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HIS HD 7950 IceQ BOOST 3072MB ' 2560x1600 ... is one enough?

Jed Shields

Jed Shields

Jed Shields

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Joined
23 Apr 2007
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Cardiff-ish, Wales
Hi guys,

The HIS HD 7950 IceQ BOOST 3072MB is back on offer at a cracking price of £174 and I've ordered my Dell U3014 @ 2560x1600. I'm sure my ageing GTX 570 won't cope very well. Will one 7950 cope at this resolution, or do I need two to play Skyrim, Far Cry 3, BF 4, Watch Dogs ... usual suspects :) ... with bells and whistles. Is there a single card solution at the price of two 7950s worth considering (£350ish)?
 
What be your cpu?

My 7950 handles 1440p well enough, but I don't bother with AA or have ALL the bells and whistles active.

If your cpu won't bottleneck, crossfire might be a better option to be sure.
 
Looks like my Gigabyte 570 GTX SOC Windforce might be worth around £80, so I could get one 7950 for less than £100 and see how it goes... get another when I get some more cash...
 
If you can only afford one 7950, just play on High in games instead of Ultra you should be able to get playable frame rate. Also at 2560 res you might not need to even use AA, so that would reduce load of the graphic card as well.
 
What about the nVidia route? How do 2x7950s compare to 2x 670s? Considering this would last for a couple of years at least... and maybe the 4Gb 670s worth the extra as I believe 2Gb won't cut it soon? I'm aware that that's probably a good £50 per card extra, but would I see a better performance now and in the future?

Also, how is the performance of crossfire and sli now? I read that crossfire had issues in the past but I assume these have been fixed?
 
Considered a 7970 which will beat both significantly? Also AMD usually gets better scores in higher resolutions due to more memory bandwidth than NV.
 
Jed Shields said:
Yeah, but how does a clocked 7950 compare to a clocked 7970 ... compare apples and apples :D
Click to expand...

I can't cite any sources, but I seem to recall the % gains are not linear with the % price increase. :p

Plus, you can put the difference towards the second 7950 ;)
 
Marine-RX179 said:
I recall two members did a comparison, and the performance difference between the 7950 and 7970 is only 3-5% give or take when both are on the same clocks.
Click to expand...

Yeah, but that's meaningless as it assumes that they won't be clocking the 7970. Who in their right mind wouldn't clock the 7970 if they would clock a 7950 :p

Assuming the 7970 can be clocked higher than the 7950 :)
 
Jed Shields said:
Yeah, but that's meaningless as it assumes that they won't be clocking the 7970. Who in their right mind wouldn't clock the 7970 if they would clock a 7950 :p

Assuming the 7970 can be clocked higher than the 7950 :)
Click to expand...

The cheapest 7970 is £56 dearer than the ICEQ 7950.

No matter how far you push it, it will never perform 32% faster (the price differential).
 
Just ordered one of these great price.

One question though do they still come bundled with free games as no games were shown when i was checking out?
 
Im so tempted to get one of these, my old 5850 1GB is still working great but the extra ram would be nice, hopefully stop the Aero performance pop ups!!

Problem for me is the case I have is OLD... it's the Globalwin YCC-61F1, most of you old school guys will know it as an Akasa Eclipse case, was very popular a few years ago, not sure if this will fit in my case, how long is the card?
don't want to purchase a new card and then have to get a new case and shift everything over!
 
Cheers Buffybill, was just about to post that I found the same details on another site, just got to get home and measure my case, only online spec shows overall length to be 560mm, but there is a HDD cage at the front that takes up a fair bit of room and although it can be removed, I need it to hold my 4 hdd's so not an option.
 
I feel your pain UKDTweak. Desperate to upgrade my old GTX 260 with all these bargains flying around. Seriously restricted to £200 limit, so this deal was perfect, BUT I really dont want to have to cut into my FIXED HDD cage :(
 
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