Trifire Having three 5850's

Discussion in 'Videocards - AMD Radeon' started by Stance, Sep 15, 2013.

  1. Stance

    Stance Guest

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    :)I have two 5850s on Asrock extreme 3 990fx motherboard with 8350 16 gigs
    1600mhz memory 850 watt power supply. I have two monitors a dell 24" 1920x1080 and Dell 3007WFP 2560x1600. I run most games at 2560x1600 resolution. To get a little more Performance at this resolution at the lowest price. I have a third 5850 on the way to trifire them. Will this help Battlefield
    3 and Crysis 3. Any ideas on percent of performance upgrade I can get with Three 5850"s.

    For now would this not be my cheapest bang for the buck

    I can not remember but didn't Hilbert Hagedoorn do some tests with three 5850's trifire a year or two ago. I have searched but no recent game Benches
    with the three cards?

    Thanks Guys I know some of the best Techs and enthusiasts are on this form
     
    Last edited: Sep 15, 2013
  2. Fox2232

    Fox2232 Guest

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    BF3SP - yes. BF3MP -no. C3 - yes.
    BF3 is one of few games which has it's fps limited by CPU especially on big MP maps therefore I would not expect improvements.
    As for C3 it's GPU hungry game which should benefit from 3rd card.

    Since you have FX processor, have you tried beta of M$ Win 8 for gaming? According to tests it can squeeze from your CPU higher performance. And a lot of games are performing better too.
     
  3. Stance

    Stance Guest

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    I have not tried or upgrade yet. I wanted to wait and see how this three GPU setup would work for now with OCZ RevoDrive 3 PCIE x4 as forth card on
    PCIE bus. I wanted to wait to after Christmas to see if ATI/AMD comes out
    with a vastly improved Card that is affordable IE 9890 say around $500.00.
    I know I am dreaming. I have Windows 8 64 bit on Laptop it is faster but hate
    the dumbed down UI that could have used GPU to look more 3d or a UI the is great looking. I do not consider windows 8 an advance. I know I will be forced to move to it in another year.

    Stance

    I tried to lookup technical docs from AMD on how Tri-fire works besides how it
    splits processing across GPS like 33.3 %. I wanted to know more on how CATS use shaders and steam units of all three cards
     
  4. airbud7

    airbud7 Guest

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    How much VRAM on those 5850s?
     

  5. 3dPlayer

    3dPlayer Banned

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    The 5850 has the same points on 3dmark11 as the 7770, i know this because i've tested both in my system. To be honest the 5850 has 50-100 less, we are talking here about 3900P for the 5850.

    2x7770=7850
    3x7770=~7870

    In theory i think that 3x5850=7870 if the tri-fire is on 100% of usage. In performance of course, because on power consumption, well, it's a waste of power.

    3x5850=474W
    1x7870=175W

    edit:

    5850 on my system
    http://www.3dmark.com/3dm11/7001512
    7770 on my system
    (i don't have the link anymore but i remember quite well that it was 4000P)
     
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2013
  6. yasamoka

    yasamoka Ancient Guru

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    Why are you adding a third card from an old series? Trifiring old cards is just asking for trouble. Microstutter (TriFire is still not fixed in AMD's Frame-Pacing), potential scaling issues, lack of VRAM, heat, power.

    The next AMD high-end card that arrives will easily have the power of 3 5850's. The 780 already has the power of 3 5850's, when they are scaling excellently that is.

    Avoid.
     
  7. 3dPlayer

    3dPlayer Banned

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    LOL, not true...3x5850=7870 did you read my previous post?!

    If you mean, the next low low-mid end card will have the same perf. then i'll agree. :)
     
  8. yasamoka

    yasamoka Ancient Guru

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    I don't care for 3DMark. Show me other benchmarks please.
     
  9. 3dPlayer

    3dPlayer Banned

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    You can use a search engine for that. I don't have other benchmarks other than the 3dmark11 logs that i keep for comparisons purposes.
     
  10. keromyaou

    keromyaou Member Guru

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    About half a year ago I moved from 5970/5870 triple CF to 2xTitan SLI. I run games at 1440p. Generally speaking the gpu power of 5970/5870 triple CF is about equal to one Titan (There is a good thread about the comparison of gpu power between 6970x2 and gtx780 in overclock.net. They are essentially the same in terms of gpu power). The main problems about 5970/5870 setup are 1) vRAM is 1GB which is too small for 1440p (or 1600p) and 2) the latest Catalyst driver 13.10 hasn't addressed the issue about triple CF yet.

    HD5850 triple CF is very similar to my old setup 5970/5870 CF. Then you have the same problems as i did. Since you run games at 1600p, you really need to upgrade your gpu to something newer with at least 3GB vRAM. At this moment ATI hasn't yet addressed the issue about triple CF. Then I feel that getting a HD5850 for triple CF is a waste of money. If I were you, I would wait for a release of new cards from ATI in October and decide what I should get, without doing anything else. For the moment you can play games without Anti Aliasing (If you luckily own 2GB HD5850s, you could add some AA).
     

  11. pcgamers

    pcgamers Master Guru

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    Hi OP,

    here's my old benchmarks from my old Trifire HD5850s setup but of course only tested on older games /benchmark since I no longer own it. hope this will give u clear picture however I'm gaming on 1080p monitor only...I think 1GB vram is not enough for modern games esp at 1440p and above resolution. I think 3x5850 is equal to HD7950 instead because OC vs OC my single HD7970 beat my trifire HD5850s.

    [​IMG]


    [​IMG]
     
  12. Stance

    Stance Guest

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    Thanks Pc gamers Scaling even at 1920x1200 was very good in some games and I
    have heard that it is better at 2600x1600 with three gpu's. I know I will not be able
    to use antialiasing in the hires texture games. Thanks for the benchmarks, like I said
    if this will keep me going till after Christmas I will upgrade GPU to maybe 9870 or what ever they call it.

    I noticed you have mushkin memory I had some of there memory many many years ago and a new Tyan motherboard for K6-2 that trashed memory on bootup and I had the best experience with there Tech Support sent new memory out put old memory in bag and box new memory came in shipped back out and had my replacement memory in 3 days. The best company I have ever dealt with back then.
     
    Last edited: Sep 17, 2013
  13. yasamoka

    yasamoka Ancient Guru

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    Thank you for providing the benchmarks.

    I abstain from using search engines. For new websites, I ask my physical friends.
     
  14. 3dPlayer

    3dPlayer Banned

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    I abstain from using search engines...That makes no sense!

    And the benchmark above is from 3x5850 @ 1025mhz so it does not count.
     
  15. pcgamers

    pcgamers Master Guru

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    nope, for the first pic above I ran all benchmarks at stock speed HD5850x3...though second pic I ran a max stable OC just for the highest score and to share with us all how good a Trifire 5850s scaling back then. I dunno how they scale on newer driver though :).
     

  16. 3dPlayer

    3dPlayer Banned

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    Ok thanks for the reply.
     

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