4850x2 vs 4890 2GB for multiboxing? [Archive]

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jak3676

09-03-2009, 01:32 AM

Thoughts from the gallery?

Specifally, I'm looking at:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102809&Tpk=4850%20x2
vs.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814102847

Before you comment, let me toss in the idea that I'm thinking about running 3 monitors (28" WUXGA and 2x 19" WSXGA - flipped sideways/portrait mode). I do have the option of mixing in a 2nd computer as well.

I've been trying to find some good info on multiboxing/multimonitor setups with the 4850x2. Not much out there. On paper it looks like it should work great. It's basically 2x 4850's glued together with an internal crossfire bridge. I believe you can flip that crossfire swtich back and forth though the driver (i.e. limited support for using it as 1 single card with 2x the horsepower or use it as 2x independant video cards.) So for me that would mean plugging in the 28" to port 1 and the the 19's to port 3 and 4 and leaving crossfire off. Yes, it's basically the same cost as buying 2x 4850's, but I'd get the advantage of fitting it onto my existing motherboard which only has 1 PCIe x16 slot.

But for every post I can find that says it works, I find 2-3 posts about problems with multi-gpu/multi-monitor setups. I thought that was supposed to be fixed with Vista SP1 and Win7? I'm not really sure how/if that applies to the 4850x2 anyway? Are there still any issues with the 2nd card (even if it is built in) not hardware rendering the gfx? Anyone out there using the 4850x2 with 3 or 4 monitors? Any chance you've compared it to a "good" single card solution?

I'm not entirely sure, but I think those of you with 4870x2's or 295's may have similar issues.

If it helps at all, here's what I have now.

Box 1 - home built:
28" WUXGA (1920x1200) monitor, currently split into 1/4 for all the slaves
22" WSXGA (1680x1050) monitor, currently full screen for the main
Q6600 (Quad Core 2.4GHz - overclocked to 3.0GHz)
8GB DDR2 RAM (800MHz - oc'd to 1GHz, 4-4-4-12 timing)
8800 GT - 512MB memory - factory oc'd a little bit
500watt PSU
1TB hard drive - 32MB cache, 7200RPM
Win7 64-bit, release candidate (need to update to the RTM when I get time)
The hard drive just has Win7, Office and 6x WoW folders on it (90% empty). I have 1 "normal" WoW install that I use when I'm playing my main solo. The other 5 folders are all symlinked together (except /interface and /wtf) to let me keep custom UI settings different between the seperate accounts.

Box 2 - Gateway POS:
currently no monitor - it's plugged into the main box (although I will buy another 19" or 22" when I around to it and the I find some way to have someone/something else taunt off the wife aggro)
E6300 (Dual Core 1.86GHz)
4GB DDR2 RAM (667MHz)
9600 gso (think rebadged 8800gs) - 384MB memory
500watt PSU
500GB hard drive - 16MB cache, 7200RPM
WinXP 32-bit, (need to update to the Win7 64-bit RTM when I get time)

Right now only using my one PC, I think my weakest link is the video card. Both the 8800 and my 9600 run a single instance of WoW just fine - good FPS (even when raiding) @ 1920x1200 resolution and all the gfx settings set to "ultra" except the shadows turned off - I don't like the look. For multiboxing all the slaves are at 960x600 resolution and have their gfx settings set as low as you can go. They are also limited to 15FPS. My main is currently also running on the same video card, but at 1680x1050 resultion with all gfx settings on "ultra" (except shadows turned off again). My slaves seem to bounce between 10 and 15 FPS, which is good enough I suppose. But my main does very pretty wildly. One second he'll be getting 50+FPS in some instance and then the next he's in the 10-15 range as well. It hasn't been a real issue yet - but I'm still in the vanilla WoW content. The gfx requirements go up for the TBC content and again for the WoLK content. I suspect once I hit the outlands I may find my one machine is underpowered. So then I'll switch to plan B.

Plan B is to run only the main on the Gatway box - probably hooked to the 28" monitor. That's pretty much the specs of the system I used to solo raid from with my main - it should do fine for at least 1 instance of WoW. Then I'll have all 4 slaves running on my home-built system and the 22" monitor. Hopefully splitting up the duties there will give me a little more horsepower.

Longer term I'd still like to pick up a 3rd monitor, but I need a new desk and some monitor stands to make it work. I'm already feeling pretty crampt with just 2 big monitors on my desk. I'm thinking something like this - http://www.dual-boxing.com/showpost.php?p=219649&postcount=16 (http://www.dual-boxing.com/showpost.php?p=219649&postcount=16), except my 28" in the center and either 19" or 22" on the sides (in vertical/portrait mode). When I stand a 19" sideways it is the same height as my 28" which looks nice, but of course the 22" is a nicer monitor. It'll probably depend on which monitor I can find on ebay for cheap first.

Once I have 3 monitors I can play with it a bit more. I'll have to see if it works better to have only the main on the Gateway with the 28" and 4x slaves (split between 2 19" monitors) on my custom PC, or maybe have my custom PC power my main + 2 slaves on the 28" and one 19" and then the gateway box can power the other 2 slaves on their own 19". I'll need a new PSU before I can upgrade my video card as well - but I'll have to do that either way. I'm pretty sure I'm maxed out at 500 watts. I'll probably need some more case cooling too. While I'm thinking about new hardware - a new SSD would nice too if Santa is listning.

d0z3rr

09-03-2009, 11:10 AM

I would avoid that x2 at all costs and get the 4890, as that will be more than adequate. Your current 8800 is definitely lacking in the memory department, so you should see some nice improvements when you upgrade to the 4890.

