2 HD 7850's in xfire, or 1 7950/70 for eyefinity

7970 is overpriced complete piece of garbage. I regret I bought 7970 myself. I would get 1 or preferably 2 680 GTX for triple monitor setup.

A pair of 7850s would be the fastest option for sure, but if you want single card go with the 680.

Well I'm an amd ati fan, so GTX is not an option for me. So 7850's in xfire, dropping down from 3g of VRAM to 2g wouldn't hurt to much than?

No, 2gb is perfect. Only way you'll exceed it is if you play Skyrim with every single HD texture mod lol.

Agreed with this guy. 2GB is going to be sufficient for BF3. You won't even use half of that until you start turning up AA. You might hit the upper limit, but you won't really be able to notice the difference at the level it will probably run with the 7800 series.

I think I'm going to go with two 7870s when the price drops a tad for the exact same purposes. 7850s would be cheaper, and if I was confident they would run the game well enough for me I would go for that now over the extra $200 it will cost for 7870s.

Does anyone know if they will unlock in the future?

I'm not too sure if they will be able to "unlock". However - those cards run so cool - you could probably easily overclock them a good amount in the future - if your CF setup starts to feel "slow'.

Edit: Just realized you meant the 7850's. They might not give the OC potential of the 7870 - as the 7870 requires 2x6 pin wheres the 7850 only needs 1 pin. I'm guessing they will not be able to unlock from 7850->7870. The 7870 has a power requirement of 225w total vs the 150w of the 7850 total.



Are you just trolling? I'm asking a serious question. The guy said he had a 1GB video card. He upgrade to a 1.5GB video card. He doesn't even mention what setup he has or what video card he went from - and went to. 2GB should be fine for GPU's at the moment. It might change though once next gen. games come out in the next year or so.

I was hoping to hear that the same stream processors are included in the 7850 as the 7870 like it was with the 7950/7970. Then that becomes and extremely valuable card. Overclocking will help stock performance, but not as much as literally turning the 7850 into a 7870 and THEN overclocking.

And, yes, they guy is trolling. He's been on several threads today posting youtube videos from other people as his answer to a question and often being racial. I wish he would stick to Youtube with the other children.

http://hardocp.com/article/2012/03/22/nvidia_kepler_gpu...


http://www.overclock.net/t/1151904/bf3-actual-vram-usag...

Nobody uses more than 2gb actual. The people reporting high numbers like the first guy at 2.5gb don't seem to realize that it's reporting the total number... split between two cards. For example my 5850s report up to 1900+ mb used, but obviously my cards are only 1gb each... if I use 1 card it limits to around 1000mb.

On top of that, if you do exceed your VRAM, your system can share RAM and at worst you get a slight pause as there is a big RAM swap. I do experience this if I crank up the settings and see my VRAM is maxed even with a 70+ avg fps. However for me it is very acceptable as it only happens when there is major texture swaps like if I spawn on the other end of the map in BF3, it might pause when it loads up the new stuff (while in the menu waiting for Respawn to be activated).

I gotcha. However they are still brand new - maybe there will be a "mod" to up a 7850 to say a 7870 "lite" or something. I wouldn't be surprised if they start popping up in the next month or so.



As I thought. Noticed a few of his messages - and they seem to be lacking.

As a rule of tumb money wise 1card of X price will perform bether then 2 card going at half price (a 500$ will beat 2x 250$ in cf/sli). But if you spend 600$ on 2 card it will beat a single 500$ card (tomshardware ran test on this subject)

Now yes many of us fear that 2gb won't be able to run tripple monitor BF3 on Ultra. For anyone going single monitor 2gb is enough but personaly I'll probably go with crossfire hd7970 onec ivybridge will be released because I,m not sure the pitty 2gb on 680gtx will be enough for a 5760x 1080p resolution.

I won,t risk my money on two 680gtx before I can see proof of this running Bf3 at ultra 4aa on a 60pl game since cf hd7970 proved it could handle it.

Scroll up 2 posts, there's some info on that for you.

Also, as a rule of thumb, two cheaper cards will always have a better price/performance than a single expensive card... Nobody buys a $600 6990 when a pair of $250 6950s are actually faster.

well kinda false info.

the 6990 is actualy two 6950 tuned down. Tomshardware ran test and sli/cf do not beat a single card at the same price (also you must spend 30$ or so for the cable to link them) and sometimes it can be a pita to make sli/cf work and game driver can be a nightmare. Well that is for single monitor need for tripple monitor sli/cf can be easyer becaus its not all GPU that can run 3 monitor on its own.

So, $240 for a pair of 550 Ti beat a $210 560 Ti

$240 CF 6790s beat $360 6970

$350 SLI 560s beat $360 580 (and that's after massive price drops), as does a $270 pair of 6850s

etc... a pair of cards is usually better bang for your buck. Not always but usually.

Crossfire/SLI:
There's a great article that discusses micro-stutter with a Crossfire/SLI setup. I've used several systems as a builder and looked for this. It exists and it's ANNOYING!!

I'm upgrading from the HD5870 to the GTX680. The new GTX680 is a truly awesome card.

Here's some highlights (see the NVidia site for more):
1) 50% to 100% faster than an HD5870 (depending on game.)
2) newer architecture for better future compatibility (versus buying older cards)
3) PHYSX v3 hardware (new for GTX680)
4) new Anti-Aliasing (will improve frame rates when used)
5) Adaptive VSYNC (it actually is a big deal)
6) GPU Boost (complicated to explain, but it is a good idea)
7) 3+1 monitor support (can run THREE GAMING MONITORS plus a fourth non-gaming monitor, though you'd likely want 2xGTX680 for gaming on three monitors)

**Going forward the GTX680 is going to pull ahead of older cards in the benchmarks. You might get a 20% boost by using the new, more efficient AA alone.

Private message from Haliburton:



I wasn't spreading errorneous information. If you post ridiculous information - people are going to call you out, like I just did.

Stop jumping into posts and telling everyone to look at some youtube junk.

Thanks for clearing that up. I was worried I was living my life the wrong way for a second.