Some CrossfireX Questions

[Bones2525]

Hey, thinking about building a new system. I was wondering if it would be better to have two 6990s in Crossfire, or three 6950s. The 6950s only have 2 GBs of GDDR5 memory, as opposed to the 6990s which have 4 GBs individually. Would it be better to split the workload onto three lesser cards, or the workload onto two stronger cards? Also, I read that Crysis 2 apparently has problems running with AMD cards, is this true? Cheers.

 

[Maziar]

Hello and welcome to the forums
First of all,I recommend neither 2 6990s or 3 6950s because quad/triple CFX(or SLI) don't scale well (due to drivers and game supports).
2 6950's are great though and scale quite good.
And yes,Crysis 2 benefits more from SLI;however,you still will get good results with CFX

 

[Bones2525]

I have two 6950s, but thanks for the info on the scaling. Crysis 2 gets only 5 - 15 fps with my two 6950s, on Ultra settings. Is this just CFX, or something in my setup? Thanks.

 

[Maziar]

wow,that's quite low.
What are your other system specs and what resolution do you play on ?
Also,how much FPS do you get with 1 6950 ?

 

[dhicks19]

yes there is something wrong here lol, i got xfired 6950s and it blasts crysis 2 even with the new texture and dx11 patch, whats your spec

 

[Bones2525]

I play on 1920X1080. It plays good until some pretty heavy explosions or effects, I have it set on Extreme with the DX11 Tessellation pack. My specs are:
Some Intel X58 motherboard, to lazy to go find the sheet for it.
Intel Core i7 975 6 Cores, 3.23 GHz, 12 MB Cache
6GB of DDR3 1333 MHz RAM
You guys know about the two AMD Radeon HD 6950s
1200W PSU
Seagate Barracuda 1TB 7,200 RPM HDD

It runs everything else maxed out. Crysis Warhead gets at least 50+ FPS. Also, kind of funny. I refuse to put anything but Intel in, but I have a grudge against Nvidia products. Those two always seem to go together.

 

[Maziar]

How much FPS do you get with 1 card ?

 

[dhicks19]

yeah try each card separate and see if there is an fps difference between the two, take it the game is updated to latest then and you have latest ati drivers?

 

[Bones2525]

Alright, I'll give it a try. Take the whole card out, right?

 

[dhicks19]

Yep

 

[jjb8675309]

OP


Crossfire sucks, I speak from personal experience... is the microstutter apparent to you with 6950s? I know it is supposed to be better then the 6870s in crossfire but Im just curious

 

[dhicks19]

its apparent in some games, for me its metro 2033

 

[Bones2525]

It also blasts Metro 2033, and I have never really noticed major microstutters. I'm also looking at these http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814130665 They are Nvidia, which I haven't used in a long time. They look really nice, good speeds, nice size memory, water cooled, and 2 GPU's in one card. Crysis 2 is still about the same fps with one card.

 

[Bones2525]

Bump.