# ASUS EAH5870 CrossFire



## W1zzard (Sep 23, 2009)

We pair two AMD Radeon HD 5870 1 GB accelerators for some CrossFire action, and see how viable it proves as a high-end graphics setup.

*Show full review*


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## aCid888* (Sep 23, 2009)

Once they get their drivers sorted out and that in turn allows these cards to scale as the 4870's did it will be a magic thing......sick power.


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## PVTCaboose1337 (Sep 23, 2009)

FINALLY.  Thanks for your coverage of the 58xx series W1z!  I go and take a physics test and poof, when I get back he already has all the reviews up!


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## btarunr (Sep 23, 2009)

Here it is folks. Tests on HD 5850 CrossFire, power-draw, fan-noise, and HD 5870 Crossfire on PCI-E 2.0 x16 (electrical x8 2.0) are in progress, and will be added in a couple of hours.


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## mdm-adph (Sep 23, 2009)

Thanks for the work reviewing!  What I find hilarious is that two 5870's scale great in Call of Juarez 2, but the 4870X2 still doesn't work right.


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## KainXS (Sep 23, 2009)

there must be a ton of bugs, it got beat by the 5850 in one test

but it seems that 2 cards for the first time are a waste of money unless your are gaming on a very high res monitor or want to flaunt your fps around


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## jagd (Sep 23, 2009)

Thanks for tests


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## ShogoXT (Sep 23, 2009)

So you are having the same sandwich heat issue I am. Im having to turn up fan speeds to max, but even in some games like Crysis or Clear sky, artifacting is inevitable after a while. 

Clear sky especially beats the crap out of my computer. Im so curious on what it takes to max it out with directx10 AA...


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## zithe (Sep 23, 2009)

You couldn't possible add a bench of Oblivion with QTP3 by itself could you? XD


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## WarEagleAU (Sep 23, 2009)

Looks to be simply awesome, cannot wait for the 5870X2 to come out. Price though is a downer but only because we are accustomed to 300 bucks. I think it is not as bad as it could be.


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## ShogoXT (Sep 23, 2009)

Yea good review. Crossfire is beast. Is the scaling worse than the 4k series though? Or maybe is it some bottleneck?


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## Bjorn_Of_Iceland (Sep 23, 2009)

o_0 

this is initial drivers?.. dang.


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## LaidLawJones (Sep 23, 2009)

Considering you can spend up to $800 for a 295, granted fully custom/watercooled, team green is going to have a hard time selling them as cross fire 5870's stomp all over everything.

I don't know if ATI is going to do much more price cutting, but this is definitely going to cause Nvidia some hurting in the 'ol pocketbook.


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## lemonadesoda (Sep 23, 2009)

GREAT scaling with the crossfire. Crossfire was never this "capable" before.

Crossfire 5870 *WINS *against ASUS Mars at a much lower price.


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## zCexVe (Sep 23, 2009)

Nice review! Now lets see what camp green has to say about this! Another name may be?


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## btarunr (Sep 23, 2009)

lemonadesoda said:


> Crossfire 5870 *WINS *against ASUS Mars at a much lower price.



Don't be surprised if Crossfire 5850 wins against MARS too.


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## Yukikaze (Sep 23, 2009)

W1zzard said:


> <Awesome review was here>



W1zz, thanks for being the #1 site on the world wide spideyweb !


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## Kitkat (Sep 23, 2009)

oh my god wait for a "good driver" rofl WOW WOW WOW WOW


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## Sasqui (Sep 23, 2009)

Wow, stunning!


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## TheMailMan78 (Sep 23, 2009)

What is the recommended wattage for a crossfire setup on the 5870 and 5850? I see you used an 800. Whats the minimum?


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## PVTCaboose1337 (Sep 23, 2009)

Yeah I'm so sad that doing two of these is crossfire is about on par with a GTX295.  The two cards in xfire do perform much better at higher resolutions, but for the mainstream gamer here, it is not really worth it.


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## btarunr (Sep 23, 2009)

Mainstream gamers don't buy 1920x1200/2560x1600 displays and spend $700+ on graphics anyway.


