Hiya guys, I have two old graphics cards (I think 'classics' might be more appropriate), the Sapphire Radeon HD4890 1GB Vapor-X, and wondered whether it's worth bothering to use them in Crossfire formation? The cards each need 2 power connections (6-pin PCI-E), and I gather they use quite a lot of the stuff! I only have a 750W PSU (albeit a good quality one), and to be honest am not likely to be going beyond 1920x1200 display resolution anytime soon. Any feedback/suggestions? Specs: Intel i7-950 3.07MHz (not overclocked yet), Asus PCX58D-E motherboard, NZXT Phantom case, NZXT 750W PSU, Sapphire Radeon HD4890 1GB Vapor-X, 6GB Kingston 1600MHz, 80GB RevoDrive, 500GB WD Green Caviar, 500GB WD My Passport Essential USB 3.0
used to run two off these in crossfire. they ran well but in certain games i suffered from stuttering. used these on a 500w psu with no problems and a 750w psu. ending up selling both of them to fund my 6870, found this card to run even better with my system with less power consumption and no stutter in all my games. typical driver problems with crossfire
If you have them sitting there you may as well give it a go. It will most definatly increase your performance, but as said above you may notice some stuttering. And assuming you have enough connectors on your PSU it should run them no problem. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!
Agree with above, the 750W should be okay to run them and you may as well give them a go to see how well they work. Xfire is getting better and better so why not.
If you do already own two why not give it a shot? Worst that will happen is that the two cards will underperform or you will experience micro stutter, then simply sell both and get a single new card. Drivers for Multi GPU really have improved in the last months.
The PSU will be fine, and you'll see some increase in performance, but I'm not sure it'll be much. With cards of that generation scaling wasn't great above two cards. You're effectively using four there so you might see some issues. EDIT: For some reason I was thinking the 4890 is a dual GPU card... obviously it isn't! From the benchmarks I can find you're looking at GTX 580 performance or better in games, where crossfire works as it should. Go for it!
Yes, if you have two already put them together, they will give good performance in games. As for the 750W PSU, that is plenty of power so no need to worry
Thanks for the response... Well, thanks to all for your replies, although the general consensus seems to be to just 'give them a go', my main worry to be honest is the power-draw. My case is especially quiet at the moment, and while the rest of the case and CPU hover around the 30°C mark, the Vapor-X card runs quiet but at a toasty 60°C -- if I had both cards in Crossfire should they run cooler? They have both been safely overclocked to core 900MHz and memory 1100MHz (GDDR5) in previous machines, and moreover does it make any difference whatsoever which one is connected to the monitor (am guessing not, but it never hurts to ask!)
Don't worry about the power draw, 750w is plenty for your set up with enough in reserve for an overclock on the CPU and GPU's if you like. I ran SLi 480GTX's on an OCZ 800w psu for a couple of weeks without problem, but I did upgrade to a 1000w corsair before I overclocked. Performance of the HD4890 was and still is very good, the modern cards are what, maybe 50% quicker? In Xfire you should be matching or exceeding the performance of a single 6970.
If 60C is the temp when in full use, then I owuld not worry too much about XFiring them especially if the rest of the case is a cool 30C. I mean, the GTX 480 at stock clock was in the 90s! If you were real concerned you could take the cards back to stock clock as to will still significantly outperform one OC'd card
