Which 6950 for xfire

[beardyweirdy]

Hi All

I have finally made a decision to xfire my current MSI twin fzr3 6950 and was wondering which card to twin her with? It's between these currently on offfer on OCUK:

1. ATI6950 IceQ @ £199
2. OCUK (VTX??) 6950 again @ £199

Now, the logical choice would be the IceQ but my PCIe slots are very close i.e. Asus Rampage 2 and the cards will be virtaully touching, so I was wondering which one would be more suitable re the heat issues?

Any advice appreciated.
Cheers

 

[tommybhoy]

Another twin frozr III would be your best bet(less hassles), failing that the ICeq.

 

[beardyweirdy]

Hi Thanks

Will 2 different cards cause issues?

 

[lrlcr]

Very rarely, what's your psu?

Personally I'd wait for the new 7*** cards becuase hopefully the 6950 will come down in price.

 

[tommybhoy]

Will 2 different cards cause issues?

It has been known to throw up the odd issue or two in the past.

CrossFire can be great, but it can also be problematic too, so you want to stick to the same cards for the least amount of hassles imo!

Patience is required with any dual card setup as you usually have to wait for proper scaling, especially if you want to pick up a game and play it on release day(although this can also be said for single cards but not to the same extent as dual cards), so don't expect miracles.

What cpu do have before you commit to buy?

Scaling was very disappointing for me with a [email protected],a bit better with a PII X2(unlocked to 3 cores) 555BE@4GHz but it didn't give the best results until I went [email protected].

***EDIT*** just noticed you should have a i7 920 or better? so scaling should be good to go!

 

[beardyweirdy]

Hi

I have an i7 950 clocked at 4.4ghz; PSU is a Seasonic 1000w
I want the card to play BF3/MW3 on full everything.
Not sure now, as I dont want driver issues. I did have SLI460s and never had driver issues but seems like xfire causes issues for some?

Cheers

 

[PapaLazaru]

Spanking over £200 for a couple of FPS is madness. You will notice hardly any difference and there are known crossfire issues. If you have to, as has been said, wait till the 7 series are out and pick one up second hand or just buy a 7 series.

 

[beardyweirdy]

What sort of performance on BF3/MW3 can I expect with a single card and following rig:
Silverstone Temjin TJ 07
i7 950 @ 4.4ghz
Custom Cooling:
EK Supreme CPU Block
XSPC 360 Radiator
Ek Laing DDC 18W Pump
XSPC Res
AC Ryan Blackfire 2000 rpm fans
Storage:
Kingston 128GB SSD
WD 500GB 7200 HDD
Asus Rampage Extreme 2 Motherboard
12 GB Patriot Gaming RAM
Seasonic 900w PSU
TWIN FROZR 3 OC 6950

 

[tommybhoy]

Not sure now, as I dont want driver issues. I did have SLI460s and never had driver issues but seems like xfire causes issues for some?

I have had a painless experience with CrossFire 6950>70's for almost a year, but others do have problems.

Iv'e never had any problems in BF3 even at launch with Beta drivers but others did:

I thought I would post a small video of Battlefield 3 multiplayer Caspian Border Gameplay performance of my unlocked 6950 shaders @ 6970 clocks in Crossfire.

Benchmarks are all over the place with many discrepancies imo.

There are a few posts saying that 6970 Crossfire is not enough @1080p with Ultra settings, well you can decide for yourselves now.

Specs are:

Battlefield 3 AMD Crossfire Performance
Full Caspian 64 Player Map
Ultra Settings
In game fps using console command:
'Render.DrawFps 1 Boolean'

Amd 6950>70 Crossfire @ 880MHz/1350Mhz
Catalyst 11.10 preview2 + Cap3 Win7
2500K@ 4.5GHz
MSI Z68A-GD55-G3
16GB Corsair Vengeance Red 1866 Mhz
128GB Crucial M4-Windows
120GB Corsair Force 3-BF3
Windows Pagefile is disabled(I don't know if this helps with the stuttering but I've never had any)



This may help if you are trying to decide whether 6950/70's Crossfire is for you or whether it's worth adding a second card.

Yes the videos not centred, that wasn't the point.

It's scaling issues more than driver issues that causes problems.

If you are competent enough then it should be fine, but if you are constantly updating the drivers when you don't need to then you could give yourself troubles.

What sort of performance on BF3/MW3 can I expect

Great performance with one 6950, mental performance with CrossFire!