Hello All. It's been a while since I've been active on here and I know you guys are pros when it comes to these kind of questions. Because you guys have insane rigs and setups and the experience and knowledge to offer great advice.
My setup is not ideal, I know, I should probably ditch these cards ASAP and go powerful BUT please bare with me for a bit, humor me and help me out unless you absolutely think I have no chance of enjoying my setup, even then info would be appreciated
So I have had a single 6870 X2 and I am very happy with it, I had a chance to return it within the 90 days when the 7950 came out but I chose to keep it due to benchmark results in Crysis, Crysis 2 DX11 and Metro DX11 Max settings. Now I was going to buy a regular 6870 for tri-fire and upgrade to 3 monitor portrait eyefinity this holiday season. I know tri-fire works with my current rig but I am unsure if I was really pushing it as I only got to test tri-fire using a friend's card for a couple of days. Recently I got a good deal on an X2 and figured it would be worth it since I want to run eyefinity.
1. What PSUs are recommended for crossfire X2s with all sata ports filled, all PCI-E ports filled, Ram OC'ed and CPU OC'ed with a bit/some breathing room
I would love to do 2560x1440 eyefinity but would be willing to settle for 1920x1200 eyefinity. There seem to be no quad-fire 6870 benchmarks besides the famous Tom's Stutter elimination article, and there's definitely no eyefiniity quad fire 6870 benchmarks that I could find at all.
Obviously the lower the res the easier to run and add eye candy to the already ludicrous eyefinity resolution, but...
2. Is 3x portrait 2560x1440 out of reach for quad-fire 6870? Is 3x portrait 1920x1200 still too hard for current games with some AA?
Like I mentioned my case is very full, and I am a bit worried about temps. I use a H50 for CPU in hopes of eliminating as much heat as possible, I would not be opposed to Heatsink suggestion/upgrades. I have the H50 Heatsink sandwiched in a push/pull intake setup at the back of the case. I have a single optical at the top front and 3x 4-in-3 hard drive cages all with intake fans at the front blowing past hard drives. The two top case fans are dedicated to blowing air out of the case from the intakes, front and back. I have a fan on the side of the case blowing air out, hoping to eliminate heat from the video cards. If this might better be used to blow air onto the video cards I would gladly switch it up.
3. Am I running the risk of melting my X2s? Should I buy an expansion slot exhaust blower for between the GPUs? Where does most of the heat from X2 GPUs escape out from [besides the intended exhaust]? The PCB? The Fan Area? The Power Connector side?
I appreciate any input and am looking forward to working on my rig again. I hope I can pull this off, it would be sweet ^_^
As a Bonus question, I was running PhysX Hack with a GTX 470 768MB before I got the other X2. Is it possible to put a GT 640 into the last PCI-E x4 slot and use it with the PhysX Hack. Will it not work because it requires newer drivers than the PhysX hack supports? Or am I able to go back to older drivers since the card will essentially only be a PhysX card?
Edited by PsychoKilla666 - 8/22/12 at 7:49pm
My setup is not ideal, I know, I should probably ditch these cards ASAP and go powerful BUT please bare with me for a bit, humor me and help me out unless you absolutely think I have no chance of enjoying my setup, even then info would be appreciated
So I have had a single 6870 X2 and I am very happy with it, I had a chance to return it within the 90 days when the 7950 came out but I chose to keep it due to benchmark results in Crysis, Crysis 2 DX11 and Metro DX11 Max settings. Now I was going to buy a regular 6870 for tri-fire and upgrade to 3 monitor portrait eyefinity this holiday season. I know tri-fire works with my current rig but I am unsure if I was really pushing it as I only got to test tri-fire using a friend's card for a couple of days. Recently I got a good deal on an X2 and figured it would be worth it since I want to run eyefinity.
1. What PSUs are recommended for crossfire X2s with all sata ports filled, all PCI-E ports filled, Ram OC'ed and CPU OC'ed with a bit/some breathing room
I would love to do 2560x1440 eyefinity but would be willing to settle for 1920x1200 eyefinity. There seem to be no quad-fire 6870 benchmarks besides the famous Tom's Stutter elimination article, and there's definitely no eyefiniity quad fire 6870 benchmarks that I could find at all.
Obviously the lower the res the easier to run and add eye candy to the already ludicrous eyefinity resolution, but...
2. Is 3x portrait 2560x1440 out of reach for quad-fire 6870? Is 3x portrait 1920x1200 still too hard for current games with some AA?
Like I mentioned my case is very full, and I am a bit worried about temps. I use a H50 for CPU in hopes of eliminating as much heat as possible, I would not be opposed to Heatsink suggestion/upgrades. I have the H50 Heatsink sandwiched in a push/pull intake setup at the back of the case. I have a single optical at the top front and 3x 4-in-3 hard drive cages all with intake fans at the front blowing past hard drives. The two top case fans are dedicated to blowing air out of the case from the intakes, front and back. I have a fan on the side of the case blowing air out, hoping to eliminate heat from the video cards. If this might better be used to blow air onto the video cards I would gladly switch it up.
3. Am I running the risk of melting my X2s? Should I buy an expansion slot exhaust blower for between the GPUs? Where does most of the heat from X2 GPUs escape out from [besides the intended exhaust]? The PCB? The Fan Area? The Power Connector side?
I appreciate any input and am looking forward to working on my rig again. I hope I can pull this off, it would be sweet ^_^
As a Bonus question, I was running PhysX Hack with a GTX 470 768MB before I got the other X2. Is it possible to put a GT 640 into the last PCI-E x4 slot and use it with the PhysX Hack. Will it not work because it requires newer drivers than the PhysX hack supports? Or am I able to go back to older drivers since the card will essentially only be a PhysX card?
Edited by PsychoKilla666 - 8/22/12 at 7:49pm






I have absolutely no idea how well 6870s scale beyond 2 (and in eyefinity). If I had to guess, and it could be totally off, 3x 1920x1200 medium settings. Again, a shot in the dark total guess.



We'd love to see it. You should then promptly go to 7870s, you know, for science 