Crossfire setup VS single card

No....one I wouldn't buy a 5970 as its now 2 generations old...6970 and 7970 out.

Two 6870 (get 701 in Guru3D's game test suite.....one 6970 gets 526 fps ....why spend money to lose 25 % of your performance ?

Peeps like to say that single cards are always a better choice but the numbers don't hold up that argument depending on your point of view.

As we see above .... two 6870's cost $300 which using the 701 fps above shows a cost of 42.8 cents per frame.... That $320 6970 would cost ya 61 cents per frame .... if that's a better choice, I'm missing something. Yes, it is true that you can add a 2nd 6970 later but.....

1. Until ya do, you are only getting 75% of the performance you'd get w/ the CF'd 6870's
2. When ya do add the 2nd 6970, it will have cost ya 78 cents per frame..... that's 82 % more expensive for a measly 17.7% increase in performance.
3. It's worse with the nVidia 560/580's ..... twin 580's get just 10% more performance than twin 900 Mhz 560 Ti's at 2.3 times the price.....going from $430 -> $1,000 for a 10% performance increase will be hard fr many peeps to get behind. Though competitive gamers will certainly be willing to do so.

http://www.gigabyte.com/products/p [...] id=3907#sp

Yup, that mobo is gimping your crossfire, Cheaper to buy new mobo than a single card though
What resolution are you playing at and how many monitors?
Moto

Go for a x16/x16 or x8/x8 so both cards are equally loaded, but dependant on res you might see 30% improvement,
again, its dependant on resolution and the actual games you are playing, some games aren't coded well for Cf, if at all
Moto

Cool, I believe that one will hold you through a bulldozer upgrade as well in the future,
*Edit, yup, just checked its an am3+/fx socket

Moto

I added a second 5830 to my i7 930 setup and am loving the performance gain, especially since radeon 5800 cards are so cheap now.

i think multi gpu is better for nvida at least

the pros
two cheap cards might give more preformance than a more expensive one

might cost less than a single expensive card

some good feature like sli antilasing but you will need a strong card

cons
some games dont supprot xfire or sli but i think most famous games do

need a good power supply which support xfire and sli and more power(but you only buy a psu every 3-5 yrs)

heat can be a problem but a good air flow usally solves that

need a mobo that supports xfire or sli and fits the gpu s


i would go with multi gpu hope this helps