Should I bother getting a second 7950?

[Cromulent]

I was half thinking about getting a second AMD 7950 card for crossfire. Do you think it would be worth the expense given the machine in my signature?

 

[arc@css]

If your current 7950 is struggling to run anything (which I doubt), then you could add another; your rig won't hold back a crossfire set-up in any way. Have you tried overclocking your 7950?

 

[Marine-RX179]

You should overclock your CPU. In some CPU demanding games that uses less than 4 cores you would need higher clock for better scaling and higher GPU usage for the 7950.

 

[Overslop]

Seeing as you have a 1440P display I would do, but it depends how much you like maxing your games out. One runs well but two is smooth as butter with all the settings ramped up on all but the most demanding of games.

 

[Rusty0611]

You should overclock your CPU. In some CPU demanding games that uses less than 4 cores you would need higher clock for better scaling and higher GPU usage for the 7950.

Agreed.

Overclock that CPU and overclock the GPU as well if you haven't. You can get so much extra performance from your rig if it's running at stock.

And then see where you are.

As above though, your set-up won't hold you back should you decide to go for Crossfire. Infact 7950 crossfire is a really nice amount of power and VRAM for under £500.

 

[Cromulent]

Thanks for the advice. I've been holding back on overclocking as I didn't want to screw anything up but I guess I could give it a go. My CPU currently runs at about 35 degrees so I have quite a bit of head room available.

I'll see what I can do but I'm a complete noob when it comes to overclocking (this is my first PC in about 10 years all my computers in that time have been Apple Macs).

 

[psychodil]

Rusty's advice above is good. Overclocking my sandy bridge was very simple and i assume it is the same for ivy bridge processors like yours, look up an overclocking guide, you should easily get to around 4.2 GHz just by changing a few settings, higher if you have a good cooler.

Also that 7950 is begging to be overclocked, they overclock like demons and you can get a significant performance increase by spending a bit of time overclocking it. You only need another 7950 if you insist on the highest settings on the latest games with 60+ FPS.

With a good overclock on your GPU and a reasonable overclock on your CPU a 30% performance increase isnt out of the question.

What model 7950 is it? is it the one with two fans on it?