6970 xfire. Time for an upgrade?

[jon_the_faun]

These are my system specs:

Asus Crosshair IV
2 Sapphire 6970s
Phenom II x6 1100t (turbo boosted to 3.8 Ghz) with ZULMAN aftermarket cooler
8 GB of RAM
Ultra 1050 Watt PSU
Samsung 1 TB
HAF 932

My resolution is 1680x1050.

Running Witcher 2 on Ultra with Ubersampling and Vsync turned off, I get 30-40 frames in cities, 50 fps average outside of cities. When I downgrade to medium settings...I still get similar results. Very confusing.

Deus X: Human Revolution...I get an average of 70 fps (which is great!), but dips to 40 and even 30 at the most random spots - like an office.

All I want is to be able to run these games at a steady 60 fps, because I have OCD and I'm a perfectionist. Any stutter removes my suspension of disbelief. I don't have vysnc forced on, and I've got all my settings on the PERFORMANCE side (AA, etc...) in the CCC. Crossfire is working because both GPUs warm up to 70 C after some time of playing these games.

I understand I could be looking at bottleneck...but how much does that really affect my fps? I've been told that my CPU is not very good for gaming. But in order to change to the i7-2000k, I need a new mobo as well. What should I do to reach my goal of steady 60 fps on these games and games to come?

Should I eventually...

Upgrade my GPUs?
1. 2 6990s
2. 2 590s

Upgrade my CPU?
1. i7-2000k (read on Toms Hardware is the best CPU for gaming)
2. FX (Bulldozer), which I've read hasn't really met expectations.


My frustration is with these 6970s is that I read on forums and reviews that people are getting outragouesly perfect fps on the games mentioned above. Why am I not seeing the same numbers?

I've reinstalled drivers. Switched the cards around. Done a lot. Downloaded the hotfix for the Witcher 2 - bought the Witcher 2 2.0. And still...50-30 fps. Even if I downgrade the graphics for performance...I still get the same damn performance.

I hope to get some answers. Many thanks.

 

[bwilliams83]

With that board you have, go into bios and check your PCIe spread spectrum. Make sure it is on Auto or Enabled. I have two 6950's and my score on furmark was only 3560 with a average of 60 fps. I done everything that you done and could no figure it out. I have a Asus Sabertooth board and sure enough went into my bios and the spread spectrum was disabled. It was killing the power to my cards. Once I enabled it everything was fine now my scores with furmark are 18,120 with a average of 267 fps. I have the exact same CPU you do, but mine is OC'd to 4.1 ghz. Your cpu will not bottleneck those cards. Two 6990 or 590 would be overkill plus your 850w psu would not support those two cards. Who wants to spend 1400 bucks on a two gpu's. My father inlaw has just about the exact same setup as you do and he gets 160 fps average in BC2 with his crossfired 6970's.