A couple of questions about Vid card differences

[Shadowmeph]

I am thinking of changing my Mobo with in the next couple of months run cross fire.I am not exactly sure which mobo I am getting but I won't be going high end more like Mid end. So I can use my 8 gb ddr2 ram.
now the current Vid card I am running is
HIS Radeon HD 3870 ICEQ3 Turbo 775MHZ 512MB 2.25GHZ 256BIT GDDR4 PCI-E 2XDVI HDTV Out Video Card this are the specs that price match has on my card
* Superscalar unified shader architecture
* 320 stream processing units exactly what is this?
* 256-bit memory interface
* DirectX 10.1 / Shader Model 4.1 support
* PCI Express 2.0 support
* ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU support for highly scalable performance
* Use up to four GPUs with an AMD 790FX based motherboard
* High-speed 128-bit HDR (High Dynamic Range) rendering
* Up to 24x Custom Filter Anti-Aliasing
* 55nm process technology
* ATI Avivo HD video and display technology
* Built-in HDMI and 5.1 surround audio
* Support for the ATI Radeon DVI to HDMI adapter
* Unified Video Decoder (UVD) for Blu-ray and HD DVD
* ATI PowerPlay energy conserving technology
* Dynamic geometry acceleration
* Game physics processing capability


I am not sure if I should buy the same card and cross fire them ( never done anything like this before )? Or would it be better to start with two new card of course not at the same time ?
my system is more for gaming then anything else

[Synth]

Ok, here's a few pointers :

1. If you decide to do a crossfire setup with the card you already own, you will need to buy a second HD3870, or a HD3850 (see Compatibility Charts).

2. At this point and time, buying a second HD3870 could run you between 80$ ~ $130 (with online deals, like @ NCIX.com).

3. If you are a serious gamer, and want crazy framerates, you should step up and buy the latest generation of cards, ie :

- 2 x 3870 ($80 ~ $130 for a second card)
- 2 x 4850 ($140 ~ $200 per card) --- better than 2x HD3870
- 2 x 4870 ($280 ~ $350 per card) --- better than 2x HD4850

4. If you haven't already purchased your 8gb of ram, don't. 8gb is useless in my opinion. Hinders overclocking too. And if you don't have a 64bit operating system, forget about it, you won't see more than 3.25 ~ 3.5gb...]

5. For a crossfire motherboard, look at the X38 & X48 chipset boards.

My .02

(edited)

[Eldonko]

2x4670 is not better than 2x3870, unless you are talking about power efficiency.

[bojangles]

Ninja'd before I even scrolled down lol.

[Synth]

Originally Posted by Eldonko

2x4670 is not better than 2x3870, unless you are talking about power efficiency.

Oops, my bad. Thought I had seen some better numbers in an online review.