Shall I Crossfire 7870's?

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AnAdequateAmountofAlliteration

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Nov 29, 2013
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I am looking to upgrade to either 3 1080p displays, one 1440p display, or to that new seiki 4k 39 inch display, haven't decided. Anyways, i looked at alot of benchmarks and saw that 7870 cf was better than a single 780 is. sometimes its even better than a 7990. I can get 2 7870's for 240 bucks or so. Should i go for it?
 
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fudoka711
I'm not sure if cf 7870's is better than a 7990, but I can believe they're better than a 780. That being said, if you are thinking about gaming on a 4k monitor, sadly cf 7870's will far far too short, both with vram and raw power.

However, for 3 monitors (I'm assuming you're going for a 5760x1080 resolution?) or a single 1440p monitor, cf 7870's would be good. You might run into memory problems though, as it is possible to use more than 2gb vram at 1440p or 3 monitor set-ups.

For only $240, cf 7870's is kind of hard to pass up. I'm just not sure you'll be able to take advantage of them for your needs.
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fudoka711

fudoka711

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I'm not sure if cf 7870's is better than a 7990, but I can believe they're better than a 780. That being said, if you are thinking about gaming on a 4k monitor, sadly cf 7870's will far far too short, both with vram and raw power.

However, for 3 monitors (I'm assuming you're going for a 5760x1080 resolution?) or a single 1440p monitor, cf 7870's would be good. You might run into memory problems though, as it is possible to use more than 2gb vram at 1440p or 3 monitor set-ups.

For only $240, cf 7870's is kind of hard to pass up. I'm just not sure you'll be able to take advantage of them for your needs.
 
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AnAdequateAmountofAlliteration

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Nov 29, 2013
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Thanks for all the answers guys, since you guys came to a consensus about it NOT working out, what would be an effective solution? (Or is there not one yet? Especially for 4k) How about the toxic 7970 by sapphire? With 6gb of vram on a single gpu, it's bound to do well at high res right?

@bigpinkdragon I apologize. I meant 7970's that looks dumb. :pt1cable:
 
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huilun02

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Don't get the Seiki TV. It's probably going to have noticeable input lag and ghosting. Because its a TV...

A R9 290 will run beautifully on 3x 1080p or 1440p. But you'll probably wana wait for the non reference models to come out, because the stock cooler is not good. If you can't wait then get a GTX 780 or 780 Ti.

edit: also, 7870 Crossfire would never outperform a 7990 or 7970 Crossfire.
 
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AnAdequateAmountofAlliteration

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Nov 29, 2013
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I meant a single 7970. Sorry for the misunderstanding. Anyways, this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mv5xyqwEKvw
has the 50 inch version and claims almost no input lag or ghosting. Even if there was ghosting, I could tolerate it, as I have a Dell 2007WFP monitor that was quite good for its era that ghosts and it doesn't bother me much. The Seiki is SO tantalizing, along with the 7870's in crossfire! I really can't throw them away as options.
 
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huilun02

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You probably won't get good framerates with 7870 Crossfire at 4k.

http://www.pcper.com/reviews/Graphics-Cards/Frame-Rating-High-End-GPUs-Benchmarked-4K-Resolutions

Guru3D.com benchmarked Battlefield 4 at 4k resolution. It included the 7990, 7970 and 7870. Look at the performance between the 7990 and 7970 to get a rough gauge of the scaling from the second GPU. Apply it to the 7870's performance and that's the number you can expect for your situation. For some reason I'm having difficulty loading that website.

And also keep in mind Battlefield 4 is an ideal situation where it performs very well on single cards and loves SLI/Crossfire. For every game like this there are many other on the complete flipside.
 
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AnAdequateAmountofAlliteration

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AA was enabled in those tests, which I won't be using. Plus, these benchmarks were done in april. In the article, it even mentions that new drivers would have helped alot but they were a few months away from then. Now, we have the new drivers so performance boost is likely. And if my crossfire 7870's cant handle it, ill just play in 1440p. Its fine. I'm going for it. Come my birthday in a month.
 
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bigpinkdragon286

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I'm going to have to agree with huilun02 here. I'm running a pair of 7870 LE cards in CrossFire at the moment and it's not unusual to see them struggle under 1080p gaming. The only way you're going to get decent frame rates with regular 7870 cards is with a severe sacrifice in visual quality. So, I have to ask the question then, what is the point of such hi-resolution gaming if it's not going to look very good?

Personally, I wouldn't hesitate to purpose a screen like that for desktop use, but I would not expect to game at higher resolutions with those cards. I would rather dial back the resolution so the picture can have more visual fidelity. Resolution isn't always everything, and I do believe even Tom's came to the conclusion that desktop cards for 4k gaming are still lacking.

Good luck with your purchase though. :)
 
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