Sanity check (7950 xfire water)

[Orangey]

Save me from looking around for various benches...

I have an i5 2500K and a MSI TFIII 7950 Boost.

I can get ahold of a cheap 2nd 7950 but can only get the blocks I want from EK who charge way too much for delivery.

I have a 144hz monitor and I want to get the most out of it, is it worth spending ~£400 now instead of waiting at least 2 months for a 99x0? I will be able to afford it + I can sell my GPU stuff for the majority of what these new gen cards will cost.

 

[skylineboy]

is it not possible to use a different block? Seems very expensive. Could you not buy 2 different ones and sell the expensive one?

Can your system cope with the extra heat? your psu up to scratch?

The results should push you up to where you want frames to be. The prices of 79 series cards are dropping quite rapidly

 

[Orangey]

TBH there's not much price difference between EK and the cheaper blocks. Unless I get lucky and find some 2nd hand that cost is unavoidable.

PSU is Seasonic X850.

 

[skylineboy]

I'd say go for it. I didn't find crossfire to be too problematic for drivers.

Will you be jumping straight to the 99 series, in which case I would say hold off...

 

[shankly1985]

Also note on some games the i5 2500k will be bottleneck by two 7950. I know this because I just switched from i5 2500k to i7 2600k on bf3 with the i5 my gpu usage was only 60-70% with Cpu at 99% with i7 I get 99% gpu usage and Cpu about 70%

 

[Orangey]

Was this multiplayer on 64 server? I don't play online, I might have a glance at the campaign though.

 

[flopper]

7950crossfire will still be better than a 9970 or titan
if you want to push fps above 144 crossfire or trifire is needed.
no single card will be there soon unless you scale down settings.

 

[shankly1985]

Was this multiplayer on 64 server? I don't play online, I might have a glance at the campaign though.

Yes multi player didn't matter the player count tbh.

 

[wildman]

Also note on some games the i5 2500k will be bottleneck by two 7950. I know this because I just switched from i5 2500k to i7 2600k on bf3 with the i5 my gpu usage was only 60-70% with Cpu at 99% with i7 I get 99% gpu usage and Cpu about 70%

really ? I thought if you were running a 2500K at 4.4 / 4.6 or 4.8 you wouldn't get a bottlenext. Also I didn't think that BF3 supported multi HT that well so the difference of 8 threads on a 2600 to 4 threads on a 2500K would make little difference. I am sire I read a report some where that stated HT made little to no difference for games on the frostbite 2 engine, although I could be mistaken

 

[shankly1985]

really ? I thought if you were running a 2500K at 4.4 / 4.6 or 4.8 you wouldn't get a bottlenext. Also I didn't think that BF3 supported multi HT that well so the difference of 8 threads on a 2600 to 4 threads on a 2500K would make little difference. I am sire I read a report some where that stated HT made little to no difference for games on the frostbite 2 engine, although I could be mistaken

I had a bottleneck, all my threads are on this forum I had my i5 2500k running at 4.6ghz and then 4.8ghz till I given up and sold it on and got i7 2600k.

The difference is superb, bf3 really does use more theads them extra 4 really do like crossfire.