6950 to 7950 worth it?

valkynaz · 2 Dec 2012 at 02:55

I have a 6950 and just noticed that I can pick up the MSI HD 7950 Twin Frozr III 3GB for £240 with 6 free games.

Is the upgrade worth it? I could probably get £100+ on the auction site for my 6950 2GB and the games would be worth say £50 on their own making the upgrade around £100.

hedgey · 2 Dec 2012 at 06:52

im thinking about the exact same thing. i think its probably not worth it yet.

Rusty0611 · 2 Dec 2012 at 07:53

I would. The 6950 is only going to decrease in value further and the 7950 with an overclock will be quite an upgrade.

Gribs · 2 Dec 2012 at 13:50

Depends on the res. If you play at 1080p or lower it's pretty pointless.

IC3 · 2 Dec 2012 at 14:13

Wait till next gen.

malachi · 2 Dec 2012 at 16:16

IC3 said:
Wait till next gen.

Or crossfire with another 6950.

spoffle · 2 Dec 2012 at 16:17

An overclocked 7950 easily doubles 6950 performance.

Gregster · 2 Dec 2012 at 16:29

spoffle said:
An overclocked 7950 easily doubles 6950 performance.

In some games at 1080P I would agree with this.

spoffle · 2 Dec 2012 at 16:39

Not in some games at 1080p, it seems to be in general. A 1200Mhz core 7950 will be over double the performance of a 6950. Granted you can overclock the 6950, but they don't overclock as well.

lettuce · 2 Dec 2012 at 16:42

Hmm thats a nice deal, what about a 6950 2GB (flashed to 6970) would that be an nice performance boost if i got the 7950? I game in 1920x1200

humbug · 2 Dec 2012 at 16:46

I went from a 6950 to a 7870 and am seeing at much as 30% performance increase, with a 7950 your likely to see 50%

Tonester0011 · 2 Dec 2012 at 16:47

Well a good clock on a 7970 would give near identical performance to CF6950s.
Clock for clock there's less than 5% between a 7970 and 7950, getting a 7950 would be a pretty decent upgrade, especially if swapping cards is only going to cost you about £100.

Gregster · 2 Dec 2012 at 16:51

spoffle said:
Not in some games at 1080p, it seems to be in general. A 1200Mhz core 7950 will be over double the performance of a 6950. Granted you can overclock the 6950, but they don't overclock as well.

Is 1200 a guarantee of an overclock? That seems a little high and a very good overclock.

spoffle · 2 Dec 2012 at 16:52

humbug said:
I went from a 6950 to a 7870 and am seeing at much as 30% performance increase, with a 7950 you're likely to see 50%

Yeah, it's just a bit over 50% at reference clocks (800Mhz).

humbug · 2 Dec 2012 at 16:54

gregster said:
Is 1200 a guarantee of an overclock? That seems a little high and a very good overclock.

No its not, its certainly possible on a lot of cards, but guaranteed? IMHO

no.

If we are talking about guaranteed overclocks there is no such thing, but you can expect 1150, 1200 less so.

spoffle · 2 Dec 2012 at 16:58

gregster said:
Is 1200 a guarantee of an overclock? That seems a little high and a very good overclock.

I's not a guaranteed overclock no but I wasn't necessarily suggesting so either. As bad as my MSI cards were, they both managed 1200 on the core (but temps went up so much faster, it was pointless) and my 2 HIS ones are doing 1200 on the core too.

But as I said, 1200 core 7950s will be OVER twice the speed of a 7950, rather than 1200 being needed for twice the performance.

Gregster · 2 Dec 2012 at 17:00

spoffle said:
I's not a guaranteed overclock no but I wasn't necessarily suggesting so either. As bad as my MSI cards were, they both managed 1200 on the core (but temps went up so much faster, it was pointless) and my 2 HIS ones are doing 1200 on the core too.

But as I said, 1200 core 7950s will be OVER twice the speed of a 7950, rather than 1200 being needed for twice the performance.

Ok cheers, I wasn't sure if the new drivers had pretty much helped in that department.

spoffle · 2 Dec 2012 at 17:02

Oh, the new drivers could very well be part of the reason for that.

But as above, it's probably one of the biggest reasons why people claim 7950s are essentially quite underclocked.

It would have been very easy for AMD to release a 79XX card with the stock performance doubled (or thereabout) from a 6970 but they were overly conservative with the clocks.

Maybe it lines up with the 8 series, they don't want the performance at stock of the 79XX to be "too" high as it'd reflect poorly onthe 89XX series, I dunno.

humbug · 2 Dec 2012 at 17:20

The clocks on all 7### series cards (with expedition of the 7870 perhaps) was defiantly 'conservative'

Nvidia seen it, and then just set them higher, i doubt AMD will make that mistake again.

Darujhistan · 2 Dec 2012 at 17:35

Rather than start a new thread, would it be worth upgrading from a 7850 to a 7950?

I'm thinking of doing this sometime in spring, or getting a 7970.

I'm gonna get a Vapor-X model of one or the other.