6950 rma replacement 2x6850 or a 570gtx

[Mvx15n]

Hi,

Two months ago I bought an asus 6950 DirectcuII and I finally have to RMA it because it was corrupting textures and crashing constantly. Th vendor has accepted the RMA but does not have any more in stock this card. And the other 6950 available are more expensive (and worse cooling) or have only 1GB.

My motherboard is a Gigabyte P55USB3 with an I5-750 and the PSU is a corsar ax850 so no limitation here.

The main use is Gaming BC2 and future BF3 and Photoshop.

I'm considering two alternatives if I have to spend more money:

1.- Get two 6850 (the main issue here is that the second PCIE will work at 4x (or even less))

2.- Get a Nvidia 570GTX card (probably slower but more stable than Crossfire and faster in photoshop).

What other alternatives I have for around the same money?
Will I get full cfx performance of the second 6850 at 4x?
What card will you recommend for 570 in here http://www.alternate.es/html/summaryListing.html?searchCriteria=570&cat1=009&cat2=464&cat3=000) (sorry for the spanish)

Thank you in advance and best regards

Nick

 

[Rustyy117]

Hi Nick

The GTX570 is about on par with a HD6950/70, Check out some reviews!

4x will hinder CF performance some what, I'd recommend going for the GTX570.

 

[megamanx00]

I say just go with the GTX 570. Sure two 6850s would generally be faster, but the 4x slot may prove a bit of a limitation on the LGA 1156 system. Doesn't seem to be an issue with sandy bridge. Anyway, things are generally more stable with a single card. Also, if you upgrade the rest of your platform latter on you can add another 570 for more performance, while if you stick with the 6870s you would need to replace them both latter on. Just something to consider.

 

[Mvx15n]

Thank you all for your guidance.

I'm going for a 570gtx. One more question, I have a 9800gt card would it make sense to keep it in th4x pcie for physics?

Thank you in advance

 

[Mvx15n]

Hi,

Ok thank you for the suggestion, I'll play around with the 9800 for physix...

While I was waiting for the RMA money back I've found a Zotac 480 GTX for 220€ that's 90€ less than the EVGA 570 SC, Is it worth the difference? Take into account that if I want to SLI it, I will need to replace the motherboard and CPU making it unlikely in the short/ mid term unless I win the lottery...



Thank you for your comments.

Nick

 

[Mvx15n]

Hi,

I finally have ordered two Sapphire Radeon HD 6950 2GB dirt3 edition as I've found them at 211€ and they are dual fan and bios cards... (I hope I can unlock them to get the extra 2-4% performance.) The main reason was that the 2x6950 are much faster than a single GTX570 as shown here http://www.guru3d.com/article/vga-charts-spring-2011/9 for just 30% price increase.

I was very close to go for the 480 until I found that they do not have displayport connection that I need. I?

I'll Keep posted how Crossfire works with these cards in 16x-4x config (it is highly probably that soon they'll go to a z68 x8x8 config anyway) and progress on unlocking them...

Thank you all for your help.

Nick

 

[Mvx15n]

Hi,

the two 6950 in 16x4x run pretty well getting over 7200 in 3dmark 2011 over 4800 in non Crossfire mode. I'll compare it next week against 8x8x....

 

[Mvx15n]

I'm just amazed on the difference the i7-2600k makes it gives around p8500 stock and p9250 with 4,4ghz overclock!!!!http://www.pccomponentes.com/buscar.php?p=h100&f=155