7870 crossfire or 7970

beerfart

Hi guys what would be a better set up crossfire two 7870's or get the 7970?

Which would give better performance or longitivity without upgrading for a couple of years.

BloodBath

Don't get crossfire. It's latency issues will make the extra frames pointless.

I recommend going dual 660 gtx's if your board supports sli. If not get a single 7950.

It's only about 8% off a 7970 at the same clock speeds and costs a lot less.

Gumbi

beerfart wrote: »

Hi guys what would be a better set up crossfire two 7870's or get the 7970?

Which would give better performance or longitivity without upgrading for a couple of years.

We need a **** ton of context here, man.

Budget? What kind of rig is it going in? Will your PSU support 2 cards? Does your motherboard support SLI?

2 7870s will vastly outperform a 7970, but they will be more expensive. Per frame, the 7870s will be more worth it. But, Crossfire has it's issues. Crossfire has micro-stutter issues and of course uses a lot more power.

beerfart

Could you explain what you mean by that? So better off with a single graphics card unless going with NVidia?

Gumbi

beerfart wrote: »

Could you explain what you mean by that? So better off with a single graphics card unless going with NVidia?

AMD single, nVidia if going dual, generally, yes. But see my above comment and answer those questions first. We really don't have enough information at all to advise you.

BloodBath

Yes. All gpu setups suffer from micro stuttering / frame latency issues but it is far less severe with Nvidia cards.

If going multiple cards go Nvidia. Amd cards offer better price/performance for single gpu setups.

deceit

Just to point out, with the last few two revisions of amd drivers i've had no microstutter issues in any games i play with my 7970's in cf.
After all the bad press amd have had on this issue I can only see them improving on it even more in the future so I wouldnt worry about it.
Saying that I would go with either a 7970 or a gtx 770 instead and go cf/sli down the line when you need the performance boost.

Gumbi

deceit wrote: »

Just to point out, with the last few two revisions of amd drivers i've had no microstutter issues in any games i play with my 7970's in cf.
After all the bad press amd have had on this issue I can only see them improving on it even more in the future so I wouldnt worry about it.
Saying that I would go with either a 7970 or a gtx 770 instead and go cf/sli down the line when you need the performance boost.

Yeah, the bad press has definitely hurt them. I'd like to hear good news about Crossfire, I may eventually go dual 7950s which would be serious bang for buck if there weren't any issues with it.

beerfart

Thats my current build I plan on getting and I have a couple of 3TB hard drives. I will be using the PC for a lot of Video editing and Photoshop, encryption and other things. I don't need windows and have a 1080P monitor. I plan to overclock so maybe a cooler will be needed. I have keyboards, speakers etc and my budget is 1050 max. Thanks for the help guys. I'm not sure about graphics cards and whats the best bang for buck. Cross firing or getting a dearer card. Oh yea obviously want to max out games and get decent FPS

marco_polo

Gumbi wrote: »

Yeah, the bad press has definitely hurt them. I'd like to hear good news about Crossfire, I may eventually go dual 7950s which would be serious bang for buck if there weren't any issues with it.

Mostly from a nerd POV, but am really interested in how the two forthcoming AMD driver crossfire driver modes will differ in performance.

BloodBath

How about this? Some stuff out of stock atm though. The 660's are good value at that price point as they perform somewhere between a 7850 and 7870 and are priced accordingly. Sli scales better and has less latency issues than crossfire.

Went for the 8320 over the 8350 as well since it's pretty much the same chip and should overclock to around the same levels that the 8350 will. It basically gives you a free macho cooler.


Item|Price
Thermalright HR-02 Macho Rev.A (BW)|€40.48
2 x Gigabyte GeForce GTX 660 Windforce 2X, 2GB GDDR5, 2x DVI, HDMI, DisplayPort|€329.98
Samsung SSD 840 120GB SATA 6Gb/s|€81.99
16GB-Kit G.Skill Sniper PC3-14900U CL9-10-9-28|€117.73
AMD FX-8320 Prozessor, Boxed, Sockel AM3+|€142.13
Gigabyte GA-990XA-UD3, AMD 990X, AM3+, ATX|€93.22
Nanoxia Deep Silence Two Anthracite, ohne Netzteil|€82.76
2 x Enermax T.B.Silence 14x14cm|€17.98
be quiet! SYSTEM POWER 7 700W|€80.61
Shipping|€18.99
Total|€1005.87

beerfart

Thanks for that, looks like a great PC. I'm a noob at graphics cards so would the dual set up there outperform say a 7970 or a 7950. Sorry for been so picky

BloodBath

Alternative build above.

beerfart

Thanks for that, looks like a great PC. I'm a noob at graphics cards so would the dual set up there outperform say a 7970 or a 7950. Sorry for been so picky. Also FX chips are not listed as a compatabile processor with processor or will they work?

BloodBath

Yes significantly more.

They would be more in line with 780 gtx or titan performance.

beerfart

Cheers, Gonna go with that build I think, just putting all the things together now on hardwareversand. I don't see the FX chip listed as compatibale on the motherboard but I presume it will work? Gonna build it myself so I'm sure I'll be back with a lot more questions

BloodBath

Case and board are out of stock at the moment though but HWVS are usually pretty quick to restock.

It supports FX. All 990 boards do.

beerfart

Budget is now changed to 750 unfortunatly due to me doing my finances wrong. I left out a couple of things and changed the case to merc alpha and cut the case down the ram to 8GB and left out the SSD. Will the motherboard work with the merc alpha? I plan on buying the cooler and SSD next month

BloodBath

Yeah it will be fine. Are you going to be mainly gaming or video editing or 50/50. You could get the 600w version of the psu if you wanted to upgrade the case a bit to say something like the bitfenix shinobi.

beerfart

Its 50/50. I just placed the order now anyway. Benchmark seem unreal from this review. Thanks again

http://lanoc.org/review/video-cards/5953-nvidia-gtx-660-sli-performance?start=1