SLI 680s to 7950 xfire?

Nocky24 · 18 Aug 2013 at 18:37

I've recently bought a second 680, but I'm considering returning it. It grieves me that I've paid 260 quid for a card that isn't that far away from a 670, plus it has 2gb vram and I'll be looking to up my res to 1440p before the end of the year.

So I could get a couple of 7950, overclock them and for £380 I've got roughly the same performance? Other reasons include the vram increase and the fact bf4 will be AMD optimised and will utilise dx11.1.

I was considering waiting for the next series of cards, but for £380 I don't think I'll get similar performance.

Any thoughts? Is this a daft move?

old gamer · 18 Aug 2013 at 18:48

Well it should be doable without costing you any money but even being a self confessed amd fan boy im not so sure theres anything to gain by it, might be worth looking for some 2560x1440 benchmarks to compare

beasty6 · 18 Aug 2013 at 18:57

i think you will be better with the 7950's at 1440p as they have a better memory bandwidth etc

but like old gamer said, im not sure if its worth the hassle tbh, and i dont think the performance will be a lot different

Gripen90 · 18 Aug 2013 at 20:23

I had 2x GTX 670 and 3x GTX 670 running everything at 2560x1440 with no problems at all. Just stay clear of SGSSAA anti aliasing and you're fine

ozaudio · 18 Aug 2013 at 20:23

the heat with the cheap 7950s is horrid, I cant it with imagen 2 of them

, you'll spend quite abit more on keeping them cool!

im at 75c with one while running folding @ home. and that's with 6 case fans running at full speed , VERY NOISY!

beasty6 · 18 Aug 2013 at 21:10

yes the refrence coolers are poor, but coolers like the twin frozr are very good and quiet

Nocky24 · 19 Aug 2013 at 16:11

beasty6 said:
yes the refrence coolers are poor, but coolers like the twin frozr are very good and quiet

Yeah I was thinking of going for those. This was my thinking:

-Return the gtx 680 and recoup £260 less £10 for the postage.
-Sell my current 680 for circa £200
-Buy the 7950s and sell the free games

By my maths I'm up on the deal? The only thing that might be holding me back are the drivers, but I'm hoping these are up to scratch now and frame pacing has been sorted.

beasty6 · 19 Aug 2013 at 17:05

the drivers are fine buddy, had no problems with my 6990, im ordering a pair of 7950's on friday!

Speed · 19 Aug 2013 at 17:13

Nocky24 said:
Yeah I was thinking of going for those. This was my thinking:

-Return the gtx 680 and recoup £260 less £10 for the postage.
-Sell my current 680 for circa £200
-Buy the 7950s and sell the free games

By my maths I'm up on the deal? The only thing that might be holding me back are the drivers, but I'm hoping these are up to scratch now and frame pacing has been sorted.

Seems a bit of a pointless move, the free games are not worth what they used to be. I'd hold out for the new AMD releases we should be seeing soon and then make a decision once the reviews are in.

IvanDobskey · 19 Aug 2013 at 17:20

Just keep what you've got, it'll be blazing fast for 1440p. My single 680 does the job well enough.

Razor Time · 19 Aug 2013 at 17:36

Can't see the point in changing.

whyscotty · 19 Aug 2013 at 17:38

Doesn't seem worth the hassle

Kaapstad · 19 Aug 2013 at 17:39

Razor Time said:
Can't see the point in changing.

whyscotty said:
Doesn't seem worth the hassle

+1

The OP would not notice the difference

Nocky24 · 19 Aug 2013 at 17:42

Noted. Will stick with what I have then. Cheers all

LtMatt · 19 Aug 2013 at 17:47

I hate to be the elephant in the room but... although i agree in principle it might not be worth the hassle of switching like for like as far as gpu grunt is required, 2gb of vram is not going to be enough, even without AA at 1440p. If you lower texture detail to high or other settings that might bring it down though.

No serious amount of caching will have occured in this benchmark because the alpha was 2gig in size and contained only one map.

Let battle commence.

Nocky24 · 19 Aug 2013 at 17:51

LtMatt said:
I hate to be the elephant in the room but.. although i agree in principal it might not be worth the hassle as far as gpu grunt is required, 2gb of vram is not going to be enough, even without AA at 1440p. If you lower texture detail to high that might bring it down though.

No serious amount of caching will have occured in this benchmark because the alpha was 2gig in size and contained only one map.

Let battle commence.

That's chucked a spanner in the works

This was what lead me to start this thread. Anyone else care to comment on this?

LtMatt · 19 Aug 2013 at 17:55

Nocky24 said:
That's chucked a spanner in the works This was what lead me to start this thread. Anyone else care to comment on this?

Its definitely something i think is worth considering if your main game is going to be Battlefield 4 and you want to run higher details at 1440p.

Nocky24 · 19 Aug 2013 at 17:57

LtMatt said:
Its definitely something i think is worth considering if your main game is going to be Battlefield 4 and you want to run higher details at 1440p.

Yeah it'll be the main thing I'll be playing come release and I'll move to 1440p before the end of this year.

LtMatt · 19 Aug 2013 at 18:02

Nocky24 said:
Yeah it'll be the main thing I'll be playing come release and I'll move to 1440p before the end of this year.

Well these guys did a battlefield 3 alpha test before that came out and their results were spot on but it didn't include a vram test at that time. I can see driver performance changing, not sure how much vram usage will change if at all in the final build.

I know dx11.1 has a feature to do with using system ram as video ram so i think battlefield 4 might use this. That might be a way around the 2gb problem.

This could be guff but this article hints at it as well as other optimizations, but take it with a grain of salt.

Techpowerup said:
EA-DICE' upcoming online shooter Battlefield 4 will take advantage of DirectX 11.1 API, on PCs running Windows 8 and Windows 8.1. Running the game with DirectX 11.1 will have a positive performance impact compared to running it on DirectX 11.0, or on older operating systems like Windows 7 (which doesn't support DirectX 11.1). In the words of the technical director behind Frostbite, the underlying engine for Battlefield 4, "We use DX11.1, there are some optimizations in it (constant buffer offsets, dynamic buffers as SRVs) that we got in to the the API that improves CPU performance in our rendering when one runs with DX11.1." This could give Radeon HD 7000 series GPUs an edge over their GeForce competitors. GPUs based on NVIDIA's "Kepler" micro-architecture don't fully support DirectX 11.1. Incidentally, Battlefield 4 was just bagged and tagged by AMD for its future "Never Settle" bundle. Join the dots.

source
http://www.techpowerup.com/187812/b...x-11-1-could-give-radeon-hd-7000-an-edge.html

Rroff · 19 Aug 2013 at 18:12

Being that its an alpha while it might be indicative its not definitely the VRAM use of the final product. Hard to say at this point tho.

I definitely think at this point if your contemplating a move to 1440p or higher in the middle term future then you'd be best off returning the 2nd 680 if you can and holding off too see how things look come the new AMD launch or so unless your desperate for the performance now.