HD 7870 Ghz Edition Crossfire

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amdman599

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Would you guys recommend 7870's in crossfire?

I have bought all my parts for my rig but dont have gpu yet. The reason i would go with xfire is because of the price of the cards and the free game bundles. Two 7870's are going for $184.99 each @ ncix Canada. Plus the silver 2 game bundle.

My rig

I5 4670k
Gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD3H
Gskill ripjawz 8Gb
1TB HD Seagate Barracuda
Corsair TX 750M
 
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clutchc
As long as your board has x8, x8 PCIe or better (yours does), there's no reason you can't. But for the cost of those 2 cards, you can get a pretty great single card. The 2 x HD 7870s will be faster in framerate however. Keep in mind that AMD CF is experiencing some micro-stutter issues yet. Their new beta driver (13.10) with frame pacing does a great job of reducing it, but it is still present somewhat.
Review of the previous beta 13.8 driver: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/08/01/amd_catalyst_138_beta_frame_pacing_crossfire_driver/#.UkzEgBAYO2U

I have a 2nd system (i7-875K/2 x HD 7870 OC) and tried out the new beta driver. It does a good job with m-s. Unfortunately I sold the 2nd HD 7870 and am back to 1 card now.
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clutchc

clutchc

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As long as your board has x8, x8 PCIe or better (yours does), there's no reason you can't. But for the cost of those 2 cards, you can get a pretty great single card. The 2 x HD 7870s will be faster in framerate however. Keep in mind that AMD CF is experiencing some micro-stutter issues yet. Their new beta driver (13.10) with frame pacing does a great job of reducing it, but it is still present somewhat.
Review of the previous beta 13.8 driver: http://www.hardocp.com/article/2013/08/01/amd_catalyst_138_beta_frame_pacing_crossfire_driver/#.UkzEgBAYO2U

I have a 2nd system (i7-875K/2 x HD 7870 OC) and tried out the new beta driver. It does a good job with m-s. Unfortunately I sold the 2nd HD 7870 and am back to 1 card now.
 
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amdman599

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Hey guys
Thanks for the replies, you have been very helpful. What exactly is micro-stuttering? One of my friends has dual HD 7950's and I have never noticed any lag or issues with his setup or how games run, in fact they run smooth as butter. If you could briefly explain micro stuttering it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks again
 
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Christopher Shaffer

Christopher Shaffer

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It's worth noting that the article linked to above is over 2 years old.

A more recent article on Tom's clears this up:
http://www.tomshardware.com/news/AMD-Catalyst-13.8-beta-microstutter,23776.html

Catalyst is now @ 13.9 and micro-stutter isn't an issue.

I've seen people post saying they still have the issue, only to find out either their driver was old or they aren't using V-sync for some reason and are seeing v-sync issues.
 
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clutchc

clutchc

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The above articles should explain m-s well. It isn't completely gone in CF yet, but not a big issue like it used to be. The 13.9 beta driver had the problem of only allowing the 2nd PCIeX16 slot to run at X1. That has been fixed with the 13.10 beta driver. I suspect AMD will be introducing the final version of frame pacing in a finished official driver soon.

Nvidia, on the other hand, seems to have fixed the issue for their SLI m-s in firmware. Maybe AMD will do that eventually also.

As far as your friend's PC, the higher-end the cards are, the less M-S seems to be an issue. At least that is what the reviewers say. My experience was limited to 2 x HD 7870OC cards.
 
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Christopher Shaffer

Christopher Shaffer

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Micro-stutter is caused partially by not properly handling the bandwidth for the PCIe bridge (thus the need for the X-fire bridge to help with data transfer).

Your best bet is to make sure the motherboard you plan to use supports PCIe 3.0 at 8x **when both slots** are used. You're other best bet is to make sure the cards have a high memory bandwidth - if you can afford a 7950 or 7870 with 3GB GDDR5, that's a good option.

In addition, keeping as few devices as possible (like just the vid cards)on the other PCIe slots will keep as much of the bandwidth free as possible.

PCIe speed can be affected by your CPU speed, indirectly, so having at least a good i5 is a good bet.

If micro stutter was really still such an issue, no one would run two Radeon cards, right?

Anandtech uses two Radeons in every non-video article test system. I can't imagine they'd intentionally opt for micro stuttering every time.
 
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amdman599

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So performance wise, should I choose the 7870's or maybe consider an HD 7970? I'm stuck between these two options for various reasons.
First two 7870's would cost me $368.99 and i get 4 free games because each card has 2 free games, or the Asus HD 7970 DCII which would cost me $299.99 (NCIX canada). What should I choose?
 
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Christopher Shaffer

Christopher Shaffer

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I didn't say it wasn't, but it's not as much of an issue as it used to be and with the right steps, it can be virtually eliminated.

AMD continues to update drivers and make some fixes for specific games, including addressing micro-stutter in specific games.

To answer the OP's last question: I have a Sapphire 7870 OC 2GB and it runs every modern game and Ultra or near-ultra settings.

Two of them would definitely kill it on about any game but it's probably overkill for now.

I would probably opt for a single 7950 or 7970 over 2 7870's if they aren't out of your budget.

Just to be clear, recommended specs for BF4 call for a 7870:

http://www.joystiq.com/2013/09/10/battlefield-4-pc-requirements-revealed-time-to-gear-up/
 
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