I have a TA790GX motherboard, running two ATI Radeon 3870’s (Crossfire). They are starting to go I think because i saw artifacts on the screen, like green lines and all weird like.
I saw them even when booting up, so it isn’t windows or a driver, and it’s not my monitor.
So anyway, what should I replace my crossfire cards with? My mainboard’s manual says for crossfire to work, use ATI 38xx series. Will new ATI series also work? Like the 48xx or 5xxx?
Should I get two cards (crossfire) at all, or just one good one? What is my best bang for the buck? I want more graphics processing of course, so I would like to upgrade from my 3870’s. I’m not sure what my mainboard can handle.
Did you try removing, cleaning, and reseating both the cards, and reattaching the DVI/VGA cables from the back? It may be that whatever is sending the green is dirty.
I am hearing it is better to go with one good card, unless you want to go ultra high-tech, or prop up an existing card (which didn’t work too well for me)?
The latest in an ongoing feature on the best cards for a specific price range.
Get one good one. The dollar per framerate for dual cards is pretty high. SLI and Crossfire are more for bragging rights than anything else.
I got an Nvidia 275 for $189 recently, which might be a hard deal to find, but I think it was the best bang for the buck a few months ago. Looks like the 460 fell in price. The lurkinghorror’s link has lots of nice options.
They’re all pcie x16 cards, so they should all work in your rig. You won’t have any problems with the 5000 series of AMD cards either.
For price performance, is NVIDIA better or is ATI?
It depends on your budget, but they’re pretty even right now. ATI may have a slight edge overall.
I don’t think you could go wrong. It seems that every couple of months one company pulls ahead a bit, and it does seem that ATI is more popular now. Then you have to choose the actual manufacturer, I like eVGA or XFX, and my Sapphire seems okay, but to each his own.