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MSI 7970 Lightning Crossfire

Watlinguk

Watlinguk

Watlinguk

Associate
Joined
1 Aug 2010
Posts
1,870
Hi guys. Currently moved from a 680 SLI setup and passed these cards on to my GF so she can play online gaming. I bought a msi 7970 and never looked back really. I've noticed the MSI 7970 Lightning Boosted Edition is on this week offer at £380.

I'm just curious as to if i buy another card to crossfire am i going to notice more frame rates within newer games. I get great frames in games what im playing now (bf3,crysis2 etcetc) but have the itch to bang another into my system whilst the price is good.
Just don't want to spend the money if im not going to notice any further increases or if the gpu usage wont be utilized.

Look forward to peoples opinions :)
 
If you're at 1080 60Hz then you probably have enough power as is, 120Hz/3d or high resolution then it's probably needed to get the very best.

If it's option one, take your £380 & invest it in some watercooling ;)
 
If you plan to keep them for some time, game higher than 1920x1080 or plan to move to 120hz screen then yeah, go for it.
Otherwise it's kinda of a waste.
 
Hi guys thanks for your responses. Yeah i game on a 120hz monitor :) its the benq xl2410t. Will the crossfire give me good gpu usage on boths gpus? My 680 SLI in prity much every game i ran was running at about 60% according to gpu-z, do amd scale better?

Regards
 
Watlinguk said:
Hi guys thanks for your responses. Yeah i game on a 120hz monitor :) its the benq xl2410t. Will the crossfire give me good gpu usage on boths gpus? My 680 SLI in prity much every game i ran was running at about 60% according to gpu-z, do amd scale better?

Regards
Click to expand...

Not really. The bottleneck is going to be the resolution itself.

It's because even one 680 is overkill for single 1080 never mind two.
 
Usage relates to a bottleneck, if usage is down around 60% with two 680's I'd give serious consideration to upgrading cpu/motherboard first then add another card later as you're likely to hit a similar bottleneck with 7970's.

Edit: I presume the bottleneck with two 680's was in a heavy un-syncd game/bench.
 
Hi guys when I was getting the 60% gpu usage it was in games like bf3 crysis 2. Benchmarks seemed fine.

I'm running a i5 ivy bridge running at 4.8ghz on a z77 sabertooth board. Surely this won't be the bottleneck??
 
I did think the resolution maybe but what's the alternative monitor? I don't nessissarly need 120hz but I need more then 60hz. Of course with a higher resolution.
 
1920*1080 just isn't a very demanding resolution. There's nothing wrong with it or your monitor/GPUs it's just two high end GPUs struggle to get to 100% utilised at it.

Can you tell the difference between one 680 and two 680's in game in terms of smoothness? I struggled to really tell other than at particular times.

I suppose the difference is more if you're running them at stock clock speeds.
 
Rusty0611 said:
1920*1080 just isn't a very demanding resolution. There's nothing wrong with it or your monitor/GPUs it's just two high end GPUs struggle to get to 100% utilised at it.

Can you tell the difference between one 680 and two 680's in game in terms of smoothness? I struggled to really tell other than at particular times.

I suppose the difference is more if you're running them at stock clock speeds.
Click to expand...

When you tested your 7950's in eyefinity, did you notice any screen stutter? I've setup a second machine with a couple of 7970's with eyefinity and it runs like a pile in games, allthough the frames are high. Which drivers did you use?
 
I think I noticed the most in games like crysis 2 and deffo crysis 3 beta. The game was very choppy with one but with two it was smooth. However in bf3 when it's all kicking off and there's a lot going on I do dip on 60 frames with two cards in so I'm not sure why the gpu usage isn't kicking in to give me more performance when I actually need it?

Sometimes especially on bf3 I cannot tell the difference between one 680 or two. Baffling.
 
Watlinguk said:
I think I noticed the most in games like crysis 2 and deffo crysis 3 beta. The game was very choppy with one but with two it was smooth. However in bf3 when it's all kicking off and there's a lot going on I do dip on 60 frames with two cards in so I'm not sure why the gpu usage isn't kicking in to give me more performance when I actually need it?

Sometimes especially on bf3 I cannot tell the difference between one 680 or two. Baffling.
Click to expand...

In Bf3! I've seen the odd dip into the 40/50's with my 690 at a resolution of 2560x1440 :eek:
 
geeman1979 said:
When you tested your 7950's in eyefinity, did you notice any screen stutter? I've setup a second machine with a couple of 7970's with eyefinity and it runs like a pile in games, allthough the frames are high. Which drivers did you use?
Click to expand...

A little in BF3 but was resolved with a couple of config edits. Not sure why AMD require the edits but not nVidia but it was pretty quick to resolve.

Nothing else really stuck out. Overall I would have to say that the 7950s didn't quite feel as smooth (at the same framerates) but that was just a subjective observation rather than properly analysed.

I used the 12.11 beta 4's as these were the latest drivers at the point of testing.
 
Watlinguk said:
I think I noticed the most in games like crysis 2 and deffo crysis 3 beta. The game was very choppy with one but with two it was smooth. However in bf3 when it's all kicking off and there's a lot going on I do dip on 60 frames with two cards in so I'm not sure why the gpu usage isn't kicking in to give me more performance when I actually need it?

Sometimes especially on bf3 I cannot tell the difference between one 680 or two. Baffling.
Click to expand...

Hmmm I remembered something... In BF3 just before I changed to AMD I was getting really poor GPU usage even in triple screen where in theory it should be higher. I rolled back to 306.23 and it was much better.

Try these drivers if you haven't already.
 
Rusty0611 said:
A little in BF3 but was resolved with a couple of config edits. Not sure why AMD require the edits but not nVidia but it was pretty quick to resolve.

Nothing else really stuck out. Overall I would have to say that the 7950s didn't quite feel as smooth (at the same framerates) but that was just a subjective observation rather than properly analysed.

I used the 12.11 beta 4's as these were the latest drivers at the point of testing.
Click to expand...

I'll give the 12.11 beta 4's a try. I tested with the official 12.10 drivers and the latest 12.11 beta's. Which were the config edits you used? With one card it runs fine.
 
geeman1979 said:
I'll give the 12.11 beta 4's a try. I tested with the official 12.10 drivers and the latest 12.11 beta's. Which were the config edits you used? With one card it runs fine.
Click to expand...

Can't remember. They're standard config edits for CF on BF3.

RenderAheadLimit maybe? Not sure - I'm sure someone at their PC will answer though :)
 
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