Is Crossfire still a thing for video cards?

[mraikes]

I'm going out to look at a customer's computer that has dual Radeon HD-5770's setup in a crossfire configuration. One or both cards may have to be replaced, and I usually like to replace "like with like" but a new 5770 is as rare as hen's teeth. I'll probably just go with a single, more powerful card.

But is Crossfire still a thing? And if so - is it worthwhile for a customer that only needs dual monitor support for an Autocad-like application? Or do you suppose any reasonably powerful PCI-E graphics card that supports dual monitor card would be sufficient?

I'm just trying to figure out if I there's an actual need to quote two matched rather expensive cards with crossfire compatibility, or just a decent dual monitor card.

 

[jbartlett323]

High end single card should do the trick. 5770 was a great card, and you could get massive performance from crossfire with it, but a mid-range card will match that performance, High end (not super-high mind you, no reason to go there unless they want to) will beat it today. Since any card you buy today will support dual monitors, if not triple or more, your good on that front...

 

[mraikes]

Yup. That's the way I pointed them.

 

[ohio_grad_06]

Agreed, single higher end card. In fact, if he wants to save money, I picked up last year on ebay a used Radeon 7950 3gb model. I paid right around $120 dollars. They still seem to go to about for close to the same, but performance should be comparable to a Radeon R9 280 or R9-380, the nvidia equivalent is the GTX 960 I think. But the 7950 supports most things the newer cards do also. Plus you are paying about 120 instead of 200 give or take.

 

[brandonkick]

I've always found that the crossfire / SLI technologies were really only beneficial in the scenario in which you buy a graphics card and then two years later you find the urge to increase performance. Since you already own one, you can pick up another and get a modest boost for the money. It's technically less money to upgrade, since you already owned one of the cards. However, if your going to either buy one higher end card off the bat or two mid range cards and run them in crossfire / SLI then almost always the single card is the winner in terms of cost, and power consumption and sometimes performance.