Need some advice on Crossfire or single card

S

SoulCreatr

Limp Gawd
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Mar 3, 2008
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Been reading here a long time, and was hoping I could get a little extra advice on some things.

I am slowly building a new machine to run a q9450. I have everything except the CPU and video card(s). My motherboard is the DFI LT X38 and my PSU is antec true power trio 650W. I have been debating over Crossfire two 3870s or get a single 3870x2 since the prices of the 2 options are pretty close. Is it maybe better to get a smaller card and try to slide by until 4x00 series? Do you guys think ATI will do another price cut (on the 3870x2) when the Nvidia 9800s hit? This would make sense to me, but maybe we will have to wait and see the benchmarks first (ATI loses they will cut, but if they are on top they may not?).

I play crysis and a lot of the newer FPS games as well as WoW. Since I only upgrade about once every 5 years I tend to over-build (hence crossfire and whatnot).

Thanks for any advice!
 
dual ati gpu performance sucks on crysis with the 8.2 drivers, we'll see if it improves with 8.3. i'm personally not a big fan of the waiting game pimarily because i don't want to be stuck in your situation. having an incomplete machine, sitting idle while new games are being released and hardware continues to refresh.
 
Well, I have an X2 and it runs everything else perfectly, except Crysis. CoD4, UT3, HL2, TF2, Witcher, etc. They all run fine. If you want to leave room to upgrade in the future, maybe get the X2 now, as you can always throw a 3870 in and crossfire them if you want another boost.
 
That is sort of what I am leaning towards; the 3870x2 and maybe later another card. However, do you think they will cut the x2's price around the release of the geforce 9800s? This last price cut was for 3850 and 3870 to be more competitive against the 9600 and 8800 (which is coming down in price), so maybe it will happen again?

Speaking of the 3870 price drop, is it just me or does it seem to be non-existent other than maybe 1-2 cards? Maybe it just takes time to get MIR and whatnot to bring them down close to 160ish.

As far as the waiting game, I do not mind it at all. I have been slowly putting this together for about a month now and scooping up parts from all the good deals that come and go. My current machine is an athlon64 3000+ (s754, bought the week they came out!) and x1950 pro which will hold me for a little bit until the new processor and whatnot come out :)
 
im pretty sure they will cut the price. (wouldnt make sense not to)
 
The Video card market right now seems to be really convaluted. It looks like maybe Nvidias next enthusiast range part, the 9800GTX, might be nothing better then another G92 with higher clock speeds. And I'm not a fan of Nvidia's single package dual GPU solutions because they run so hot and their track record (ie, the 7950GX2) isn't exactly stellar. Anyways, I dont think were going to see anything truly impressive in the GPU market until Q1 09, I'm sorry to say.

Get your HD3870X2 now and have a good time with it.
 
I say get the 3870 now... prices can't drop much on those. IMO those cards are near enough as low as prob gonna get.

3870x2 has a huge potential to drop. With a 3870 you can play now and upgrade when crossfire x 2nd/3rd driver release (May?) and prob get a 3870x2 for $299 by then.

My 2 cents and what I'm doing.
 
Well I have a Visiontek 3870 and I just finished an hour session of the tank level in crysis DX10 at 1600x1200 with high everything + ultrahigh object quality @ very playable framerates to me for crysis (in the 20s). I was going to get a second 3870 but I can play everything I want with one right now. So I am going to wait for may or june to see how the 4870s or r700 or whatever it's going to be called turns out, and I may swich or just add one in crossfire x.
I know you may have heard about stuttering in crysis with the 3870s and I did not believe it because my card never did, but yesterday I figured i would try a new bios to see if my cards Idle temps would come down. my card has all the same clocks (800core 1200mem)through all 4 stages of ATIs powerplay, so I saved, edited and flashed my bios with new 300mhz 2d clocks and went on my way.

Well my Idle temps droped a few degrees but later when I tried crysis it was unplayable stuttering every few second and such. Right away I ran rivatuners hardware monitor while I tried to play again and I could see my clocks going from 800 to 300 during crysis. Well right away I flashed my old bios back and crysis rocks again at the cost of having 48degree Idle temps instead of 45. Oh well I'd much rather have smooth gameplay.

So anyone experiencing bad framerates or stuttering with a 3870 should check out their cards bios and their 2d powerplay clocks.
 
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