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## Yukikaze (Sep 23, 2009)

btarunr said:


> Mainstream gamers don't buy 1920x1200/2560x1600 displays and spend $700+ on graphics anyway.



I'd have to disagree on the 1920x1200/1920x1080 displays, since they are so cheap nowdays, it it hard to find someone back home who is buying a new PC or replacing a monitor and isn't getting something like the Samsung 2333SW, but you're quite right on the GPU setups to go with that.


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## mdm-adph (Sep 23, 2009)

WarEagleAU said:


> Looks to be simply awesome, cannot wait for the 5870X2 to come out. Price though is a downer but only because we are accustomed to 300 bucks. I think it is not as bad as it could be.



Considering the single-GPU GTX 280 and 285 cost, what -- $450 when they came out?  I'm not bummed out at all about $300, or even $375.


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## Animalpak (Sep 23, 2009)

This is some serious performance man ! 

But I am sure that the future 5xxx X2 should be able to do even better in a single package card.

Personally I love the dual GPU's on a single PCB.


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## zithe (Sep 23, 2009)

mdm-adph said:


> Considering the single-GPU GTX 280 and 285 cost, what -- $450 when they came out?  I'm not bummed out at all about $300, or even $375.



The 280 was 799 I believe. lol


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## grunt_408 (Sep 23, 2009)

I wonder how much the performance drops when you run 3 or six displays like say with a res of 11520 x 4800.....


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## naoan (Sep 23, 2009)

Performance gain is linear in some (read:most) case, and this is with premature driver!


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## TheMailMan78 (Sep 23, 2009)

TheMailMan78 said:


> What is the recommended wattage for a crossfire setup on the 5870 and 5850? I see you used an 800. Whats the minimum?



I repeat


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## PVTCaboose1337 (Sep 23, 2009)

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/ATI/Radeon_HD_5870/28.html

You can kinda get an idea that the cards themselves on load would need about 420watts just for themselves...


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## grunt_408 (Sep 23, 2009)

I dont think I will be going crossfire for a while looky here at the AUS price
http://www.onlinecomputer.com.au/pr...=2796&osCsid=6996f07cab8025a16b56a6e46eea0d4c


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## ShogoXT (Sep 23, 2009)

Im sure you could get away with a decent 750w or a good 650w, like the new Corsair one. Just make sure it has the plugs.

EDIT: Opps well ive been mostly looking at modular ones lately. 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139012
Thats the one I was talking about. Corsair sure does gouge on them though.
EDIT: Earthwatts from Antec arnt bad either. 
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817371026


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## W1zzard (Sep 23, 2009)

hd 5850 cf benchmarks complete .. making graphs now, should be up in a few minutes


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## FishHead69 (Sep 23, 2009)

Any reason why your Benching with 9.6 and not 9.8 ?

edit: Maybe I'm just misreading it and your using a beta driver


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## HTC (Sep 23, 2009)

In interested in the power consumption of CFed cards, be it 5870 or 5850 and, if @ all, temps are higher then with single cards.

The only game in this review where CF totally failed is Quake IV. I wonder what the performance graphs would be if this particular game wasn't in the review.

All in all, very good review: many thanks.


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## W1zzard (Sep 23, 2009)

FishHead69 said:


> Any reason why your Benching with 9.6 and not 9.8 ?
> 
> edit: Maybe I'm just misreading it and your using a beta driver



all other ati cards use 9.6.. it's kinda difficult rebenching all cards each month. i'll probably rebench all cards when a 5800 official catalyst is out, and then next rebench in november when the new vga benchmark rig goes up


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## W1zzard (Sep 23, 2009)

HTC said:


> In interested in the power consumption of CFed cards, be it 5870 or 5850 and, if @ all, temps are higher then with single cards.
> 
> The only game in this review where CF totally failed is Quake IV. I wonder what the performance graphs would be if this particular game wasn't in the review.
> 
> All in all, very good review: many thanks.



power + noise + temps tomorrow (11:30 pm for me and i've been benching and working on reviews all day .. just like the last days). uploading 5850 cf results right now, should see the new graphs in a few minutes


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## dir_d (Sep 23, 2009)

For a Xfire Setup 2 5850s is the way to go..


