I have a core i7 860 system with 8gb ddr3 1600 and 2 gtx 285s in sli. I plan to upgrade to 3 hd 6950 cards in triple crossfirex. I have lined up a new motherboard to better fit the configuration, though the board i have is enough. the pci express x16 slots are awkwardly spaced, and i thought mebbe the evenly spaced cards would be better. Is this true? Secondly, I have a corsair 1000 watt. will a larger psu be needed? I have one lined up that is a 1200 watt if the corsair is inadequate i will buy this one, even if it is excessive. also, does anyone know if the dx11 will be needed for tes5 skyrim? the screenshots tell me the 2048 mb vram will be!
I would get the 1200 PS if you can and if you gonna use 3 monitors you cetainly need tri xfire I ordered my 3rd 580 yesterday cause my 580 sli dont hang to well with 5935 x 1080 res.
well i think 1000W is just enough for 3x 6950 since they do use some 100W less per card then 580 i think i could do 3x 5850 on my power and 6950 uses less power
if you gonna 3 way cfx with your asus p7p55d pro you are limit to 8x 8x 4x. i know at 8x 8x you only lose about 5% performance but at 4x is around 10% to 15% I have that board for a while until i recently upgraded.
If your gonna run 2way or even 3way you'd want to run atleast 1x 16 1x 8.. Not 884.. Go 2x CF imo as it would scale alot better then it would with 3 gpus..
Thanks for your input! recomendations for a motherboard that is better suited to 3 way crossfirex would be great! btw, one of those gtx 285's died today, so i bought 2 HD5850s, as they were the only thing i could afford two of in this pinch. I plan to buy a third, but I wonder if I would be better suited to use the two of them in new builds I plan for some friends, and buy a pair of 6970's for this machine instead of a third 5850?
More cards, or better cards? Didn't have the money at the time, but the question is would two 6870's be better than three 5850's. I need to know whether to get more cards or better cards, because i know there's strength in numbers, but I also know that sometimes the more experienced troops win the battle (Metaphorically speaking). Who will win this battle of cards? The bigger army, or the more advanced army? I will soon be able to afford either option. This additional input would be appreciated!
Do you mean 6970's or 6870s? If your asking about the 6870.. Clock for clock the 5850 beats and is a stronger card besides in tessellation when compared to a 6870. 6970 is a whole different story. I honestly would just stick with 2 cards for now. My overclocked 5850's (950mhz) get 8.4k in 3DMark11 and 31k GPU score in Vantage. Granted you can overclock your cards you can get amazing performance out of these. With my scores and looking at legitreviews.com the 6970 crossfire scores 1k more points than me. My cousin just bought a refurbished alienware with the exact same specs as my machine and we tested with same cpu speeds to see what a 5850 needed to be to match a 5870... 950/1200 on a 5850 gets you 5870 speeds or 2%+ in some instances. I need 1.268v on both mine for stable 24hr use.
Granted the game support was there and all was working correctly i would think 3 5850s would beat 2 6970s. I don't know what kind of overclock you would need though. Do you really need 3? What resolution are you gaming at? Id rather get 2 6970's than run 3 5850s. If you run into a game that doesn't support Tri-Fire or even Crossfire then your stuck with a single 5850 instead of a 6970 to fall back on which is much faster.
I'm currently leaning 6970 2-way CrossfireX... O.K., I think when I upgrade again, I will get two HD 6970's. It will mean more money, but my brother wants to buy the 5850's I just got this coming winter, so it's all good!
I flashed both of my 5850's to 5870s with the Asus 5870 bios when i added a 5870 to my set up. Mind you, the only thing it changed on the 5850s was the voltages and clocks, but my computer does recognize them as 5870s.
