GPU Bottlenecking

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Carnage

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I'm thinking of getting 2 4870s in crossfire 1gb each (2gb total)
I stumble on a forum that you can bottleneck, such as not getting the most out of Video card(s) if you don't have a fast CPU.

My specs:
Asus Rampage Formula
Intel E8500 @ 3.16GHz
4gb of ram OCZ Reaper
1tb of hdd
850w Corsair PSU
4870 512mb (Current)

So here's the question.
If i get 2 of those bad boys (2x 4870 1gb) will it bottleneck my cpu? or should i go for a 4890?
 
just a little heads up, gpu's cant read memory from each other, so what u will realy get is 1gb even though it a total of 2gb, event if u put four of them together it will still be 1gb, now about your quistion, no i dont think it will be bottlenecked by you cpu but u will se a huge diff with 4890, not by any means preformance wise but power consumption and overclocking
 
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I agree that you shouldn't see any bottlenecking with the cpu, the 8500 is one of intel's fastst core 2 duo chips.

However, you may not want to buy the 4890s. They can do quite a bit better than the 4870s, but 2 4870s in crossfire should be able to handle everything you throw at them for at least the next year or so (probably a little bit more), at which point, if the 4870s can't do it for you, the 4890s probably won't be able to either.
 
before you think about crossfire or sli make sure your motherboard has 2x pci-e x16 and not 1 x16 and 1 x8 or else that'll really screw you over. i'd go with the 4890
 
JunK said:
before you think about crossfire or sli make sure your motherboard has 2x pci-e x16 and not 1 x16 and 1 x8 or else that'll really screw you over. i'd go with the 4890
Click to expand...

there really is not such a difference noticeable between x8 and x16, at least not with sli
 
With that OC on your 8500 you should be fine. I'd honestly go with the 4870's. I've seen benchmarks of the 4870 CF vs. 4890 CF and the 4890 CF doesn't really perform that much better than the 4870 CF. You wouldn't notice a significant difference unless you were playing at 2560x1600 and you probably would notice a little difference at 1920x1080 in some games. But seeing how the 4890 is basically an OC'd 4870. I'd just save ur money, get the 4870's and OC 'em.
 
You dont see much of a performance between the 4870 and 4890 CF but when the game utilizes the 4890 CF then it absolutely dominates. I would go with teh 4870 CF though and save some money, you can get a 4870 for like $130 so you could save around $100 total from both cards compared to the cheapest 4890 with is around $185.

As for the PCI-e slot question. You will only see a difference if it is PCI-e 1.0
All the PCI-e 2.0 are fine but i personally would have 2xPCI-e 2.0 x16 slots just to fully utilize all the lanes and not have to worry about any performance decrease even though i hear it is very minimal in the PCI-e 2.0 slots

I would also overclock your CPU just incase. Your CPU can easily go to 4.0 ghz and over. If you get there, you will see a pretty big speed improvement. All you need is a good CPU cooler but its not hard to come by these days. Get a direct touch heat pipe design, those are working extremely well right now and they are pretty cheap, around $30 on newegg for a Scythe one.
 
Whoa, thanks guys. FYI, I don't know how to OC. My motherboard can do alot, just haven't had the knowledge of doing so.
 
One quick question are you finding that your current video card is not running your games at high enough quality? If a card is running your system well enough why not wait till it is not performing (running games at high level) before upgrading it.
 
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