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## HTC (Sep 23, 2009)

dir_d said:


> For a Xfire Setup 2 5850s is the way to go..



For "only 2 cards", i would say so.

Still, i wonder how much more would tri-fire or quad-fire give ...


In any case, and unless you're aiming for max details on 1920 / 1200 or above resolutions, with AA and AF, more then 2 cards would be overkill, IMO.


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## snuif09 (Sep 23, 2009)

just got my self a new mobo wich had for pci-e x16 slots =D

now i wish i had the money for four 5850's


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## 1Kurgan1 (Sep 23, 2009)

Amazing, I'm glad I now play at 1920x1200, these would be the perfect fit, too bad I don't have the cash now.


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## troyrae360 (Sep 23, 2009)

@W1zz Any chance of a Quadfire review next? you might even set some records


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## SteelSix (Sep 23, 2009)

aCid888* said:


> Once they get their drivers sorted out and that in turn allows these cards to scale as the 4870's did it will be a magic thing......sick power.



Agreed. 4870 CF sucked early on, at a time when when i7 was breathing new life into high-end SLI scaling.

4850's are mopping up too! I'm _trying_ to wait for 2GB cards or an X2. Damn this is gonna be tough..


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## Easy Rhino (Sep 24, 2009)

crysis maxed out settings the 5870 in crossfire plays at 30FPS...FINALLY!!!!


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## grunt_408 (Sep 24, 2009)

Easy Rhino said:


> crysis maxed out settings the 5870 in crossfire plays at 30FPS...FINALLY!!!!



5850 dosnt do a bad job either


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## Sasqui (Sep 24, 2009)

W1zzard said:


> power + noise + temps tomorrow (11:30 pm for me and i've been benching and working on reviews all day .. just like the last days). uploading 5850 cf results right now, should see the new graphs in a few minutes



We are waiting...    YOU are the man.

I hope you do as much work when the drivers have gone through some more optimization.


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## DrunkenMafia (Sep 24, 2009)

good review.....  crossfire 5850's are the way to go imo!!!  awesome power and much cheaper than its big bro.

Smashes the 295 for the same price as well   and you don't need a mega nuclear psu...

Good work ATI


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## Agility (Sep 24, 2009)

Best performance in all resolution... But the most horrid dollar chart.


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## wolf (Sep 24, 2009)

Awesome review W1z, these cards are just what the market needs right now 

5850/5870 CF chop pretty damn hardcore, 2x5870 2gb eyefinity6's is what I'm waiting for


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## senninex (Sep 24, 2009)

Wowwwww.... this is AWESOME performance.. No 1 VGA to date!!!!!!!!!!

I bet NVidia get trouble now due to their new GT300 not ready yet.... But i'm believe it will be release is very soon (if their won't lose more customer).

If i buy.. I'll choose for 5850 series due to save cost & performance close to 5870

However, I'm need calm down wait for GT300 series show it claw & see if it able to beat 5870 or not..... AND off cause performance/price is the main factor for me.

So i keep my 8800GT on table for a while because it able to play all kind off game so far. 


Thanks for the review... 

P.S : sory, im poor in english!!! LOL


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## Cybrnook (Sep 24, 2009)

I dont think I can even fathom the review W1zz is going to make on the X2's in crossfire.   Just imagine.......


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## Imsochobo (Sep 24, 2009)

2x 5870X2 ..

MMMMM!


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## Easo (Sep 24, 2009)

Need final drivers to see what they realy can do imho.


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## tzitzibp (Sep 24, 2009)

great review.... 
cant wait for power + noise + temps results....


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## Frizz (Sep 24, 2009)

I'd wait for the 5890  so far great revolutionary results, but still a bad price! Have to wait til Nvidia comes out with dx 11, then its shopping spree.


