Why I still love my 5970/5870 tri-fire

[Jacky60]

Its coming up to a year since I bought the 5970 and these are the reasons I still love it dearly.

1.Driver improvements have made the performance improve consistently in all the games I play.

2. It never gets above 85C and I can never hear the fan over the ambient noise of gunfire.

3.I can switch the central heating off all day with it 5C outside and it keeps my gaming/pretending to work room a nice comfy temperature.

4.It still flies along at a healthy 900Mhz core/1200 memory

5.It still is -Oh yes THE fastest graphics card on the planet even without the overclock.

 

[Mistwalker]

That's quite a beefy setup, with three OC'd GPUs and the I7 @ 4GHz...what power supply do you have?

 

[Jacky60]

Enermax Revolution 85+ 1250Watt -probably overkill but Anands 5970 review made me spend more on PSU than CPU out of fear anything less wouldn't be enough

 

[WelshBloke]

... 5.It still is -Oh yes THE fastest graphics card on the planet even without the overclock.

Its crazy how well the 5970 does considering its age, its one hell of a beefy card.

It does make me curious how well the 6990 will do.

 

[RavenSEAL]

Damn....i hate you....

 

[Jacky60]

Its crazy how well the 5970 does considering its age, its one hell of a beefy card.

It does make me curious how well the 6990 will do.

I hope it will put the hurt on 580 sli then I'll consider an upgrade -two of them would rule if 6970 can compete with the 580-just three more days!.
However I think we're already a bit CPU limited.

 

[Tempered81]

What a great setup, should do you well for even a few more years


I've been an ATI fan for a while, but I think a 580 is going to best the 6970 by about 5-10%. GF110 and the 580/570 are excellent parts. 480 not so much.

6990 vs. gtx595 should make for an interesting New years

 

[scooterlibby]

I wanted to do tri-fire with a 5970+5870 in the future on the new Sandybridge platform, but am hesitant because the chip set for the 2500k only does 8x8x for two card configurations. Would a 5970 saturate a PCI-e 2.0 lane running at 8x?

 

[cusideabelincoln]

I wanted to do tri-fire with a 5970+5870 in the future on the new Sandybridge platform, but am hesitant because the chip set for the 2500k only does 8x8x for two card configurations. Would a 5970 saturate a PCI-e 2.0 lane running at 8x?

I think the 2GB of VRAM that's surely to be on the cards would help alleviate any reduced performance from an 8x slot.

We don't have any single cards as fast as what it will be so no one can really say for sure at this point in time.

 

[BTRY B 529th FA BN]

Nice setup

 

[Ashkael]

Its coming up to a year since I bought the 5970 and these are the reasons I still love it dearly.

1.Driver improvements have made the performance improve consistently in all the games I play.

2. It never gets above 85C and I can never hear the fan over the ambient noise of gunfire.

3.I can switch the central heating off all day with it 5C outside and it keeps my gaming/pretending to work room a nice comfy temperature.

4.It still flies along at a healthy 900Mhz core/1200 memory

5.It still is -Oh yes THE fastest graphics card on the planet even without the overclock.

Do you have any issues with microstuttering and just bad Crossfire performance in some games?

I currently use a 5870, but I have a 5970 sitting in a box in my closet that I refuse to use. I tried using it alone and with a Tri-fire setup with my 5870, but the ridiculous amounts of microstuttering put me away. I just can't stand that stuff.

I also noticed some games ran better on my 5870 alone than with the 5970 or the Tri-fire setup (Crysis being one of them). The last time I tried this setup was with the 10.6 cats. Have there been any improvements since then?

 

[WelshBloke]

Do you have any issues with microstuttering and just bad Crossfire performance in some games?

I currently use a 5870, but I have a 5970 sitting in a box in my closet that I refuse to use. I tried using it alone and with a Tri-fire setup with my 5870, but the ridiculous amounts of microstuttering put me away. I just can't stand that stuff.

