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Upgrade gone wrong... what now?

davewhite04

davewhite04

davewhite04

Soldato
Joined
28 Mar 2004
Posts
3,933
Location
Newcastle upon Tyne
Hi all,

I recently upgraded my much loved Radeon 5850 and decided to do a deal with the devil(as it turns out) NVidia. I upgraded my PSU, as my old one was 4years old and apparently I can save on electricity with this new one plus it would mean it could deal with 2x 660GTX(Nvidia) no problem, it does...

So as you now know I went for the SLI route, thinking I would be "blown" away, and I'm devastated. Battlefield 4 does run nice but if I go away from the screen for 5mins, so no inputs, it just crashes. I thought I'll wait for a patch, I get Crysis 3 for a tenner as I have actually been wanting this. Everything maxed out and the frame rate can go down to 20? Is this supposed to happen? Then when I played it last it crashed too, with a "DX" problem.

I did read about people getting headaches dealing with Sli issues but I didn't listen.

Firstly does anyone know what FPS I should get with x2 GTX660 on Ultra @ 1080P in Crysis 3? If what I'm getting is about right then I should have put my £380 (could have survived without PSU purchase) towards a good PS4 bundle.

The cards are going back, but I want a reliable replacement card, and I'm thinking Radeon/AMD, I would be willing to put in £250-£300, can someone please recommend a beast of a card that will chew up Crysis 3 for that price?

Thanks

Dave
 
Nvidia drivers for sli are generally rock solid and with you 1080 I would believe you would get a decent fps on those cards. any reason you choose the 660s? as for that money if you like amd I would have gone 7970 platinum or if you wanted nvidia 770 :)
 
Nothing will chew up a maxed out Crysis 3 for £300 :)

Perhaps be satisfied with high and a bit of ultra with 2-4xAA or more if it can manage? It still looks awesome.
 
No single GPU will chew up Crysis 3 sadly. The trouble with the 660 is the memory bandwidth. At 192 Bit (I think?), it isn't going to deal with high levels of AA very well.

I have been a big fan of SLI and never had any real problems. It does need a little more looking after than a single card and temps have to be watched and it will put more strain on the CPU but on the whole, it is pretty much trouble free.

Are you sure both cards are working correctly and you have not been sold a duff?
 
systemerror said:
Nvidia drivers for sli are generally rock solid and with you 1080 I would believe you would get a decent fps on those cards. any reason you choose the 660s? as for that money if you like amd I would have gone 7970 platinum or if you wanted nvidia 770 :)
Click to expand...

I was thinking of a 770... I got 1 660 and got the old upgrade bug and curiosity led me to SLI as for just a £150 more I could get better performance then a 770 (both gigabyte windforce), so my mistake was going for 1 660(just had the edge on my old 5850!) I should have spent that bit more originally but I thought tech would have moved on a lot in 3.5years, which is when I got my 5850.

The 770 "apparently, according to some folk" is 10% slower then my config, I will look at that 7970 plat though.

Thanks bud.
 
If Crysis 3 is crashing you have issues. It's not SLI.

If you want to max out Crysis 3 you're looking at Titan, 670 SLI+ or a 7990.
 
Uncle Petey said:
Nothing will chew up a maxed out Crysis 3 for £300 :)

Perhaps be satisfied with high and a bit of ultra with 2-4xAA or more if it can manage? It still looks awesome.
Click to expand...

@1080p surely £300 should be enough for just the graphics card to slaughter Crysis 3!? Technology seems to be in Limbo. My 5850 could do Crysis 3 on High and low AA.
 
Just so you know, a 7970 at 1200mhz will 'only' manage 50-60fps (a bit lower in certain places like the first level, but still very playable) with settings at high with 2xMSAA.
Maybe an i7 would help out a bit? I dunno...

davewhite04 said:
@1080P surely £300 should be enough for just the graphics card to slaughter Crysis 3!? Technology seems to be in Limbo. My 5850 could do Crysis 3 on High and low AA.
Click to expand...

Not even a Titan would.
 
Gregster said:
No single GPU will chew up Crysis 3 sadly. The trouble with the 660 is the memory bandwidth. At 192 Bit (I think?), it isn't going to deal with high levels of AA very well.

I have been a big fan of SLI and never had any real problems. It does need a little more looking after than a single card and temps have to be watched and it will put more strain on the CPU but on the whole, it is pretty much trouble free.

Are you sure both cards are working correctly and you have not been sold a duff?
Click to expand...

Somehow I feel comforted to know that no card can chew it up, but I am surprised I must say, fair enough on resolutions higher then 1920x1080...

Have I been sold a dud... I hope not, but you could be right, how would I know?

Extended playing time with Skyrim has been fine, and generally everything fine apart from BF4 crashing(only when I stop playing), and Crysis 3 performance, which seems to be normal. I know SLI is working because I used FRAPS with one card on C3, then used 2 cards on it and there was a difference of about 10FPS.
 
I would whip out the first card and pop in your new card in the top PCI-E slot and run that on its own for a couple of hours just to check.

What CPU do you have?
 
Uncle Petey said:
Just so you know, a 7970 at 1200mhz will 'only' manage 50-60fps (a bit lower in certain places like the first level, but still very playable) with settings at high with 2xMSAA.
Maybe an i7 would help out a bit? I dunno...



Not even a Titan would.
Click to expand...

I have an i7 920 running at 2.66ghz, never overclocked it. 6gb triple channel memory too. Wonder if it's worth overclocking it, I have a huge fan on it and about 5 case fans, BIG ones! lol including the large PSU fan.
 
No idea mate. I've never clocked one of those.
From a brief google, 4ghz shouldn't be out of the question depending on your cooling and what version of the chip you have.

Perhaps this will help http://www.overclock.net/t/538439/guide-to-overclocking-the-core-i7-920-or-930-to-4-0ghz

ED: As for that Matrix plat, I reckon a better plan is to sell your 660's and grab a couple of those 7950's mentioned earlier. Perhaps grab them now before the offer expires if you have the funds available?

ED2: then again, it really does depend on how badly you want to turn stuff up on crysis...
 
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Uncle Petey said:
No idea mate. I've never clocked one of those.
From a brief google, 4ghz shouldn't be out of the question depending on your cooling and what version of the chip you have.

Perhaps this will help http://www.overclock.net/t/538439/guide-to-overclocking-the-core-i7-920-or-930-to-4-0ghz

ED: As for that Matrix plat, I reckon a better plan is to sell your 660's and grab a couple of those 7950's mentioned earlier. Perhaps grab them now before the offer expires if you have the funds available?
Click to expand...

Thanks for this bud, I think if 2 of you guys are recommending the same thing I will listen, and maybe give you a free copy of Crysis 3! Are graphics card a standard length? I have the 2 660's in obviously but wondering if these will fit... I will google it but I thought I'd quickly ask before ordering.

Thanks for your help.
 
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