Pleaase! Doing my head in!!!

[Suchibun32]

;Guys\Girls,
My gaming rig was built in '08 and I'm upgrading (done every 4/5 years over time). Everything is built myself and budget is always tight being around £200ish for gpu. I'm still using q6600\P5q-e o/c to 3.6ghz, normal ddr2 6400 4gb, gtx 460 oc 800\1600\2000, 550w gold psu, sb0350 modded for dolby live, windows 8 64 bit (and yes, running great). I never get over 85-90% cpu usage in any game even modern at high\very high settings with low\no aa settings at 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 and 100% gpu usage so no bottleneck. Usually in new games i'm getting 30-43fps which is ok. My plan over next 1 1\2 years is to
1:upgrade gpu to modern now for gaming fps improvement (if even slight)
2:enjoy 60fps'ish normally with possibility of surround gaming if over 25-30fps (X3)
3:upgrade mobo\ram\cpu as haswell established solid (over next year)
4:repeat in 4 odd years.
This is all fine, though here's the problem, no one can agree all over the net if a hd7950 3gb, a newer tech 660ti would be more suitable, then somebody suggests something else! It goes memory bandwidth issues, physx support (which i do like), 3gb vs 2gb, lack of cuda on radeon cards, micro-stuttering problems, lack of direct compute on nvidia cards, but this is causing mega confusion and I don't know what to do! All I want is around 60fps at 1080p normal (crysis,battlefield,witcher 2,batman etc) with option of 20-30fps surround. I do like high aa but its not a deal breaker. I've never seen a more confusing time for gpus and I've been gaming sine the 80's! Please help!!

 

[wazza300]

just get a 7950 and be done with it,who really needs physics support?

 

[hyperst]

60fps at 1080?p, games like bf3 and such, well don't get drawn into wanting the latest and greatest, it not all ways needed, I get by fine with 1 gtx 480 and have loads more than 60fps depending on the in game settings used. (I can max bf3 and it plays fine, memory usage of around 1200mb)

As wazza said, get a 7950, i'm sure that will last a few years as long as you can suppress the upgrade itch.

 

[TheRealDeal]

660ti v 7950 3gb.

That's not even a choice really. The 7950 is in the big boys league with the 670/680/7970 where as the 660ti is more 7870 territory. You do have to overclock the 7950 to get the best out of it as it comes with pretty low clocks but you would be mad not to.

 

[Suchibun32]

Thanks for your swift replies. That is pretty definative. I've always been Nvidia, so is the change to catalyst drivers painless enough? I'm a bit nervous about conflicts\problems. Also, is anyone running eyefinity, any problems or things that I should know? performance with 3 screens roughly at say 5760x1080? I've nearly always had a 3 way crossfire mobo bar my p5n-e, so in future I could run 7950's in dual or 3 way (I know about current crossfire problems, but sure will be solved in future). Lastly, (promise!) which model 7950 is recommended. I've looked at club 3d, flex, asus direct cu2, gigabyte etc. I would prefer spending a little extra for a non reference card that will clock well while running relatively cool. Thank you, Thank you and Thank you again, Suchibun.

 

[ArchAndroid]

Thanks for your swift replies. That is pretty definative. I've always been Nvidia, so is the change to catalyst drivers painless enough? I'm a bit nervous about conflicts\problems. Also, is anyone running eyefinity, any problems or things that I should know? performance with 3 screens roughly at say 5760x1080? I've nearly always had a 3 way crossfire mobo bar my p5n-e, so in future I could run 7950's in dual or 3 way (I know about current crossfire problems, but sure will be solved in future). Lastly, (promise!) which model 7950 is recommended. I've looked at club 3d, flex, asus direct cu2, gigabyte etc. I would prefer spending a little extra for a non reference card that will clock well while running relatively cool. Thank you, Thank you and Thank you again, Suchibun.

As long as you follow the guides which are in the forums to properly uninstall the nVidia drivers before switching to AMD's Catalyst, the changeover should be fine.

For Eyefinity, the quirk which most often catches people out is that at least one of the monitors has to be run using DisplayPort. The only exception to this rule is the Sapphire Flex 7950 which allows you to run all of the screens using DVI (DVI, DVI, HDMI --> DVI).

Given MSi's recent woes with the 7950, the best card on the website seems to be the Gigabyte Windforce 3X 7950 which is on sale this week.

Good luck with your choice.

 

[Suchibun32]

Thanks for all your help, will let you know soon enough!