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6950 2gb vs 6870 in CF

BauerCTU

BauerCTU

BauerCTU

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Joined
21 Feb 2004
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320
Location
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I started my build yesterday then got chatting to a friend who is thinking of upgrading his aging GPU. Im going for 2 x 6950 and showed him the link to these on OCUK for him to have a butchers to potentially get one.

He came back fairly happy with price etc but stated that for £30 more than the one card solution he could get 2 x 6870 albeit only 1gb versions. Now i think he said his monitor is 1980x1200 and he isnt a massive massive gamer so multi monitor setups at silly resolution isnt on the agenda. Advised about PSU but from memory he changed that out due to a failure in jan 2011 to a good quality 700-750W PSU.

Thoughts on this they do look amazing value at £140 per card im sure his gaming interests stretch to skyrim/bf3 and mass effect
 
6870 cf is a very very good setup, i was running on those before my 580. and it will defo be able to handle bf3 at near max (or even be able to max it no probs), im personally gonna switch back to 6870 cf if my 580 doesnt handle things well, but i doubt that lol
 
To be fair its a brilliant shout i didnt dream for a min these would be so cheap even given the age ! OCUK deal of the week has the sapphire models at £139.99 with 2 free games :-S

My only concern is the newer games using more than 1gb of VRAM.
 
Last edited:
Azarathal said:
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/301?vs=293

1920x1200 the 6870cf destroys a single 6950, any higher res and the single card seems to be slightly better.
Click to expand...

Just read that as you posted it seems a much better option for him only anomaly was Crysis: Warhead - Minimum Frame Rate - 2560 x 1600 - Frost Bench - Gamer Quality + Enthusiast Shaders + 4xAA.

Will send him an email on this matter :) cheers people.
 
If only running at 1920 res with 4xAA, having 1GB of vram instead of 2GB isn't gonna be a huge disadvantage except for may be in Metro2033 and may be Shogun 2.

Most examples of the games using over 1GB by a fair margin was with the setting on 8xAA, and in my opinion, for 1920 res the difference between 4xAA and 8xAA in terms of graphic quality wise is not really noticable. Yet there are some people insisting on using 8xAA leading to higher VRAM usage, which will lead to drop in frame rate by quite a bit.

So basically for 1920 res with 4xAA 2GB of VRAM wouldn't offer huge advantage over the 1GB of VRAM, but having more grunt (GPU power) on the other hand would directly increase the frame rate quite noticably.

However, rather than the issue of VRAM, multi-GPUs does have "potential" problem such as poor scaling in some games, or driver issues. So basically for the peace of mind, one should get a single GPU card...however if people is willing to gamble on reliability for the sake of extra grunt, they could consider Crossfire. But the thing about getting a Crossfire set up right off the bet is that there will be not upgrade path for adding another card to Crossfire in the future.
 
Marine-RX179 said:
However, rather than the issue of VRAM, multi-GPUs does have "potential" problem such as poor scaling in some games, or driver issues. So basically for the peace of mind, one should get a single GPU card...however if people is willing to gamble on reliability for the sake of extra grunt, they could consider Crossfire. But the thing about getting a Crossfire set up right off the bet is that there will be not upgrade path for adding another card to Crossfire in the future.
Click to expand...

thanks for the input :)

Just had a small chat he says he wont be going back playing old games this upgrade tbh is just for skyrim, batman and bf3 all other games will be xbox 360 so i would assume the newer unreleased games will make use of crossfire setups ?

upgrading down the line is not something thats top agenda at the moment as there is nothing like these games that tickle his fancy to warrent paying out lots of extra cash when they can be played on console, unlike bf3 for example :)
 
I have a 6870cf setup and although I maxed out Bf3, I had to turn off AA as it was simply eating away at the Vram. Not too bad with 2xmsAA on though.
 
Good thread! I've been looking at both the 6950 and 6870's in CF. I think I'll go with the 6870's, but we all know the 7 series is what we want. I want a 2gb 7870 for BF3 :(
 
Azarathal said:
Does AA even make a massive visual difference anyway?
Click to expand...
What AA does it makes the outlines of objects looks smoother. Lowering the AA level will reduce the amount of VRAM being used, thus lowering the amount of performance hit as well.

On the other hand if the graphic card(s) don't have enough grunt (power) for the game, people would have to lower other graphic quality settings such as texture details, shadow, effects quality to improve the performance.
 
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