Smoooth

09-03-2009, 12:35 PM

I use the 4850x2 for 10 boxing on Win 7 and it does great using 2 monitors. I haven't tried using more than 2 yet but if it would help you I can try out using 3 later tonight.

jak3676

09-03-2009, 03:16 PM

@Smooth - Do you run both your monitors with crossfire disabled? Win7? Do you have your monitors plugged into the "seperate" video cards (i.e. monitor 1 on slot 1, and monitor 2 on slot 3? If you have a 3rd monitor handy I'd be curious if you see any signifigant difference in FPS. You'll probably get a small drop because you're pushing more total pixels - but I'm hoping it's minor.

When I read articles like this: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/best-graphics-card,2387-7.html It makes me lean towad the 4850x2 - in general they say that the 4850x2 (or two seperate 4850's in crossfire mode) outperforms the 4890. But I know there are issues with WoW's support for Crossfire/SLI - but I wouldn't be using it in crossfire mode anyway (at least I don't think so).

Smoooth

09-03-2009, 10:02 PM

I run Win 7 with both monitors on the same side with crossfire enabled. I'm not sure if this is the best setup or not but I get all the fps I need so I never had a reason to mess with it.

I just tried 3 monitors and I don't think there was a noticeable difference. The only place I don't get 60 fps, which is what I limit it to, is in Dalaran and the fps there all depends on how many players are visible. I usually get 30-40 in a packed dalaran with the 9 slaves set to 20 fps max.

My video settings are set to almost ultra on the main on 1 screen and the 9 slaves on the second screen with a little over the low settings. I get the max fps everywhere but dalaran so I never really messed with it much. Five accounts run just fine but I don't know if it could do 60+ fps across them all. I haven't tried it, I barely ever even look at the slaves' screen.

My limiting factor seems to be my processor. I use a quadcore 3.2 and set my main to 1 core and 3 slaves to each of the remaining cores. It will max out the processor in Dalaran which is what I believe limits my fps. I use 16gb ram and dont think I've ever seen it use more than 10gb of it.

EvoX

09-04-2009, 05:45 AM

I also have a 4850X2 and tried 3 monitors. It seemed like regardless of the configuration, I would always have one of the 5 windows that dropped to slideshow-like fps. Occasionally the low fps would clear up, only to affect a different toon. I'm curious whether I just didn't have something right in the setup. Any ideas?

asonimie

09-04-2009, 09:18 AM

WoW is pretty much completely dependent on RAM and CPU bandwidth. I swapped a huge GPU upgrade this year, and it did nothing at all. So I returned it.

jak3676

09-04-2009, 10:32 AM

Multibocks

09-04-2009, 11:09 AM

WoW is pretty much completely dependent on RAM and CPU bandwidth. I swapped a huge GPU upgrade this year, and it did nothing at all. So I returned it.

For true. Upgrade RAM then CPU then graphics card if you really must. I watch a system resources meter while I play and the only thing that moves on it is RAM useage, CPU is constantly hovering around 10% and only moves when I load a new zone. I really wish Blizzard would put some development into crossfire optimization.

EvoX

09-05-2009, 01:03 AM

While WoW doesn't seem to take much video processing power, multiboxing 5+ toons does seem to rely a fair amount on video memory. If I was looking to 5-box and new video cards I'd go with as much video memory as possible - hence why I'm looking at the 4890 or 4850x2. 2GB of video memory (even if it is spread across 2 cards) should be plenty.

I think the 2 responces form Smooth and EvoX seem pretty consistant with what I've found searching on this forum and a few others. Some it works great - others have issues. In general I don't think anyone has been able to point to what the issue is.

@EvoX - have you tried both with crossfire enabled and disabled? What OS are you using as well. I'd suggest Win7 if you can.

I'm using Win 7 Build 7100 64-bit. I'm not sure if later builds or RTM has had any changes that would affect this or not. Initially, Crossfire was enabled as per default settings and only one monitor would get signal. I disabled CF and managed to get all 3 but couldn't get around the FPS loss whether running 2 of the 3 monitors from the primary card or the secondary. I tried 3 monitors back in June or July, and wasn't terribly upset that it didnt work since I was already prepared to split the team across 2 PCs. Maybe on update Tuesday I'll spend the morning downtime (my usual after-work play hours) downloading RTM and grabbing the latest Catalyst drivers to see if anything has changed. Thanks for the input.

jstanthr

09-15-2009, 08:59 PM

i just got the 4850x2 2gb today, in win xp it actually seems to be about the same as my 8800gt. tried doing it on the same side with crossfire on like you said, but it puts the same display on both monitors, what crossfire does is couple the gpu's to a single output, i don't know how your geting different displays on 2 monitors with crossfire on, going to finish my win7 setup tonight and i know it'll be tons better, just because of the way win7 deals with multi gpu's, with the x2 cards you are in essence running 2 cards, they just happen to be on the same board. another question to the guy that already has the x2 running, did u use the 6pin and 8pin both? or just one, the sticker on the bag was quite confusing, i hooked them both up, but not sure if that is what is supposed to be or not, i'll add to reply when i get it boxing in win7, im 5boxing on a single machine btw 1 x 4

Smoooth

09-15-2009, 10:41 PM

another question to the guy that already has the x2 running, did u use the 6pin and 8pin both? or just one, the sticker on the bag was quite confusing, i hooked them both up, but not sure if that is what is supposed to be or not, i'll add to reply when i get it boxing in win7, im 5boxing on a single machine btw 1 x 4

Yes, you need them both plugged in.