Gtx 680 vs two 7850's

[alvine]

hey guys so I have a $500 budget to upgrade my graphics
I'm looking at a single gtx 680 or two 7850's in crossfire to fit my bill
I can't seem to find benchmark comparing these two combinations

 

[inzone]

It is usually hard for a single card to give better performance than a two card setup. Especially when the two cards are new technology , even though the single card is new as well. While it may be possable for the two 7850's to give better performance than the 680 I think it's close enough to say that I would go with the single card because you will always have the option to add another 680 while to get the same performance increase you would have to add two more 7850's.

 

[Onus]

As powerful as the GTX680 is, the grief you're likely to save by using a single card will more than offset any possibly gain from using the pair of HD7850s.

 

[Rockdpm]

Yea and i don't believe 7850's do 3-4way Crossfire

 

[alvine]

i guess i will go with a single card because i dont want to deal with bad drivers at new game launches. thanks guys

 

[ricardois]

i would go with the 680 certainly even if it is hard to buy one right now, soon you will find one in stock, if you haven't already.

the crossfire will need too much energy, a very expensive motherboard and also by running in crossfire you may run into a lot of problem, games that will not work with both cards, so you will need to turn of sli and will be running only with 1 gpu, you need to check for driver updates and rollback drivers constantly to find the ones most suitable for you, Micro stuttering problems, if you can go with the 680, go with it, it is the best option for 500 bucks.

 

[Lord Captivus]

how many monitors are you planning to use?

 

[inzone]

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-680-review/21

If you use a benchmark like BF3 at Ultra settings and 1920x1080 resolution, here you can see that the 680 will produce 57 fps and the3 7850 will get 32 fps. Now if you add a second card to the 7850 and let's say the fps doubles to 64 fps , that's close enough to call it a wash because I don't think that the fps actually doubles. As you can see in this link the 680 in SLI adds only 44 fps to the 57 in single mode to come in at 101 fps.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-680-sli-review/15

Going with another benchmarking site the 680 is really putting some distance between itself and the 7850 so that would back up my pick to go with the single 680.

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/549?vs=555

 

[alvine]

how many monitors are you planning to use?

one 27 inch 1080p

 

[JackNaylorPE]

hey guys so I have a $500 budget to upgrade my graphics
I'm looking at a single gtx 680 or two 7850's in crossfire to fit my bill
I can't seem to find benchmark comparing these two combinations

Couple of considerations:

1. In past years, I'd always recommend the top single card with the "plan" to upgrade to a 2nd one later ..... it almost never happened.....by the time someone came back looking to upgrade, they wanted a complete new system.

2. These days I almost always use two mid range cards ..... most recent case histories in point:

One 580 or two 560 Tis ......considerations

a) The 560 design was extremely robust leading most vendors to release a beefed up PCB design with 7 or more phase VRM and larger coolers which were able to hit 30% OC's....the 580's could not do that much.

b) The 580 got 616 fps in Guru3D' game test suite.....two 560 Ti (900Mhz - 10 % factory OC) get 862 ....and then they could be overclocked another 20% (personally I stopped at a 25% overall OC).

c) The two 560's gave ya 40% more fps "outta the box".

d) Buying a 2nd 580 "someday down the line" gave ya just a measly 10% more fps than the two 560's..... I found it hard to pay $1,000 for two 580s versus $410 for two 900 Mhz 560's to get just q 10% improvement.....especially when the 560's had another 20% of OC headroom.

Moving on to today .... I'm still seeing driver issues with the 78xx and 79xx series in CF. Secondly, I would recommend waiting for the non-reference designs from vendors which will no doubt include beefed up VRM';s and more efficient coolers. I expect we will see these from both AMD and nVidia around mid June.

The 560 sold more than all the 68xx and 69xx series cards put together.....almost twice as much in fact. I think the 7850 could be a card of that similar impact on the market place...... much of course will depend on what nVidia's 660 looks like. But at this point in time, Im hesitant to jump on the 7850 bandwagon until the driver bugaboos get ironed out, we see the non-reference designs and of course we see what the green team puts up next to it.

 

[MANOFKRYPTONAK]

Couple of considerations:

1. In past years, I'd always recommend the top single card with the "plan" to upgrade to a 2nd one later ..... it almost never happened.....by the time someone came back looking to upgrade, they wanted a complete new system.

2. These days I almost always use two mid range cards ..... most recent case histories in point:

One 580 or two 560 Tis ......considerations

a) The 560 design was extremely robust leading most vendors to release a beefed up PCB design with 7 or more phase VRM and larger coolers which were able to hit 30% OC's....the 580's could not do that much.

b) The 580 got 616 fps in Guru3D' game test suite.....two 560 Ti (900Mhz - 10 % factory OC) get 862 ....and then they could be overclocked another 20% (personally I stopped at a 25% overall OC).

c) The two 560's gave ya 40% more fps "outta the box".

d) Buying a 2nd 580 "someday down the line" gave ya just a measly 10% more fps than the two 560's..... I found it hard to pay $1,000 for two 580s versus $410 for two 900 Mhz 560's to get just q 10% improvement.....especially when the 560's had another 20% of OC headroom.

Moving on to today .... I'm still seeing driver issues with the 78xx and 79xx series in CF. Secondly, I would recommend waiting for the non-reference designs from vendors which will no doubt include beefed up VRM';s and more efficient coolers. I expect we will see these from both AMD and nVidia around mid June.

The 560 sold more than all the 68xx and 69xx series cards put together.....almost twice as much in fact. I think the 7850 could be a card of that similar impact on the market place...... much of course will depend on what nVidia's 660 looks like. But at this point in time, Im hesitant to jump on the 7850 bandwagon until the driver bugaboos get ironed out, we see the non-reference designs and of course we see what the green team puts up next to it.

$410 for two 560s are going to need about a 700W PSU give or take, 680 550W. Then there is heat, heat kills computers. Laptops usually dont last as long as desktops because of heat issues. Less heat less power draw for an extra $90 to go to a 680 which has more power= Win!

 

[MANOFKRYPTONAK]

Oh yeah factor in the price difference of the 2 PSUs then the $90 price difference shrinks just a little more.

 

[ricardois]

$410 for two 560s are going to need about a 700W PSU give or take, 680 550W. Then there is heat, heat kills computers. Laptops usually dont last as long as desktops because of heat issues. Less heat less power draw for an extra $90 to go to a 680 which has more power= Win!

like i have said, 680 all the way, the new antialiasing techniches are the new revolution TXAA, the FXAA is already nice, they were using geometric antialiasing before with MSAA and CSAA etc, now this FXAA is on the frame itself, much faster, and have a close effect, there are a lot of extras on the 680 that worths the extra cash, not just the performance, it alone gets very close to the 590... so yes, it is indeed an awesome card, i strongly recommend it.