Is watercooled HD 6970 Tri-Crossfire the ultimate graphics solution?

I have read that quad crossfire/sli is not recommended because of gaming performance problems such as sudden dips and then spikes in framerates, and microstutter. I read that this is due to the complexity of a quad crossfire/sli technology and games cannot handle it well. I have also read that the HD 6970 scales much better in CF compared to the GTX 580 in SLI. Is all of this true? Would a watercooled HD 6970 tri-crossfire setup be the ultimate graphics solution for real world PC gaming?

Any responses will be appreciated.

Thanks.

Do you to intend to use 3 monitors? (If not, more than 2 GPUs seems to be wasted money)

Given that a pair of 6950s in XFire often closely rivals or even outperforms the 6990/GTX590 but for only $500 or so, that would seem the logical choice for a still-fairly-reasonable price but with a truly great price/performance ratio...

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts [...] ,2668.html

580 tri sli is so not worth the extra cash, the 6970 tri xfire for sure if i had to choose.

Would be even cheaper to get 3 reference 6950's and flash the 6970 bios, they have identical performance.

Yeah like the others guy said tri-sli is an huge overkill unless you running 6 monitors in some crazy setup which I doubt. 2 cards are enough to max anything right now, even one is enough if you are on a single monitor. Unless you like gloating about your fps because you suck in games then I don't see the point of tri-sli. Or can you be a troll?

TRRRRROOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLLL

For how many monitors? 1? 3? 6? Pretty sure any real world game doesn't need 3 cards.

If you want to run 3 2560x1600 monitors in surround, get 4 cards. That'd be super high-end... I would probably die of starvation if I had a setup like that.

Maybe look at some of the unconvential cards like the combining of 580s on a single card, or 2 of the 6870x2 or something. I readily admit to knowing far less about AMD graphics cards so... don't anyone punish me too severely, lol.

well once he gets his weekly allowance he will decide

I tell you one thing
If his weekly allowance is 6k
I want his parents to adopt me

Read the first couple sentences of his first post....

ok
i did
quite thoroughly
your point sir?

he wants the ultimate solution
a dual hd 6990x2
is the best way imho
gives you the pros of quad
but with only using two cards

"Would a watercooled HD 6970 tri-crossfire setup be the ultimate graphics solution for real world PC gaming?"

the answer is no
why use a three card config
when you can use a dual gpu 2 card config?

better watercool them though

well most benches ive seen show barley any improvement over 3 gpus not to mention the driver blunder for 4 gpus; have fun with that. I'd say get 2 6970s with the ability to add a third and judge the performance from there, that is a ridiculous setup in itself

I understand what your saying in the convenience to watercool 2 gpus rather than 3 but I want to know what monitor setup this rig will run before I can make a further rec

I love gaming
I just want to say that
I really dont get much time now with the family and work
but I appreciate it as a child of the 70s (b1970)
who had an Atari Pong machine when it first came out
but the idea of a system of even 2.5k just dedicated to gaming
is not fathomable to me
a well built $1000 rig will play any game out there nowadays

though of course I do love the concept of More Power
and can appreciate the extremity of building a 6k rig
but to build it for gaming and browsing just doesnt make sense
but hey it is not my money
better have that thing Folding at Home during downtime to justify it's
existence

that is why I said watercooling
really running even one HD 6990 on air
is rough
at that level of card it should be watercooled
not only for cooling but for noise factor
and if you spend that kind of money on a card
then an a watercooling setup isnt too expensive to protect your investment
really a combo of Peltier and watercooling would be called for

I've been checking and haven't seen any 6990s on newegg or tigerdirect. i realize there's others but havent bothered looking beyond those 2. newegg is my personal favorite because their warehouse is < 1 day away so all ground shipments get to me in 1 day.

Anyway... I'd trust 2 590s over 2 6990s (if u can find 'em).

