Just out of curiosity, how did the 6950 manage to power three monitors for gaming?
As you're running a high resolution I would be less concerned about a potential CPU bottleneck; perhaps look to upgrade that a little later on.
Well the 6950 2GB ran like a 6970 for a while, I unlocked the shaders and OC'ed it when I first got it, but other then that, it was pretty fine at gaming at high resolutions on a mix of settings, normally high/ultra textures, low/off shadows and other taxing options off, but it all depended on the game really. Games like L4D2 and that sort of engine ran great with everything on high, but that goes with any older game.
It worked pretty nicely in BFBC2 at 5760x1200, gave me anything from 20-60 FPS depending the situation in game, the average was anything between 25-30. If I was in a tank or in the distance firing at something, then it was a lot higher.
In Skyrim and Fallout 4, I had to make some large concessions due to the number of texture mods I was adding so the resolution got really smaller then my native desktop resolution, for example in Fallout 4 it was at 2304x1024 with high textures/enb on high/ultra and that gave me anything from 20-60 FPS but I was playing on a screen size that equalled a 40-50" TV which looked really nice.
That said, going into the Boston was a nightmare and wrecked my FPS to unplayable rates, so I did my best to avoid that area as much as possible and just put up with the FPS when I had to go there. Outside of Botson and in the building/cave maps, then the FPS wasn't a concern, this when it was playing at 40-60 FPS.
Skyrim was a lot better, inside caves and places, I had higher FPS then I did outside but even outside it was still playable, we talking anything between 25-60 and this was using a really odd resolution but bigger resolution then Fallout 4. In Skyrim due to the odd resolution, I suffered some UI problems, the top of the menu was cutoff, so I couldn't see the text there, but I could still use the menus to switch between things.
That said, when I first got the 6950 back in 2011, my main monitor was a 40" 1080p TV. So some games I played, I disabled the side monitors just to game on that, while other games I used the side monitors for Eyefinity like L4D2, CSS, BFBC2 etc.
This was with a Q6600 back then.
In the last years, the 6950 and the older Q6600 really was showing it's age. Games like Space Hulk: Deathwing was really terrible and in Planetside 2 it was getting worst and this was with a normal GPU temp of 80-90"C and gaming pushed that over 100"C with the fan almost at 80% speed, damn nosy *******, it got to the point where I couldn't use my speakers anymore to game due to the noise of the fan being so loud. Headphones was my only option.
From 2011, my 6950 never gave me any problems, no graphic corruption, no crashes from gaming from overheating or anything. Last night was the first time it showed errors and I can't blame it, for a 6 year old GPU to work so hard all it's life, it's payed for itself so many times over.
My brother has the same GPU that we got at the same time, his is still working but he only plays WOT every few days, not a real gamer like me.
Strangely enough, Planetside 2 is the only game where I really suffered terrible in Infantry play (I think Infantry play in that game is terrible anyway but thats a other story), I find it really hard to fight as Infantry in that game due to the low FPS I had.
But in vehicle play, things was different due to the distance I could keep or due to the armour and speed of the vehicles, I can play pretty well.
While in other games like BFBC2, BF3 and BF4, my Infantry play wasn't affected much by the FPS I had, I was still able to come first in the scoreboard with high kills and low deaths, same said for other games of that nature but in PS2, I couldn't.
But not to say I was the best player out there, but I can hold my own in them.
Space Hulk Deathwing was a strange game, when I got my new i5 760, I found out that the 6950 could play that game on ultra settings at 3160x1200 (I think it's that) and gave me 20-35 FPS. Since the game looked beautiful at that, I kept them settings, on the old Q6600, it really couldn't do that at all, was unplayable. That showed me a good example how CPU sided that game is I think. At 1080p, it had 60 or more FPS when I tested it once at that resolution.
The Division was a other game that my 6950 really hated, the first few hours of that game was fine till I got outside of the newbie area then every so often, I would get really blinding light from light sources, inside was pitch white/yellow. I had to restart the game to fix that.
Seems the only fix was to get a newer card, but that's pretty **** when it's clearly a glitch/bug in the game that could be fixed. Outside of that annoying glitch, it ran fine, FPS was pretty much the same as any other game I said, anything from 20-60 depending what is happening at the time.
Well, story time is over, I hope everyone enjoyed my little history of my poor little 6950.
To finish, I think it all depends what you want to sacrifice in games and what you can handle regarding FPS. I always played like this so it's normal for me.
/note, Please take my FPS values with some salt, I don't make a habit of writing things down or anything when playing, just what I can remember seeing the FPS was reaching in different times of gaming.
