS normalizes frame times by reducing delay between frames. It also sounds like both Nvidia and ATI have started working on driver-level optimizations to normalize frame times, but the problem seems greatly reduced on high-end solutions now due to the big gains in performance from the last round of GPUs and CPUs.

 

[hclarkjr]

But I just have this deep-seated fear of multi GPU, I suppose

i have been running my 3870X2 since last July with no problems at all. runs all my games fine and has excellent performance. do not regret the buy at all

 

[P2Mc28]

Originally posted by: toyota
youre building this system for him and you dont know if the 4670 is as fast as an 8800gt?

That's what I thought. Those 46xx cards came out after I had already gotten my own card. I read the read up on Anandtech when they came out and just noted them as low-mid range cards.

I assumed the 8800gt was faster, tho older, which is why I asked, and is also my minimum benchmark for this build.

 

[toyota]

Originally posted by: P2Mc28

Originally posted by: toyota
youre building this system for him and you dont know if the 4670 is as fast as an 8800gt?

That's what I thought. Those 46xx cards came out after I had already gotten my own card. I read the read up on Anandtech when they came out and just noted them as low-mid range cards.

I assumed the 8800gt was faster, tho older, which is why I asked, and is also my minimum benchmark for this build.

yeah thats why I suggested the 4830. great card for the money.

 

[LOUISSSSS]

why not go for a 4870 instead for now and just upgrade the machine later on (in 2-3 years) or so when he plays newer games?

 

[Jacen]

With today's price cuts the 4870 and 4850 have become that much more appealing. Really may want to consider giving them a nod.