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Yearly GPU dilema - opinions please

Leebob17

Leebob17

Leebob17

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Joined
26 Oct 2009
Posts
10
Earlier this year, I decided to invest in a 30" monitor at 2560x1600. I have an i7 920 oc'ed to 4gig, 6 gig of ddr 3 and a sapphire 5870 vaporx 1gig.

Recently, this set up has started to see slow downs on some intensive games like Napoleon total war when ran at the higher settings. my performance monitor shows that cpu and memory are not being topped out so i am guessing the 30" monitor is causing a bottleneck with the 5870.

The 5870 seems to be holding its value and i might be lucky to get £200+ for it on ebay as it seems to be quite rare these days. I could stretch to putting another £150 towards a new card but the 5870 is still a great card and i dont know if a newer one will run much faster? So my question is, will i solve my slow down issues the best by either:

1) selling the 5870 and buying a new 6970 2gb?

2) buying another 5870 to crossfire (not done this before)

3) consider a £300-£350 nvidia card (wouldn't know where to start with this as i have been out of touch with nvidia for some time)

4) manage as i am and wait for the next generation

your thoughts please.................
 
I believe you're correct. The 5870 seems to be the limiting factor when playing games at that resolution, certainly when you play at high settings.
The best thing is to consult benchmarks which show how games perform at high res. If you were planning to sell your 5870, I doubt it would fetch £200+. A quick search shows that you can purchase one for £160 (new).

You could buy a 6970 2GB, but I would recommend purchasing a MSI 6950 2GB Rev1 for £197 at OCuk and flashing it to a 6970. It would save you quite a bit.
You could add another 5870, it would certainly give you that performance boost but and will extend the lifespan of your setup for a while.

I would recommend selling your 5870 and purchasing a GTX580 which are going for £370 if you can afford it. Then you have an option to add another for SLI later down the line for much better performance, where as if you CF 5870 you've exhausted your upgrade option for now.
 
A GTX580 would be a fair upgrade (~40% or thereabouts), and with the sale of your 5870 should set you back around £250.

Crossfire scaling on the 5-series isn't great, and given the effective performance reduction that comes with multi-GPU setups (due to microstutter), I probably wouldn't go for another 5870. The 580 would be a better bet IMO.

If you want to spend a little more then a pair of 6950s (flashed to a 6970 as suggested above) would set you back £400 in total (say £280 or so after selling the 5870). This setup would be significantly faster than the GTX580, even taking into account multi-GPU issues. So, given your budget I would recommend this as the option which will see the biggest "bang for buck" improvement over the setup you have now.
 
the two 6950's seems like a great idea if i could stomach the cost, i have a corsair 650w psu, would that cope with it do you think? It would future proof my system for longer i guess as the 30" screen is always going to take its toll.
 
650W is not ideal.

A pair of 6970 CF, on an i7-920 @3.33 GHz, Asus Rampage II X58, 6GB RAM running Furmark has a total power consumption of 607W. If you have multiple HDD, expansion cards etc... I know games will not run as intensively as Furmark - but it gives you a fair idea of power consumption when on load.

The figures come from: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/GPU11/233

750W would be ideal. I mean you could purchase a single 6950 and then when you wanted to add another you could sell your old PSU. It will get pricey :(
 
i think i might go for the 2x 6950's, the flashing process seems quite simple, has anyone had any bad experiences with reliability after the flash?

The other thing to confirm is the PSU, i seem to have 2 options:

XFX pro 850 @£79.99(dont know anything about these but reviews seem good)

Corsair TX 750w @£94.99 - currently got a TX650w so would be happy with this.

Am i right in thinking that both of these have enough connectors for 2x 6970's out of the box?

Again, let me now your thoughts and thanks to all that hve replied so far
 
two final questions then.....

which psu, the corsair 750 or the xfx 850

which 6950's the asus on offer at £213 or the MSI at £197.

Thanks All

I will let you know what i end up getting and how it all runs
 
Leebob17 said:
two final questions then.....

which psu, the corsair 750 or the xfx 850

which 6950's the asus on offer at £213 or the MSI at £197.

Thanks All

I will let you know what i end up getting and how it all runs
Click to expand...

Personally I'd go with the MSI. I wouldn't consider the extra year's warranty to be worth £15.

As for the PSU, well corsair's PSUs are generally top-notch, so I would look there. I'm sure the TX750 would be enough to handle dual 6970s, but it seems a shame to go for such a small upgrade (650W to 750W), especially when the TX850 is only £9 more. The larger PSU would give you a bit more headroom for potential future power-hungry GPUs, and would see you running the PSU further away from its maximum capacity.
 
Thanks All

Ordered the 2 MSI 6950's and the corsair TX850W (thanks to Duff Man) today, will be here early next week. I will report back how the new rig runs.
 
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