7950 CF - Worth it?

[Jasonst888]

Issue with a lot of what you say Marine is you comparisons. For instance you buy anything its a small gamble whether it works, if it doesnt you send it back. And now thanks to ocuk if your xfire doesnt work, just send back the second card, simple.

As to why arent drivers working when released....well again gotta copy someone further up, they arent perfect because you had the audacity to be an individual with your pc....shakes fist in outrage! Drivers always improve look at consoles, how do games that struggle on some pc's work fine on consoles far older and weaker....simple console game designers have the time to create a game perfectly coded and tailored to one system, gfx card drivers have to do the same job in a far more generic fashion.

And as to the slow down in graphics tech......not saying i agree with you on that one, but even if it has slowed down....id guess its because of consoles....fat lot of good Nvidia do spending a small fortune on r&d for the 680 just for the next xbox to be touting a hd 6670.....and this is important because you can add up the top selling games on pc throughout 2011....and they probably still dont equal the numbers of MW3 sold on xbox alone....so dont expect graphics to be leaping ahead to far from a gaming point of view....

 

[Marine-RX179]

Issue with a lot of what you say Marine is you comparisons. For instance you buy anything its a small gamble whether it works, if it doesnt you send it back. And now thanks to ocuk if your xfire doesnt work, just send back the second card, simple.

Except DSR require consumers to pay out of own pocket for sending it back, unless you buy from somewhere like rainforest.

 

[Jasonst888]

Except DSR require consumers to pay out of own pocket for sending it back, unless you buy from somewhere like rainforest.

My entire ranting speil and thats all u pick up on!?
So you lose £10 to test something out, cost you more to test a couple new pints down the pub!


Oh and forgot to add to OP. Just got xfire 7950s for eyefinity myself, primarily for Battlefield 3. Wasnt perfect on 12.3 drivers not quite micro stuttering but just didnt feel smooth, but went up to 12.4 and it is amazing, my fps is much higher and its like silk now! Also another plus side is despite all the horror stories about tearing on three screens i havent seen any sign of it.

Two things to be aware of, 1) the first card will be a lot hotter, i have a sapphire oc and a gigabyte windforce. I moved the windforce to primary as its cooler is much quieter. 2) my cpu runs much hotter in eyefinity, not an issue as my h2o 920 just ramps up fan speeds, but it is somethign i didnt expect so thought id point it out.

 

[Marine-RX179]

My entire ranting speil and thats all u pick up on!?
So you lose £10 to test something out, cost you more to test a couple new pints down the pub!

The only reason I didn't address your other points is because they've been said far too many times...I don't see the logic in people defending the companies or making excuses for them or try to analyse cause of effect, when situation can be improved. It's like a person made a mistake, and he then go and make some excuses for himself to justify his action to forgive himself, he just simply going to make same mistake again in future, because justify his action, rather than reflect on what he done wrong and try to avoid doing it again in the future. Drivers is may be complex, but when you are in the business to make money off it, then you have the responsibility to get it right...it is that plain and simple.

Call me realist, but as a consumer I don't care what goes on inside or outside of the companies, the politics or the fanboy wars, all I care about and expect of the product I purchase from them would work as they are marketed/advertised. I am a consumer, not a shareholder of the companies. Bottomline is crossfire's reliability is may be improving slowly, but the fact remains it is not there yet (after so many years).

 

[Final8y]

Actually it's not like that. Despite what people say about AMD driver being bad, I myself would say that for single GPU, they ain't really any worse than Nvidia...however, driver reliability greatly reduce when moving onto to crossfire rather than running a single GPU card, and it is not exactly a secret.

What I find I can't agree with the logic of some people is that as a consumer, I would expect the product which I pay good money for to WORK, rather than paying the money to gamble and to HOPE it is problem free. It's like you go buy a electronic, and it has...say 10% chance of unable to perform what it is marketed to be able to do...it that really acceptable? It's precisely because people accepting the problems and risk involved as norms, company is not putting in as much affort as needed in ironing out the issues.

As mention above crossfire driver support tends improve further down the line after the product is launched, but why can't people get the full performance of what they paid for, and instead have to wait rather than on day 1? I don't care what excuse they got (crossfire is a complex tech yadi yadi yada), but to me they are simply rushing a product to the shelf without going through proper finalisation. People buy finished product, not to become guinea pigs beta tester for companies for free.

If after so many years companies still haven't perfected the tech, then they should just focus on what really matters...improving the speed of the GPU instead. The only reason companies push multi-GPU so much (despite the tech is not perfect) is because it is good money for them. People might say it is just conspiracy theory, but I believe that the only reason why the graphic/GPU progression is getting lesser and lesser each gen is to encourage people toaccept multi-GPU as norm, or to accept paying nearly a grand instead of £500 ish for top graphic; if there's no multi-GPU tech, I am VERY certain that we would have much faster GPU than what we get given today.

Its upto people if they want to be early adopters, the company i work for has just spent £350,000 upgrading and there was a massive bug in the software and a hardware fault that was a total show stopper that no one noticed besides me and that a redesign had to be made and brought in from Switzerland and this is from a world wide leading company in its field which has been going since 1946.
We are the first to own the new range in England hence the bugs and hardware fault.

Also they do concentrate on making faster and faster GPUs and if people want to risk using multi GPU its there own choice as no one is making you buy it.

You have a right to your opinion and you have a right to act upon it, like don't be an early adopter and don't buy multi GPU, but don't try to know what other people are willing to try and feel about it and when it come to just trying to air the potential pitfalls then psychodil covered it.

 

[RichH]

Oh and forgot to add to OP. Just got xfire 7950s for eyefinity myself, primarily for Battlefield 3. Wasnt perfect on 12.3 drivers not quite micro stuttering but just didnt feel smooth, but went up to 12.4 and it is amazing, my fps is much higher and its like silk now! Also another plus side is despite all the horror stories about tearing on three screens i havent seen any sign of it.

Two things to be aware of, 1) the first card will be a lot hotter, i have a sapphire oc and a gigabyte windforce. I moved the windforce to primary as its cooler is much quieter. 2) my cpu runs much hotter in eyefinity, not an issue as my h2o 920 just ramps up fan speeds, but it is somethign i didnt expect so thought id point it out.

Thanks for this, much appreciated. What are temps like now compared to single card, in number terms?

 

[jakejacob0]

What PSU would be recommended for crossfire 7950's?

 

[Rusty0611]

Good quality 750W minimum ideally 850W.

 

[jakejacob0]

So my 850W TX Corsair would be fine, if i eventually went CF

 

[Jasonst888]

So my 850W TX Corsair would be fine, if i eventually went CF

i have a ax 850 and its fine.

As to temps, well depends on game of course and whether you oc, your case etc. But in a hot room, on hot days! first card will hit about 65c vs 57 c when it was single xfire. The second card is much much cooler, more along the 55c lines. The temp is why I recommend the Gigabyte windforce 7950 as primary, the fans hit about 56% and are still very quiet, this compared to my saphhire oc in primary position and you certainly notice it!

In fairness there is plenty i could do to alter these temps, a custom fan profile, turn up my case fans, have a cooler room! - for reference my case is the ft02 which is very cool but i live in the westcountry and pretty much since i have had xfire we have been between 20-30c almost non-stop.