CF 5850 or wait?

[lordvic]

With the Radeon HD 5000 series slowy phasing out and the price of them dropping slowly, I was wondering if I should grab another 5850 to make a CrossFire setup. As I was thinking about this, the not-so-good scale of the 5000 series and the awsome scaling performance of the HD 6000 series came into my head.
So now I'm stuck between these two options:
1. Grab another 5850
2. Wait for a little bit, sell the 5850 and get 1 or 2 6950s or custom PCB/cooler 6970s.

Money isn't much of a concern, but not going over-board.


Any suggestions?

[pwcmed]

I think it really depends on your needs. Is 5850 struggling? Are there current games struggling with your current rig? Are you planning to upgrade your monitors? If you do decide to upgrade the 6950 is a great choice if you can flash them to 6970's

[DragonFury]

sell of the 5850 and go for the 6970 so option 2.

[lordvic]

I'm thinking about doing a triple or dual display setup, and experience some EyeFinity action.
I have two large 1080p HDTVs, a 1920x1080 monitor, and one that's 1680x1050....and some random small 15" monitors lying around; I'll see what I can whip up from those.

[DragonFury]

you can do eyefinity on two monitors or tv's but it is rather interesting to play it that way because in FPS games the crosshair is split between the two monitors or tv's. you have to have matched resolution monitors in order for eyefinity to work. I never tried it other then run different manu monitors of the same size, res, refresh rate, and response time.

[lordvic]

So...a friend of mine noticed I was looking for another 5850. He's willing to sell his Sapphire Vapor-X 5850 for $150.
Do you guys think it's worth $150 now? I was thinking ~$120..$125.

Should I take it for $150 or try to bring it down a bit?

Thanks!

[DragonFury]

bring it down a bit, considering a 6850 goes for on or around the 175

[XstollieX]

So...a friend of mine noticed I was looking for another 5850. He's willing to sell his Sapphire Vapor-X 5850 for $150.
Do you guys think it's worth $150 now? I was thinking ~$120..$125.

Should I take it for $150 or try to bring it down a bit?

Thanks!

Always try and chew em down a bit, what else are friends for

[lordvic]

Well, I bought his Sapphire 5850 for $130. Unforuntely, it wasn't a Vapor-X 5850, but simply uses Sapphire's custom cooler.
I'll add it to my rig soon and see how well it does.

[lordvic]

Hmm... so here's my situation:
- My XFX 5850 has voltage adjustment
- My Sapphire 5850 does not

- XFX card needs a slight voltage bump to run 900/1200 stable
- Sapphire card runs 900/1200 with stock voltage

Is it possible to make them both run at 900/1200 in CF (without BIOS flashing)? I mean if I adjust the voltage for my XFX card, will my Sapphire card just simply stay at it's won voltage...or an error will happen?

[DragonFury]

hmm, I am not sure if the overclocking utility applies voltages to just one card. if anything if it does apply the volts to both cards i dont think it would hurt the sapphire card or cause errors. but then again I cant get MSI to overclock both of my cards past 950, so theres no point in adding volts on my cards

[lordvic]

Alrighty, got my two 5850's running with no problems; plugged it in and it works...unlike some unfortunate individuals.

CCC (10.12 BTW) recognized them and enables crossfireX, I check with GPU-Z abd MSi Afteburner - check.

Only problem: When I adjust ANY settings in Sapphire TriXX one of the card's (don't know which one) fan speeds up, and I lose signal to my monitor. I would have to reboot in order to get it working again. The voltage slide bar also shows 0 voltage, but the (+) and (-) buttons are coloured (not greyed out as in disabled). From this it seems TriXX "sees" my Sapphire card, but noy my XFX one.

I can adjust the settings in MSi afterburner fine, but no voltage tweek.

Damn, I was hoping to reach 900+ on the cores, but I guess it may not be possible

[DragonFury]

trixx is a good little utility for one video card, but it goes nuts if there is a second video card. Like you I am running two different manu'd cards. you may have to flash the xfx to with the sapphire card bios, if you wanting extreme overclockability.