Widescreen Gaming Forum

I currently have a 5870 running 3x1 but I'm making the move to 5x1 and want thoughts on the best approach. I'm currently considering two options:

1) Buy a 5870e6 and just lose the extra gb of memory (due to just 1gb on 5870)
2) Buy 2x 6850 and give current 5870 to wife replacing 4850.

Flashed 6850>6870 should give performance close to that of the 5870 setup but the cost is $360 vs $280. Of course that also means that I'm upgrading the 4850 to a 5870 for only $80. With that being said she's running an older e7200 c2d on stock cooling at stock speeds (2.53) so the upgrade might be minimal due to cpu bottlenecking. Dunno, that's why I'm asking for thoughts.

I haven't stayed on top of eyefinity since my initial purchase about a year ago. I'm assuming the xfire/eyefinity issues have been ironed out. Also if there are issues with using the dp>vga adapters in a 5x1 setup that'd be great to know also. Any thoughts or help is appreciated.

The only way to do 5x1 Right now is to use 5870 eyefinity 6 edition. Eventually the 6000 series will get the DP 1.2 MST hubs and you'll be able to get it that way. But honestly I don't think the 6970 is that big of an upgrade. I'd just go ahead and get a 5870 E6 on Newegg (open box deal right now).

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System Core: | Intel Core i5-2500K + ASUS P8Z68-V + 16GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3 1333 MHz | Win7 x64 | MSI R7970 Lightning 3GB [1105/1400] |
Display: | 3 x Dell Ultrasharp 3007WFP-HC @ 7680x1600 | Dell u3011 |

The only way to do 5x1 Right now is to use 5870 eyefinity 6 edition. Eventually the 6000 series will get the DP 1.2 MST hubs and you'll be able to get it that way. But honestly I don't think the 6970 is that big of an upgrade. I'd just go ahead and get a 5870 E6 on Newegg (open box deal right now).

I did just that myself. Picked up a PowerColor EyeFinity6 open box for $135 discount. I don't exactly like PowerColor, but it was the cheapest Eyefinity6 listed by $50. Wonder why ASUS thinks their OEM card is that much more of worth than PowerColor? :P

Probably sell off my spare GTX465 and one of my three GTX470's to offset the cost. That way I can still do both AMD EyeFinity and NVIDIA Surround for testing purposes.

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Brad Hawthorne
Product Manager
Nthusim Pty. Ltd. | www.nthusim.com