Railworks America

I am mid-build on my new system and was looking for some input with regards to crossfire, the M-boad im getting will have a 3 way crossfire set up and was thinking which route to take on the graphics front, - Do I get one mega graphics card and then save up and a few months down the line get another of similar specs to crossfire with or should i just get 2 mid range cards (was thinking of getting a couple of ati- 6770's (- Core Clock: 850MHz - Memory: 1024MB GDDR5 - Memory Clock: 4800MHz - Processing Cores: 800). I'd ideally like to keep the 3rd pci port free for a new (expensive) hybrid drive i seen (standard ssd rates being approx 500mb-600Mb/sec, this hybrid being 900 and above) but my main concern is am i just following a false economy by getting 2 mid range cards or should i get the beast card and then dual it up a few months down the line when i can afford it?

Tell me your story or experience about crossfire, SLI too, I've always been an AMD guy but wont write off nvidia just yet as i have had a few good system builds with nvidia inside, im thinking of cost though and seem to get better bang for my buck with amd/ati setup though



For those interested in Hybrid drive links are below

link to hybrid drive :- http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showprodu ... 14&subcat=
video link for hybrid :- http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pl ... Ehid7qFWBk

please do tell me if you have one of these drives or know of anyone that does, id like to hear more about it as i think a drive like this would be awesome for asset heavy games

thanks for your time guys :)
Dazz

Did anyone check out the hybrid video? If so what did you think about it?

To the best of my knowledge, to run in SLI mode you really need two identical cards. Not sure if that's the case for Crossfire though.

That's exactly what i've heard Hawk , SLI have to be identical cards and crossfire can be 2 different cards but run at speeds of the card with the lower specs, i was tempted to buy 2 identical cards with the crossfire set up but thought to myself should i just wait a few weeks more and go all out and buy a 2gb or 3gb high end card and then save up again to get a 2nd one down the line somewhere.

My current card is gd enough but my current mainboard is restricted to pci 1.0 transfer rates so most my budget is being invested in an expensive new motherboard processor bundle even though the new motherboard has a 3-way (haha) i doubt id use 3 cards,

Correct, SLI and Crossfire must both be run with 2-4 of the same card. This is, however, technology called Lucid Hydra. What that does, is it enables you to use different cards; whether it be a GTX 560Ti and a GTX 580, a Radeon 5570 and a Radeon 7870, or even, a GTX 580 with a Radeon 7870. There is a very limited market of mobos that come with it though (ASUS, MSI, ECS). And if you are going to go with two mid-range card's, then I would go with 2 GTX 560Ti's in SLI, or if you want one big card, then I would go with a GTX 580. The reason for the 580, is because it is faster than the Radeon 6970 in most situations. If money is a concern, go with a 6970 instead of the 580. If you are getting a PCI-e 3.0 mobo, then go with a 7xxx series card, or wait to get an nVidia Kepler card.

Go to Tom's Hardware site and check the reviews there.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/gam ... ,3107.html

Thanks for all the info, i think i might take a 2 tier approach to my upgrade, as i also want to wait and see if the price of solid state comes down a bit in price aswell, my setup im looking at is on this link :- https://www.aria.co.uk/Systems/Bundles/ ... ctId=48369


With a view to get the graphics card set up a few weeks down the line, i currently have an ati 6770 in this machine which isnt being used to full potential due to my current setup being pci 1.0, hopefully it will be a viable stop-gap until i can afford the 2nd stage of upgrade, gives me a few more weeks to learn more about the higher end cards,

As far as I understand it, Hybrid Drive uses the board's onboard video until you go into gaming mode, then it shifts to high gear, utilizing the second video card. Seems to be in very early stages, I don't trust it. Plus, lots of folks have done comparisons between a single high end card, and SLI or Crossfire, and found no big improvement in RW.

I've been suggesting, if you want to upgrade, do it because you need to upgrade, not just for RW. New motherboard, new DDR3 RAM (8Gb at least, supposing you have a 64 bit Win) Terabyte drive. SSD's are too small and expensive. Yeah, they are quick, and fill up quick. The Seagate 1Tb drives are blazing fast!

