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5850 to 6950 but which one?

liamcrane said:
Thanks for that matey, i am in the process of looking at an i5 upgrade with the Asrock Z68 Extreme4 Gen3 Intel Z68 board so i guess xfire is an option. I didnt know about the MSI beta 10, is it stable tho? im using version 2.1 at the mo
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yep its stable, not had any issues with any of the afterburner versions. CF 5850 will give you similar performance as a GTX 580 1.5gb. with an i5 setup itl be great
 
Sweet may well look into that then! do you happen to know if there is a way to extract my custom fan profiles from afterburner? if i have to uninstall it to then install the beta 10 i really cant be bothered to redo my fan profile!
 
liamcrane said:
Sweet may well look into that then! do you happen to know if there is a way to extract my custom fan profiles from afterburner? if i have to uninstall it to then install the beta 10 i really cant be bothered to redo my fan profile!
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Not that I know of, your fan profile is just a line on a graph though :/
 
All sorted when i went to uninstall it asked if i wanted to save my configs and on reinstalling the new version they are still present sweeeet!

Just trying the frame limiter now set to 59 hopefully might improve my performance
 
MOOGLEYS said:
I have the HIS and it's a great card. It's silent even under load. Mine has the shaders unlocked and runs happily at 900/1325 which is the max of CCC.
The 6950 2GB is essentially a 2GB 5850 with a bit more go and more ram, It will be better in games like BF3 where the Vram helps. You are not going to see massive gains in lower Vram usage games. If you are wanting to see a huge jump you would need to look at the 7x series.
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How did you unlock your HIS Shaders on the Ice Q card ?
Mine is happy to sit at 950/1350 as a 6950
 
YorkshirePadd26 said:
How did you unlock your HIS Shaders on the Ice Q card ?
Mine is happy to sit at 950/1350 as a 6950
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Use GPU-z to save a copy of the original bios and then make a copy of that. Use RBE (Radeon Bios Editor) load one of the saved bios files and select the option to unlock 6970 shaders. Save the bios and then flash to the card using winflash 20113.

It all sounds more complicated than it is, just remember that you may need a seperate or built in gpu to re-flash the oringinal bios if it does not work. Essentially you are just modding the original bios to unlock the shaders.

It hardly makes much difference having the shaders unlocked so tbh if you have a high clocking card I would not bother but I suppose if it works it's something for nothing...
 
MOOGLEYS said:
Use GPU-z to save a copy of the original bios and then make a copy of that. Use RBE (Radeon Bios Editor) load one of the saved bios files and select the option to unlock 6970 shaders. Save the bios and then flash to the card using winflash 20113.

It all sounds more complicated than it is, just remember that you may need a seperate or built in gpu to re-flash the oringinal bios if it does not work. Essentially you are just modding the original bios to unlock the shaders.

It hardly makes much difference having the shaders unlocked so tbh if you have a high clocking card I would not bother but I suppose if it works it's something for nothing...
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So could I use a spare PCIE card like a HD3870 or HD4970 to reflash from i've i mess it up ?
 
Minstadave said:
I'd agree with the chap above. I running a 5870 and 6950/6970 is just too little a gain to justify the outlay.
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It's about time you updated your sig then isn't it Dave? ;)

I've considered this upgrade too for the extra vram in BF3 but I ended up adding another 4GB of RAM instead. Level load times have halved & I get a constant 40 FPS with everything on high anyway so I'm going to wait for a 7850/70.
 
elrasho said:
I play BF3 everything on High, no AA/motion blur/HBAO. FOV is 90. It never goes below 60fps (apart from a few rare times when things are very hectic). That's on my stock clocked 5850s playing at 1080P. I say get another 5850 with Preview driver 12.1a + CAPs and your laughing.

Also get MSI Afterburner Beta 10 and turn on Framelimter to 59, set VSYNC in game ON... luuuuurvly.
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do you have msaa on or off :) i ask as it can be quite a big fps difference . i play same settings as you but have msaa on and have 60 fps capped at same res
 
I guess if you were going to spend £100 (sell 5850 + buy 6950), you'd be better off spending £100 on another 5850 instead.

The only downside is that you could potentially get a 2gb 6950 for £200, but 2x 1gb 5850 CF would be faster.
 
p5- said:
I guess if you were going to spend £100 (sell 5850 + buy 6950), you'd be better off spending £100 on another 5850 instead.

The only downside is that you could potentially get a 2gb 6950 for £200, but 2x 1gb 5850 CF would be faster.
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but more heat, driver issues etc would be an issue.

Some people are fine with the drivers, some don't like it.

I think the best upgrade for nearly any system is an SSD :D
 
I'd say no as you didn't think spending a £100 more for a HD5870 over the HD5850 was worth it. (I assume 2 years ago ish)

Spending £120 now for the HD6950 upgrade which is only slight better than the HD5870 would be very bad timing. (Upgrade price assumes you get back £80 for the 5850)

The extra Vram would be the only reason to be considering it, but I'd wait till the mid range 7xxx series come out or Nvidia's Kepler range and then see if it's worth upgrading.
 
Despite all the considerations on upgrading to a 69xx, as Marine-RX179 said, it's probably best to wait to see what the 7800 series will bring.
 
What would you say is the one setting within the video menu that causes the most strain on the card? Im guessing the texture setting or the terain setting on high must make the card work pretty hard. I have msaa turned off so might maybe lower either terain or texture to medium and see what the visuals to performance gain look like
 
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