To crossfire, or not to crossfire?

[Ekreed]

I'm relatively knew to all this, and sorry if you have answered this question before, I'm sure you get asked similar ones all the time. Basically, I'm looking to upgrade my graphics card over christmas, but on a low budget. I currently have a Sapphire radeon HD4770, and am either looking at either another 4770 and crossfiring it, or maybe buying one of the new HD57 series of cards.

The first question (which will possibly show how little I know about this), can you crossfire a HD57 with a HD4770, and also if you can will it actually work?
The second is, if I can't crossfire them, would it be better to buy a HD5770 or 5750 and replace my card, or buy a second HD4770 and crossfire them?
Also, am I being too vague about my questions(I.e. do you need to know more about my computer to judge this)?

I'm not really able to spend much more than the £130 or so it would cost to buy a 5770, but I may be able to stretch a bit more if there was a really good alternative.

[scaryjim]

The first question (which will possibly show how little I know about this), can you crossfire a HD57 with a HD4770, and also if you can will it actually work?

AFAIK this will *not* work. I think crossfire is slightly more forgiving than SLI with regards to which GPUs you can stick together, but they still have to be from the same family!

The second is, if I can't crossfire them, would it be better to buy a HD5770 or 5750 and replace my card, or buy a second HD4770 and crossfire them?

Better for what? That's not an easy question to answer without more specifics!

For pure framerate in current DX9 / 10 games, two 4770 XFire should easily outpace a 5750 / 5770 - after all, one 4770 almost keeps up with those cards! The 5 series, however, support DX11 and Eyefinity, so if you value those features then obviously 2x 4770 would *not* be better.

EDIT: Having looked at your "My System", the rest of your system will definitely *not* have an impact on this
EDIT 2: You might be interested in this Hexus review

[Pob255]

Well the rest of your system can take it crossfire 4770 fine, as scaryjim said it's doubtfull it would work with a 4series and a 5series, but even if it did the faster card would be reduced to the speed of the slower card so you might as well get a 2nd 4770

AFAIK the 5750 performs roughly the same as the 4770, so we can rule that out

That would leave us with a 4890 (which can be got for around £130 atm) or a 5770
both would be a boost over a single 4770, but on a game that can use crossfire well a pair of 4770 beat it.
So a 2nd 4770 would be best atm and only cost around £70

Biggest question is do you need it? if you're not really having any issues atm I'd say skip it for now, save your cash and see what happens when nvidia bring out their new series.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The HD5750 is an improvement over an HD5750:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/..._5750_review/3

However adding another cheap HD4770 would be a greater performance boost although you will not have DX11.

[Ekreed]

Thanks for the advice, I guess I don't really need to upgrade, I just thought I'd check out my options at the moment, since I have a friend who is building a new budget pc and was looking to get a HD 4770 for it, and so I would have an opportunity to upgrade to a HD57 series of card and sell him mine. I guess the real thing I'm not sure about is whether I would actually benefit from upgrading to a DX.11 card now or waiting until later. I guess I'm just not sure about the benefits I would gain from DX.11.

Also, CAT-THE-FIFTH, do you mean the 5770 is a big improvement over the 5750?

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Thanks for the advice, I guess I don't really need to upgrade, I just thought I'd check out my options at the moment, since I have a friend who is building a new budget pc and was looking to get a HD 4770 for it, and so I would have an opportunity to upgrade to a HD57 series of card and sell him mine. I guess the real thing I'm not sure about is whether I would actually benefit from upgrading to a DX.11 card now or waiting until later. I guess I'm just not sure about the benefits I would gain from DX.11.

Also, CAT-THE-FIFTH, do you mean the 5770 is a big improvement over the 5750?

I meant that the HD5750 is a decent improvement over an HD4770. The HD5770 is also a decent improvement over the HD5750.

Here is a later review of the HD5770 with a different setup:

http://www.hardocp.com/article/2009/..._card_review/1

OTH,if you could sell your HD4770 for around £50 to £60 an upgrade to an HD5750 or HD5770 would be not too high:

http://www.ebuyer.com/search?sort=pr...imit=10&page=1

http://www.ebuyer.com/search?sort=pr...imit=10&page=1