The hybrid drive once developed and more mainstream could have so much potential, I bought a 2Tb 64mb cache HDD last week to tide me over until a 250Gb ssd becomes affordable as 120 or 128 would be full up within a week i reckon :) I also got a 750 watt psu with 2 pci 6 ports for the crossfire.
I have read a few forum posts suggesting its all about finding a balance with the gpu and cpu, maybe using the 6770 at its potential will be a sufficiant enough for now, i do play RW a lot but do have other games on the system, its mainly meant to be my music studio but reckon once i get that bundle deal a lot of my problems will be solved, i just keep thinking to myself why did i buy a system (my current one) with the worst motherboard set up on the earth - no upgradable bios, no overclock, pci-e 1,.0 and very little space to put my 6770, i'll try stop moaning about things for a while but no doubt will have a ton more questions over the next week or 2, just had the GARL route upgrade, theres another route i probably wont be able to run without getting a headache lol - cheers guys

Hi, dazzharvey. I just built a system using dual 6950s, here are the full specs:

AMD FX 8150 Zambezi Black Edition 3.6 GHz, 8-Core CPU
ASUS Crosshair V Formula MB
16GB Kingstion RAM HyperX PC3 12800
Dual 500GB 7,200 RPM HYBRID HDDs in RAID 0
Dual Gigabyte Radeon HD 6950 1GB GPUs in Crossfire Configuration
Corsair HX1050 PSU (1,050 Watts)
Corsair Carbide Series 500R Black Steel ATX Mid Tower Computer Case
Windows 7 Home Premium 64 bit OEM

Runs really well. I can regularly achieve frame rates in the 40s, although some routes (Portland Terminal, for example...) are still frame rate hogs. I can get into the 20s most of the time on that one. I run TSX on, High setting on the launch screen, and Highest in the in-game settings. I also use Game Booster 3 and it seems to help just a tad.

As far as Crossfire is concerned, when I initially installed both cards, the software only recognized one of the GFX boards. I had to remove one, configure everything, then shut down and install the second board and Windows then recognized a new component and allowed me to set up and configure the Crossfire correctly. Monitoring temperatures with SpeedFan my GPUs never get above about 72ºC, so it seems to work well. The Gigabyte 6950s each have THREE fans, so when they get wound up they really scream! In total the system has 12 fans:

2 x 3 ea. GPUs
4 on the case
1 CPU
1 PSU

It's a cool customer, but a bit loud, especially at night when everyone else is trying to sleep and I'm making deliveries on Commercial Street in Portland, Maine!

Can't answer your thoughts about SLI as I'm an AMD fan, as you can probably tell.

Don't know if you've finished your build yet as I see that the thread is a couple months old, but it's just my worth. Your mileage may vary...

Best,
Marc

This should have been moved to Geek Speak a long time ago.

Hey Marc.

I used to be a huge fan of amd and was going to buy the 8 core 8150 setup but at the last minute got myself a i7 2600k overclocked to 4.6ghz as it was pre build and was just a case of plug and play, I'm still quite interested in possibly getting an amd 8 core down the line sometime when moneys better for me, I'm only using a solo ati card 6770 at the moment tho and still highly rate the ati cards for value for money or bang for buck I think the term is, when i got my current setup i only received an sli bridge but after looking in my motherboard box and finding no ati equivilent (even though it says it was included on the website)

I wondered if i was to get a couple of new ati cards down the line sometime - will i need to get myself a seperate bridge for them and if so how much are they roughly? also I always check my 30fps box, should i just leave it unchecked?

I dont usually have a frame rate lag but one or two do appear for instance if i load up a seriously busy glasgow wcml or one of the arcella missions in new york and it dips down to mid 20`s but overall it sorts itself out and reterns to normal, i used to use game booster on my old amd setup, i may put it back on this one to give it a blast. what have i got to lose i thought as my bottleneck is still hard drive speed, got a 2tb 64mb cache thing to tide me over until ssd are cheap enough but find its still my systems achilles heel.

Cheers
Darren.

Well, Darren, I think the i7 will be a terrific setup with the 6770. I'm having a LOT of fun with TS2012. I started out all at normal clock speeds to get a baseline for performance. Then I "did the deed" and overclocked the CPU to 4.06 from 3.6, and the GPUs are at 950 from 870 GPU speed, and the memory clock is at 1325 from 1250. I like the performance.
As far as the new SLI cards, I got a bridge with each card, it came in the box. That made bridging completely mindless. I always keep the 30FPS box UNchecked, but I've never actually experimented with it.
I still get stutter from the HDDs, but I guess that's unavoidable. Good luck with your SSD when you get it.

Best,
Marc