Video Card Compatibility Question

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SHiBBY927

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Jun 18, 2010
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First off here's my rig:

AMD Phenom II x4 955 Black Edition Processor (3.2ghz)
XFX HD5850 Black Edition GPU
8GB 1333mhz RAM
1TB HDD
Foxconn H-RS880-uATX Motherboard
Antec Earthwatts 650Watt PSU

I am looking at upgrading my video card possibly. I don't really know what the limitations of this particular motherboard are. I do know that it only has one PCI-e port so Crossfire anything is out of the question. I would like to know if something like the HD5970 or the new HD6990 are compatible with this Mobo. I know how to put things together but when you start getting into what's compatible with what then you're pretty much past my area of expertise.

So for those of you who are much smarter than I am when it comes to computers please give me your opinions. Thanks in advance.
 
They're both compatible with your motherboard. Will they fit in your case, though?
 
man those cards are soo pricey. Thats like half of my PC build. Anyways hope it fits :)
 
If your power supply won't be limiting you, I would recommend you overclock your 955 to avoid any bottlenecking. I don't expect you having that problem, but those are beefy cards.
 
Measure that sucker! The 6990 is 12" long and thankfully have the power connections at the top of the card rather than the end. I believe the 5970 is just slightly smaller.

Just lay a ruler across the card you have now and see if anything infringes upon that 12"
 
shadows5631 said:
If your power supply won't be limiting you, I would recommend you overclock your 955 to avoid any bottlenecking. I don't expect you having that problem, but those are beefy cards.
Click to expand...

Bingo, he will have that problem if he gets a 5970 or a 6990. I own a 5970, and I was using a Phenom II 940 when I got it, overclocked to 3.75 GHz. I realize that newer PII's will overclock a little higher, but either way I was severely bottlenecked. I decided to upgrade to an i7 950, which is 3.07 GHz stock. Even with the CPU at stock clocks, my benchmarks were pulling significantly higher numbers. my 950 is now @ 4.3 GHz, and I have some benchmark results to compare the two. The only difference between the benchmarks were the CPU and RAM, the Phenom II had 4GB DDR2 @ 1066 MHz , while my new rig has DDR3 @ 1600 MHz. There's usually a ~5% performance increase when upgrading RAM like that, but I'll let the numbers speak for themselves. The following is Far Cry 2, maximum settings @ 1080P. The 5970 was overclocked to 850 core/1200 memory for both runs (5870 stock speeds).

Phenom II @ 3.75 GHz:
fc2phenomii.jpg


i7 950 @ 4.3 GHz:
fc2i7.jpg


Let me repeat that my benchmarks showed at least a 20% increase in FPS with the stock i7, vs the fully overclocked Phenom II. As the graph shows, my old maximum framerate with Phenom II is lower than my average framerate with i7.
 
reflex99 said:
even the minimum is way above playable on both though.
Click to expand...

That doesn't matter in the least. The point of the benchmarks is to show that there is a large bottleneck for Phenom II's and multi-GPU systems.

Don't you think it's important to be able to use the full power of a video card? If not, why pay extra for performance you can't attain?

If the OP still wants to upgrade, I'd suggest either a powerful single-GPU configuration or a dual-GPU and power supply upgrade. 650W would be rather close for a 5970/6990 unless everything else is kept at stock. My current i7 setup with my 5970 pulls around ~600W from the wall under heavy load, so with capacitor aging and efficiency factored in, I think a more powerful PSU would be wise.
 
I think HackerJack expressed my concern already. That Earthwatts 650 has 1 6-pin pcie and 1 6+2 pin pcie connector. Basically, anything above a GTX 580 or HD 6970, you're out of luck for that PSU. The GTX 590 and HD 6990 both requrie 2 8-pin pcie connectors.

If you (or your friend) want an HD 6990, you're going to need a PSU upgrade to around 750 or 850 watts.
 
mad pistol said:
I think HackerJack expressed my concern already. That Earthwatts 650 has 1 6-pin pcie and 1 6+2 pin pcie connector. Basically, anything above a GTX 580 or HD 6970, you're out of luck for that PSU. The GTX 590 and HD 6990 both requrie 2 8-pin pcie connectors.

If you (or your friend) want an HD 6990, you're going to need a PSU upgrade to around 750 or 850 watts.
Click to expand...

Good call! I hadn't bothered to look at the PCIe connectors.
 
Isn't Far Cry 2 a pretty CPU-intensive game? What with all the physics and stuff going on in such a large open-world environment.
 
a pet rock said:
Isn't Far Cry 2 a pretty CPU-intensive game? What with all the physics and stuff going on in such a large open-world environment.
Click to expand...

It's both CPU and GPU intensive. I suppose it wouldn't make a perfect example of the difference, but I noticed large FPS gains with all of my games, including Crysis. It goes to show that the Phenom II is getting rather dated, it's a good thing that Bulldozer is right around the corner. :)
 
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