You literally need 3 or 4 580s to run 3 displays of 2560x1600... so unless you are doing that, you should never need more than 2 6970s or 2 580s with high-end boards leaving you the option of adding a 3rd.

I just ordered all the parts in my sig, already had the 570s, and everything except the mobo arrived today... I went with the 2600k over the 2500k b/c I plan to use a lot of encryption on my storage, I plan to do a lot of media creation (home movies, sound recordings, mixing) etc.

I tried to set a budget but like viper, I had quite a bit more available. It's so incredibly fun spec'ing and building a rig of any budget, I dare say it was intoxicating. I say let viper enjoy his moment. We all know, including him, a $2.5k or 5k machine is yesterday's news by the end of this year, just like every sub $1k build. Let's not rain on his parade, and by extension, my recent lil march down main street (hehe)

So get a 2560x1600 display, or 3x 1920x1080, or 1920x1080/1200 120hz 3D monitor. Get 2 6970s or 2 580s, top of the line motherboard, top shelf AMD or intel processor, awesome SSD, fast storage drive(s), a beautiful case, and watercool the hell out of it. If you go 2500k or 2600k you won't bottleneck your graphics setup as quickly as you would going with AMD's current lineup, but a 990x board sets you up nicely for the "comeback".

^dos 6950s! for sure the best value here

I agree.SSD's are the way to go.

The whole purpose of having a SSD is for the OS.Every time you do something the OS needs to get information from the HD.With a mechanical drive it makes everything slower because every time you do something it needs to access it.With a SSD it makes the OS's access time almost nonexistent making everything faster.It's not just for loading times.

He's gonna run out of slots for video cards . King, i think you want this PC more then anybody here lol.

Are you kidding me?

I live vicariously through you people on here

I was happy getting a VelcoiRaptor 10k rpm drive for my tower
used for $50 on Ebay

so if I get a chance to help somebody build a 6k rig
you know I got to think big

and it is doable

definitley needs to be a full ATX board with RAID onboard

how about this
one PCIe 512gb SSD for boot
and two VelociRaptor 10k Sata 6gbs 600gbs in Raid 0?

All it is is us just talking randomness.Lets wait till the OP decides what he/she wants to do and then we can start brainstorming.

in my opinion nowadays the velocity raptor drives suck, they are noisy, high in power consumption, and expensive even this hybrid SSD would beat it:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822148591

SSD vs hybrid SSD vs velocity raptor:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3734 [...] hybrid-hdd

Quote:
"We thought there might be some CPU limitedness going on with triple-GPU performance, but we had no idea GTX 580 3-Way SLI was being held back so much by the CPU in at least two specific scenarios.

In our redux today, using our new 4.8GHz CPU, GTX 580 3-Way SLI has come out of its hibernation and is peeking around its fort ready to lay aim on the first prey it sees. That prey happens to be AMD Tri-Fire. In all of our testing today, the GTX 580 3-Way SLI setup performed faster than AMD Radeon HD 6990+6970 Tri-Fire, except for Dragon Age II.

Depending on the game, it wasn't just a small victory either. In F1 2010 there was nearly a 30% performance advantage with GTX 580 3-Way SLI over Tri-Fire. In BC2 there was a 24% performance improvement over Tri-Fire. However, there was equally some unimpressive differences, such as Metro 2033 with 6% and Crysis: Warhead with 7%."
http://www.hardocp.com/article/201 [...] ire_redux/

while true a SSD can beat a Raptor
but when you compare price vs performance vs gb
they are a nice deal

and BTW have you ever owned and used a Raptor?
My raptor is quiet
and in PCMark07 game storage it beats a Spinpoint F3R
easily
as far as power usage
http://www.anandtech.com/show/3636 [...] nd-600gb/9
it is less than other 7200rpm drives like the barracuda


There isnt a mechanical Sata hard drive on the planet that can
come close in performance

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Prod [...] 6822136554

and can you get a 600gb SSD for $270?

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey