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580 or 2 6950's

Masterdeadly

Masterdeadly

Masterdeadly

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Joined
29 Jun 2010
Posts
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Location
England
I could sell my 6950 for 150 quid, and I can grab hold of a EVGA Geforce GTX 580 Super Clocked 1536MB GDDR5 Graphics Card for 320 quid meaning a 170 quid upgrade the 580 or another 6950?
 
In terms of performance, 6950 2GB x 2 can even beat GTX580 x 2 in some AMD titles surprisingly.

The price is that you'll have to deal with the heat and noise if your motherboard doesn't have reasonable PCI-E spacing for CrossfireX. Also you might have to wait for the CAP for latest games to scale properly in CrossfireX.

As a user of 5870 1GB x 2, GTX580 1.5GB x 2, 6950 2GB x 2 and GTX580 3GB x 3, I can tell that I'm most satisfied with the 6950 2GB x 2. Best bang for buck.

If your 6950 is the 1GB version then sell it and don't bother with CrossfireX.
 
Masterdeadly said:
Why is the 1GB version not worth crossfiring? Im gaming on 1680x1050 resolution.
Click to expand...

Harmony bangs on about 1GB not being enough, so spending extra money on a Crossfire, he reckons you'll run out of VRAM.

Personally, I reckon it's a load of balls. The only game that stresses my VRAM is Hard Reset which takes me to about 850mb usage out of 1024mb. That's at 1920x1080 maxed.

1GB VRAM in a few years will be a bottleneck, that's for a sure, but not for a while, Deus Ex Human Revolution only maxes about 400mb.
 
It's a upgrade until next year, got a AMD 955 BE 3.61ghz and 8gb XMS3 1600mhz ram And two 6950's 1gb and corsair 650tx will be perfect for bf3? :D at 1680x1050
 
Personally, I'd keep your current GPU, and upgrade your AMD stuff to an SB rig, then up the GPU to a 7XXX series from AMD or 6XX from Nvidia next year.
 
Clock that HD6950 to 900/1375(5500) and you should pretty much have a HD6970 in terms of raw performance.

At 1680x1050 there should be no point in looking at CF / GTX580.
 
Your CPU will probably hold you back on BF3, if BFBC2 is anything to go by. They loved fast CPU's, whilst the 955 is by no means a slouch, coupled with 2x6950's, I'd of thought that the CPU may hold their full power back on CPU intensive games.

Could be wrong of course.
 
Nymins said:
Your CPU will probably hold you back on BF3, if BFBC2 is anything to go by. They loved fast CPU's, whilst the 955 is by no means a slouch, coupled with 2x6950's, I'd of thought that the CPU may hold their full power back on CPU intensive games.

Could be wrong of course.
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Indeed, especially at 1680x1050. SB will decimate a clocked Phenom in BFBC2. That would be the best upgrade past for BF3 rather than a new GPU.
 
You won't get much of a performance increase though.
Honestly, you're best off keeping your 6950 and overclocking it, and selling your AM3 stuff, to get SB.

That'll max out BF3, then get 7XXX next year.

Best choice.
 
Martini1991 said:
You won't get much of a performance increase though.
Honestly, you're best off keeping your 6950 and overclocking it, and selling your AM3 stuff, to get SB.

That'll max out BF3, then get 7XXX next year.

Best choice.
Click to expand...

Yep.

Your CPU will possibly bottleneck your crossfire setup, making the performance increase very little for the money.

Recent games require a good CPU more so than a GPU (due to console ports blah blah not going there), so an invest in SB would be a good idea, or wait and see if Bulldozer has anything to offer. Could get a decent motherboard aswell and have support for Ivybridge, so there is an upgrade path there.
 
Of course it's a big difference, but your CPU will bottleneck a 6950 Crossfire, you won't get that performance.
And the flagship single 7XXX GPU should be almost as fast as that, while you've got a much better CPU/Mobo.

It's your money, and you've made up your mind, a 6950 Crossfire is very fast.

But rebuild a computer? All you need to do is swap mobo and CPU, it takes like 10 minutes.

Do you have a 2GB 6950 or a 1GB 6950?
 
1gb 6950 I have literally no confidence touching my computer I don't know where all the cables go on the MOBO etc. I'm useless when it comes to computers
 
To be honest, your 6950 1GB should be more than enough if you would overclock it. Considering you are only gaming at 1680 res, having only 1GB of VRAM won't really cause immediate suffering in drop in performance, unless you are using 8xAA instead of 4xAA in some demanding titles.
 
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