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## ZoneDymo (Sep 24, 2009)

All I have to say is, LOL at those that bought a Asus GTX295 Mars Edition


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## btarunr (Sep 24, 2009)

Yup. HD 5850 CF is roughly $500, and it snacks on MARS. If you have a 2 slot mobo that supports CFX, consider HD 5850 CF over a GTX 295.


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## amschip (Sep 24, 2009)

*check this out *

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR45ja_fNzU
I guess they did something similar when 4800 series came on market.


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## Imsochobo (Sep 24, 2009)

randomflip said:


> I'd wait for the 5890  so far great revolutionary results, but still a bad price! Have to wait til Nvidia comes out with dx 11, then its shopping spree.



Wait for 5890, what says 5890 will EVER come ?

They already got a bigger core than they planned.
High clock speeds.
5890 would be 32 NM perhaps  i can see no other card that would be 5890. 

I would not bet on a 90 card again, it was something ati used to fight GTX275, and managed to beat them to their own game ;D by a week


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## Wrigleyvillain (Sep 24, 2009)

Hexus has speculation on the 5890 (a few days old):



> Ready for a spell of Monday-morning speculation? Good, 'cause our sources tell us that AMD has a Radeon HD 5890 in the works.
> 
> We're told the card will be a single-GPU solution, and judging by the nomenclature, it should become AMD's quickest.
> 
> ...


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## Steevo (Sep 24, 2009)

How the frick are otehr sites running GTA4 at 50 draw distance and maxxed settigns on 1GB cards? At max settigns I can't go over 40 as it just limits me, and shows 1099MB vmem use at that setting.


Are they full of shit, or just special enough to remove texture load and other memory hogs with their minds?


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## glenboy (Sep 24, 2009)

thanks for the review wizzard, with the 5850's do you think at some point the disabled shaders can be re enabled like they did on the old ati 850 cards and does gputool work with the 5800 series cards yet
thanks


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## azides (Sep 24, 2009)

*Question about performance percentages.*

"To create this graph we took all performance results of the five resolutions we tested, threw them together and calculated the relative performance of each card, compared to our review sample. In a sixth graph we also combined all tests in all resolutions to calculate the total relative performance of the review sample."

My question is: Do you work out the percentage performance of each card at each resolution for each game first and then average the percentages? Or do you add up all the FPS and divide by the number of tests?

The reason I ask is that if the latter is so, the data will be unfairly bias towards lower resolutions and games with higher frame rates. The former would be better as it would normalise each resolution and each game before averaging.


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## Polarman (Sep 24, 2009)

Nice work Wizz. You must have had fun.

I'm curious about seeing some 5850's now!


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## erocker (Sep 24, 2009)

Polarman said:


> I'm curious about seeing some 5850's now!



5850 CrossFire is in the graphs.


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## W1zzard (Sep 24, 2009)

azides said:


> Do you work out the percentage performance of each card at each resolution for each game first and then average the percentages?
> [...]
> The reason I ask is that if the latter is so, the data will be unfairly bias towards lower resolutions and games with higher frame rates.



yes we normalize each test before adding them up


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## $ReaPeR$ (Sep 25, 2009)

at last a con fig that plays CRYSIS at 60 fps  a  for AMD/ATI i hope Nvidia comes up with something similar or better


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## zmanster (Sep 25, 2009)

Very informative review.  Thanks


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## jaredpace (Sep 25, 2009)

Imsochobo said:


> 2x 5870X2 ..
> 
> MMMMM!


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## btarunr (Sep 25, 2009)

Don't rule such a review from TPU out.


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## krisna159 (Sep 26, 2009)

2X 5870X2....how much money we can spend for all those cards?
i just imagine it......


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## HTC (Sep 27, 2009)

W1zzard said:


> power + noise + temps tomorrow (11:30 pm for me and i've been benching and working on reviews all day .. just like the last days). uploading 5850 cf results right now, should see the new graphs in a few minutes



Any chance you could post these, please?


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## cauby (Sep 28, 2009)

By the look of the charts,the 5850 is the card to get.It performs on par with the gtx285 and it's cheaper (U$299 vs U$339,i think).


