7950 or 6870 CF?

[RichH]

So following adivce from you chaps last week I bought a 7850 to replace my 6870, rather than crossfiring, which was my first thought.

The 7850 is going back as it turns out that with the stock cooler it is louder and hotter than my 6870 and not really much faster, especially considering I obviously got a really bad clocker.

So back to square one. Do i get a 7950 for £300 when the prices drop soon or just get another 6870?

The crossfire option would cost me £130, the 7950 would cost £200+.

I know the crossfire option would be cool enough and wouldn't be too loud.

I dont know how loud a reference 7950 would be and what it would cloock like.

In my mind at the moment the only advantage of going 7950 is the extra Vram, and slightly less hassle. However it is more expensive and might be really loud as far as I know and would probably perform worse where 1GB of Vram is enough.

I know the default advice is to get a single card, but do you think it is worth it in this case?

Thanks as ever for the advice.

 

[Rusty0611]

6870's are loud as it is. 2 of them and you're going to get more heat and as a result, more noise. I speak from experience

Go for the default option. Sad to hear the 7850 option didn't work out. Surprising considering some of the overclocks the other guys are getting.

 

[RichH]

My current sapphire 6870 with not reference cooler, is good. Was planning on getting another one of those, not a reference one.

Yep, it is a shame about the 7850. A good clocker with non ref cooler would probably have been great. Sadly mine wasn't.

 

[ChrisD.]

7950.

Mine's been superb and clocks really well.

Demolishes my previous 5850 setup; better performance, less noise, less heat, less power.

 

[RichH]

Did you have CF 5850s? Is the 7950 considerably better in performance terms or just a bit?

 

[Rusty0611]

7950 is a superb card. Shame nVidia don't have anything to offer in their 6 series in this performance/price bracket at present.

 

[Nutella33]

Did you have CF 5850s? Is the 7950 considerably better in performance terms or just a bit?

Would be very interested to know this as well?

 

[ChrisD.]

Did you have CF 5850s? Is the 7950 considerably better in performance terms or just a bit?

It performs the same in SWTOR (probably better but in both instances FPS is over 100) but the difference is in BF3. It loads 1.7GB minimum into VRAM and I can play it at 1920*1200 with everything on max, so ultra I think. With the 5850's I had to turn down one of the AA's and even then, on busy servers it'd nose dive below 30fps so I had to turn down textures on busy servers. Not an issue now.

So far with the 7950 it's been super smooth and hasn't dropped below 40fps, even on Caspian 64 player.

 

[RichH]

Ok thanks. That is something to mull over.