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5850>6950/70 Is it worth it

C64 said:
Maybe you are overlooking a setting or something you need to do ? i thought the 5 series had none of the problems that plagued the 4 series ?

Are they the same clock speed ? anyway must be okay right as there's loads of people running 5770cf and 5850 cf with no issues at all ?

Also don't they say you should get the exact same cards ?
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There's only one box to tick and it does that itself on detecting the second card anyway. Don't have to be the same clockspeed (although they both are) as they can be clocked independantly. Don't even have to be the same card, let alone the same manufacturer as long as it's the same series. You can run 5870/5850 or even 5970/5870 crossfire if you like. Gone back as far as the 10.10 drivers now with no joy.


MoodyB said:
I found 10.5a hotfix & 10.10e to be the best drivers when I was running crossfire.

Anything after 10.10e can cause 100% load on the 2nd gpu on some systems.

Can't check with 11.2 as I'm on a single card now.
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I noticed that earlier. Had Afterburner's monitor running in the background launched a game that does'nt instantly lock up, shut it down before it did lock up. Checked the monitor and GPU 2 was at 100% load while GPU 1 was only at 61% load while the game was running.
 
If you can be bothered, try this & see if it helps before you rma / dsr the card :

http://www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/77614-device-manager-hidden-devices.html

Lets you remove any old 'ghost' device driver that has been used previously - not the same as 'show hidden devices'

In my case I've had 5 different card setups in the past 12 months, which was making dxdiag show my 5850 as a 4800 series.

Did the above & removed all the ghosted entries under 'display' in device manager. Reinstalled 11.2 & it's now fine.

I realise this might not relate to your issue, but might be worth a shot if nothing else is working.
 
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I swore I wasn't getting the 6970 at release as I was not too impressed with the price /performance ratio over what I had with the 5870. When the unlocking news broke, I thought it became a much different proposition. It cost me £80 to go from 5870 to an unlocked 6950 after selling on the 5870.

What any review or benchmark can't show you is imo, the vastly improved smoothness during game-play. Yes the 5870 could hit high fps, but it could sometimes (with me anyway) take terrible drops in fps too. For example F3NV fps would be all over the place with high settings, but the 6950>70 takes it all in it's stride with a steady fps.

When all is said and done I have no regrets on the upgrade at all. I even took the AC 5870 extreme cooler off the 5870 before selling it and slapped it onto the 6950 with some extra heatsinks.
 
Really it just depends on the games you play. Most games the 6900's are a bit faster, but there are a few games where the 5800's are just as fast. They are pretty close.

I went from a heavily OC'd 5870 to a heavily OC'd 6950, not much, if any, difference in my games. And AMD is still getting performance increases for 5800's with drivers.


Is it worth it to scratch that itch? That depends on how valuble your money is to you and how much of it you have to give up for the trade. Worth it from a performance point of view?, I don't think so.
 
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What any review or benchmark can't show you is imo, the vastly improved smoothness during game-play. Yes the 5870 could hit high fps, but it could sometimes (with me anyway) take terrible drops in fps too. For example F3NV fps would be all over the place with high settings, but the 6950>70 takes it all in it's stride with a steady fps.
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This really, the 5850 was a great card by horsepower but it and the other 5000 series cards had a trend of falling away as the going got tough. Now when you add aa, resolution, effects ect the 6900s seem to actually get better in comparision to nvidia cards.

Obviously getting an extra gig of ram on the card helps also unlocking and a tuned fan profile mean that a 6950 costing 210 can lock heads with nvidia's 570, which is a top notch card in of itself; and that costs 260.
Overclocking probably equals out but overclocking performance per pound? If you factor in what the two cards cost then the 6950 overclocks at least the same as you are paying less for the improvment.

Number one with a bullet, if you are gaming at a res of 1900x1200 or less, you need to spend 210 to get a card that spanks everything with room for overclocking.
 
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el Kuarlos said:
Now when you add aa, resolution, effects ect the 6900s seem to actually get better in comparision to nvidia cards.

Obviously getting an extra gig of ram on the card helps also unlocking and a tuned fan profile mean that a 6950 costing 210 can lock heads with nvidia's 570, which is a top notch card in of itself; and that costs 260.
Overclocking probably equals out but overclocking performance per pound? If you factor in what the two cards cost then the 6950 overclocks at least the same as you are paying less for the improvment.

Number one with a bullet, if you are gaming at a res of 1900x1200 or less, you need to spend 210 to get a card that spanks everything with room for overclocking.
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It's not as if it's a poor clocking card either as after the flash my card can do a 25% overclock:

d579b0937d1304d4edfd83886ae57769.jpg


My Amd HIS 6950 2Gig With Asus Shaders Unlocked Bios Flash.
1ghz Core(Stock 800Mhz)
Memory 1.3Ghz(Stock 1.25Ghz)
1.265V (Stock 1.1V)
Kombuster Run MAX temps 50c
Cooled By Modded Arctic Cooling Accelero Xtreme 5870 VGA Cooler

5 min video (pretty boring but you can skip to the end to see that it's stable)

And some people say these cards don't OC much!!!
 
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