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## chaotic_uk (Oct 8, 2009)

why do these crossfire tests not compair it to crossfired 4890's ? , not one have i seen anywhere


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## handsomerichguy (Oct 21, 2009)

Awesome card. I become impatient to wait for 5870x2. I'm sure that 5870x2 crossfire will be the killer of all cards


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## Anath (Oct 21, 2009)

Well from my experience as well 5870 crossfirex is


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## Lazzer408 (Oct 21, 2009)

The'll get the drivers sorted out by the time the 6850 and 6870 come out.


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## steveoh (Nov 5, 2009)

> We will also be testing how running two of these accelerators with PCI-Express 2.0 x16 (electrical x8) compares to the same on the full-bandwidth interface, to try and give you a rough idea of just how viable a pair of these accelerators are, in mid-range and high-end motherboards.



Where is this comparison of crossfired 5870's (or 5850's) @ 16x/16x vs 8x/8x?


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## RaPiDo987 (Nov 5, 2009)

steveoh said:


> Where is this comparison of crossfired 5870's (or 5850's) @ 16x/16x vs 8x/8x?



This one?

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/


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## steveoh (Nov 5, 2009)

RaPiDo987 said:


> This one?
> 
> http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_5870_PCI-Express_Scaling/



Unless I missed something, no, that review only compares single GPU, x16 vs x8 vs x4 vs x1.

What I quoted in my first post I cannot find in this review or that one.


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## GrnMonster (Nov 22, 2009)

steveoh said:


> Unless I missed something, no, that review only compares single GPU, x16 vs x8 vs x4 vs x1.
> 
> What I quoted in my first post I cannot find in this review or that one.



You're not the only one.  I can't find the scaling comparison for Crossfire either.


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## zed011 (Dec 11, 2009)

GrnMonster said:


> You're not the only one.  I can't find the scaling comparison for Crossfire either.



I've been also wanting to see the results of crossfire scaling between 8x/8x vs 16x/16x. I don't suppose this will ever be tested?


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## andreeebdg (Dec 24, 2009)

Hello, i am new here.. 

I need info regarding 5870  cf on 32 bit system. As far as i guess... there won't be 6GB available  in the review.  Here my question,  within the test session, how much the main memory size available for the system ? 

Sorry if my english is poor..


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## TAViX (Dec 29, 2009)

zed011 said:


> I've been also wanting to see the results of crossfire scaling between 8x/8x vs 16x/16x. I don't suppose this will ever be tested?



Yeah, I was searching for that to. I have a 5770 and I was curious about perf. difference.


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## crazyeyesreaper (Dec 29, 2009)

think about it if on average u lose 2% at x8 that would mean a lose of 4% on average in crossfire compared to to x16/x16  so i would say 4% loss is tiny loss overall when CPU or Ram will make a bigger impact then x8/x8 compared to x16/x16  example i7 in multi gpu setups compared to Phenom II or Core2Quad  you wont notice the difference

i say this running 2 5850s in crossfire on a 790gx board comparing my setup to erockers who has a 4ghz phenom II compared to my 3.4ghz and a 790fx (x16/x16) to my (x8/x8) theres only a 4-5fps difference and this of course is at 1680x1050 with 8xAA so if that dosent give you a good answer nothing will

erocker even went so far to clock his 965 down to my speeds and are fps were nearly identicle so the difference is unnoticeable in terms of gaming


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## riddy (May 20, 2010)

I cant see any difference in 5870CF setup..the performance like using single card...sometimes it give much lower frame rates..the game that i test is crysis, Devil May Cry 4, resident Evil 5, supreme Commander 2, MW1, MW2...dont know what is the problem...this is my setup..

Lg 19 inch 1280x1024
Asus Maximus II Formula
C2D E8600 (stock speed)
4x Crucial Ballistix Tracer 1Gb 1066
2x Samsung F3 1Tb
Dell OEM 5870
Power Color 5870 (Asus bios)
Seasonic 850W

All game is on 1280x1024 (highest setting AA (max) AF (max))

any suggestion/recommendation? thanx!...


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