580 or 2 6950's

[413x]

At that res I would stay as you are, you only really need 2gb at what I game at, 2560, I say wait till ivy or st last the 7xxx series

 

[Marine-RX179]

I'll probably just wait till next christmas to invest for the new 7xxx series and Bulldozer next year

^This

Think your 6950 1GB would handle 1680 res for a quite a while...don't think you really 'need' to upgrade unless you are going to upgrade you monitor to higher res than 1680.

 

[Masterdeadly]

I was going for a 27 inch monitor http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-030-AS&groupid=17&catid=1120&subcat= so 2 6950s?

 

[harmony]

I was going for a 27 inch monitor http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=MO-030-AS&groupid=17&catid=1120&subcat= so 2 6950s?

I recommend you figure out how to max out GTA4 and Shogun 2 under 1920x1080 with 1GB vram per GPU before you proceed.

 

[Masterdeadly]

I don't want to play GTA4 or Shogun 2? XD

 

[harmony]

I don't want to play GTA4 or Shogun 2? XD

If it's fine with you then who has the right to stop you? It's your money. Just wish you would know if your efforts are worth it, taking such games and future games into consideration.

I still remember I gave advise to a guy considering a laptop. I told him to stay away from the 4GB RAM model and get the 8GB model. He didn't listen. One year later he came back and asked me how to hack the BIOS to support 8GB RAM.

 

[Metalface Mark]

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?

Its not worth the money upgrading from 6950 to 580, ive gone the other way and cant really notice any difference in games.

 

[tommybhoy]

1gb xfire vs 2gb xfire here.


http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/3942/amd_radeon_hd_6950_1gb_video_card_in_crossfire/index3.html

A lot of the benchmarks show 2x 1gb quicker.

That's down to newer drivers, the results for the 2Gb 6950 Crossfire came from TT's original review using Catalyst 6900 BETA drivers in 2010:

The 1Gb Crossfire used the 11.4 driver, that's why it appears faster.

At the bottom of page 2:

'this one performs a little better, probably thanks to the more recent drivers.'

 

[Martini1991]

You honestly cant play many games then, my 570 can get pretty much maxed out with many high end games.

One, that's an Nvidia card. AMD's VRAM usage is lower, but I'm not sure on the numbers, you'd need to test.

If your 570's VRAM was getting maxed out, then you'd be running very poor FPS.

What resolution?

I recommend you figure out how to max out GTA4 and Shogun 2 under 1920x1080 with 1GB vram per GPU before you proceed.

I did?, unless you're talking AA? Why would I run 8x AA at 1920x1080?

 

[harmony]

One, that's an Nvidia card. AMD's VRAM usage is lower, but I'm not sure on the numbers, you'd need to test.

If your 570's VRAM was getting maxed out, then you'd be running very poor FPS.

What resolution?


I did?, unless you're talking AA? Why would I run 8x AA at 1920x1080?

Unfortunately, the vram usage I saw from AMD cards are very close to that from NVIDIA cards.

Why would you run dual-card? Only to fail to max out AA?

 

[Martini1991]

Unfortunately, the vram usage I saw from AMD cards are very close to that from NVIDIA cards.

Why would you run dual-card?

And that has to do with running unnecessary levels of AA for 0 increase in IQ since?
8x AA at 1920x1080 is utterly pointless. You may as well argue "WELL IT'S NOT MAXED UNLESS YOU DO 24X EDGE DETECT SUPER SAMPLING".

 

[harmony]

And that has to do with running unnecessary levels of AA for 0 increase in IQ since?
8x AA at 1920x1080 is utterly pointless. You may as well argue "WELL IT'S NOT MAXED UNLESS YOU DO 24X EDGE DETECT SUPER SAMPLING".

But the problem is, before you crank your AA to 8X, you are very likely to get over 60 fps with your dual-card setup. That's a waste of GPU power.

 

[Martini1991]

But the problem is, before you crank your AA to 8X, you are very likely to get over 60 fps with your dual-card setup. That's a waste of GPU power.

So I need to run unnecessary amounts of AA to go above 1GB VRAM to make a graphic card set up "worthwhile"? Nice....
I agree 1GB VRAM won't be enough for ever, but for 1920x1080, right now? It's fine, if you want to bring in exceptions to the rule, you can start with a GTX580, best single GPU out, can it max every game at 2560x1600 at over 60FPS? Nope. I can see the witcher two using uber sampling running like crap. But it doesn't make the GTX580 defunct.

 

[harmony]

So I need to run unnecessary amounts of AA to go above 1GB VRAM to make a graphic card set up "worthwhile"? Nice....
I agree 1GB VRAM won't be enough for ever, but for 1920x1080, right now? It's fine, if you want to bring in exceptions to the rule, you can start with a GTX580, best single GPU out, can it max every game at 2560x1600 at over 60FPS? Nope. I can see the witcher two using uber sampling running like crap. But it doesn't make the GTX580 defunct.

With 2AA or 4AA you don't need SLI/CF in many games.

 

[Martini1991]

With 2AA or 4AA you don't need SLI/CF in many games.