I also noticed some games ran better on my 5870 alone than with the 5970 or the Tri-fire setup (Crysis being one of them). The last time I tried this setup was with the 10.6 cats. Have there been any improvements since then?

You have $500 worth of card sitting in your closet that you don't like?

Why haven't you sold it? :hmm:

 

[Skurge]

You have $500 worth of card sitting in your closet that you don't like?

Why haven't you sold it? :hmm:

Or given it away... Preferably to me.

 

[Jacky60]

Re:Microstuttering I haven't noticed it but I do remember the cat 10.6 were nightmare for my setup causing artifacting at very low overclocks. Performance is pretty consistent although I do see fps dropping to 30-40 before going back to normal if loading a new high texture scene. I'd dig the 5970 out of the cupboard and try trifire with the 10.11's it will only take you 20 minutes.

 

[jacktesterson]

I love my setup too!

 

[iLoveNvidia]

My GT430 SLI is faster


Thread-crapping is not acceptable.

Moderator Idontcare

 

[WelshBloke]

My GT430 SLI is faster

Happy is that you

 

[MentalIlness]

Happy is that you

 

[Destiny]

Happy is that you

HappyMedium? I thought he had an ATI card?

 

[WelshBloke]

HappyMedium? I thought he had an ATI card?

I was joking, Happy got vacationed in the sticky.

Although ilove is trolling.

My GT430 SLI is faster

Pfft my 9600GSO is faster then this

No only use nvidia, g210 > 5970 cf!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Ashkael]

You have $500 worth of card sitting in your closet that you don't like?

Why haven't you sold it? :hmm:

Because I live in Central America, so I have no real way of selling my card in the US. Even if I got a buyer in the US, no one would 1) pay the $120 shipping so the card arrives safely through FedEx or UPS, and 2) no one would trust someone living this far away to make the transaction anyway.

As to why I haven't sold it here, I've tried. I've put plenty of newspaper ads and stuff, but no one wants it. You cannot even get these cards here, they just don't exist. I had to order mine through the Amazon marketplace since they were the only ones that would ship to me, and I had to use a US Mailbox service to get it sent down here.

 

[Sentry2]

OP: Glad you're enjoying your setup. 5970 + 5870 Tri-Fire was the smoothest Crysis experience I've had to date!

I also noticed some games ran better on my 5870 alone than with the 5970 or the Tri-fire setup (Crysis being one of them). The last time I tried this setup was with the 10.6 cats. Have there been any improvements since then?

Check the box next to GPU scaling in CCC. For some reason this was the only way I could get 5970 + 5870 CFX working in Crysis at all. Once it does work though it's like night and day! I'm with you on the micro stuttering stuff though... 5970 turned out to be a no go for me. I've owned so many cards in the past few years it's not even funny and I will never buy another dual gpu card from either camp... I've had a 4870x2, GTX 295 Quad SLI, and a 5970... The PLX chip on the 5970 just plain sucks IMO... Run a 5970 at 850/1200 up against a pair of 5870s and you'll notice that not only will the 5870s run a good 5 - 10% faster clock for clock...but the 5870s in most cases just ...feel... smoother. I will say that Crysis feels a lot smoother on the 5970(by itself or paired up with a 5870) than my GTX 470 SLI does even though I'm easily matching the minimum frame rate of my previous TRI-CFX setup... can't win them all I guess.

 

[jacktesterson]

I may sell my gpu's depending on what the 6970 is like

 

[InfoTiger]

Do you have any issues with microstuttering and just bad Crossfire performance in some games?

I currently use a 5870, but I have a 5970 sitting in a box in my closet that I refuse to use. I tried using it alone and with a Tri-fire setup with my 5870, but the ridiculous amounts of microstuttering put me away. I just can't stand that stuff.

I also noticed some games ran better on my 5870 alone than with the 5970 or the Tri-fire setup (Crysis being one of them). The last time I tried this setup was with the 10.6 cats. Have there been any improvements since then?

Can I borrow your 5970 to test out Tri-fire ?