Depends on your resolution.

A 6870 won't max every game at 60 FPS at 1920x1080 with 2x AA. My 6870 VaporX crossfire effectively cost me less than 200 quid. My 6870 Crossfire is about 90% faster on average than a single 6870, thus performs a lot better, and will get me 60 FPS and higher on average in the majority of games.

 

[harmony]

Depends on your resolution.

A 6870 won't max every game at 60 FPS at 1920x1080 with 2x AA. My 6870 VaporX crossfire effectively cost me less than 200 quid. My 6870 Crossfire is about 90% faster on average than a single 6870, thus performs a lot better, and will get me 60 FPS and higher on average in the majority of games.

Less than 200 quid for 6870 CF? No doubt it's a very good choice. I have no doubt that it can perform faster than a single card.

The problem is, if you are spending over £300, then my advice would be to think about the expectation. Before your GPU power is exhausted (which limits your framerate below 60 fps), the vram is exhausted first, in many cases. However the price difference between 1GB and 2GB can be merely £20, which I say, is no brainer to go for the 2GB version.

 

[Martini1991]

Less than 200 quid for 6870 CF? No doubt it's a very good choice. I have no doubt that it can perform faster than a single card.

The problem is, if you are spending over £300, then my advice would be to think about the expectation. Before your GPU power is exhausted (which limits your framerate below 60 fps), the vram is exhausted first, in many cases. However the price difference between 1GB and 2GB can be merely £20, which I say, is no brainer to go for the 2GB version.

This is better, you're talking sensibly.

It all depends on budget and resolution ultimately.
Since there aren't any 2GB 6870's, and I can't see multi platform games exhausting my 1GB at 1920x1080, I'm fine.

However, if you're choosing between a 2GB card and a 1GB card based on only 20 quid, as you say, you'd go for the 2GB card.

The problem this generation, is just how poor the higher tier cards are for the price for value.
I can start to see 2GB VRAM becoming the new standard, much like 1GB VRAM is now.

EDIT : Using Afterburners new VRAM monitoring, I'd be glad to run Shogun 2 maxed out, I'd even do 2x/4x/8x AA to show the VRAM scaling and IQ not raising p) and any other game, at 1920x1080.

 

[harmony]

EDIT : Using Afterburners new VRAM monitoring, I'd be glad to run Shogun 2 maxed out, I'd even do 2x/4x/8x AA to show the VRAM scaling and IQ not raising p) and any other game, at 1920x1080.

I still don't understand the vram monitoring mechanisms on AMD cards very well. There are 2 weird things:

1) In Shogun 2 the game engine would see 2GB vram usable, on 6870 CrossfireX; this doesn't happen for NVIDIA cards though - GTX580 SLI doesn't get vram doubled.

2) GPU-Z 0.5.5 would read the total vram usage on both cards, where GPU-Z and MSI Afterburner both report the vram usage per GPU on NVIDIA cards.

I'm not sure if these 2 things are correlated. I don't think AMD still uses split-frame rendering to stack up the vram on both cards.

Could you post your log file of Shogun 2 official benchmark (with everything max'ed out and vsync disabled)? (one run with CrossfireX enabled and the other with CrossfireX disabled) The log file is located at:

%APPDATA%\The Creative Assembly\Shogun2\logs

and looks like:

16_05_00_10_35_benchmark1.log.txt

Regarding IQ: there's been debate on the number of pixels in digital cameras for long. Some would insist that there's no IQ improvement going from 12 Mpixel to 24 Mpixel. I agree that 8AA gives minimal improvements upon 4AA, but people just would like to max out everything they can.

 

[Supplejoe]

I still don't understand the vram monitoring mechanisms on AMD cards very well. There are 2 weird things:

1) In Shogun 2 the game engine would see 2GB vram usable, on 6870 CrossfireX; this doesn't happen for NVIDIA cards though - GTX580 SLI doesn't get vram doubled.

2) GPU-Z 0.5.5 would read the total vram usage on both cards, where GPU-Z and MSI Afterburner both report the vram usage per GPU on NVIDIA cards.

I'm not sure if these 2 things are correlated. I don't think AMD still uses split-frame rendering to stack up the vram on both cards.

Could you post your log file of Shogun 2 official benchmark (with everything max'ed out and vsync disabled)? (one run with CrossfireX enabled and the other with CrossfireX disabled) The log file is located at:

%APPDATA%\The Creative Assembly\Shogun2\logs

and looks like:

16_05_00_10_35_benchmark1.log.txt

Regarding IQ: there's been debate on the number of pixels in digital cameras for long. Some would insist that there's no IQ improvement going from 12 Mpixel to 24 Mpixel. I agree that 8AA gives minimal improvements upon 4AA, but people just would like to max out everything they can.

I use a 6870 hd 1gb and I don't get any stutter on GTA IV anymore.

 

[Mr Krugga]

I use a 6870 hd 1gb and I don't get any stutter on GTA IV anymore.

I use a 6950 2GB and I get the stuttering in GTA IV.

I used a 5850 1GB and didn't have that problem.

Look, what a coincidence!