GTX 680 Superclocked or two Radeon HD 7850?

[Litirin]

GeForce GTX 680 Superclocked 2048GB GDDR5

vs

2x XFX Double D FX-785A-CDFC Radeon HD 7850 2GB 256-bit GDDR5, Crossfire


Does anyone know what performs better? I can't find exact benchmark for these. The 680 is the superclocked version and the 7850 are crossfired. I'm trying to decide what to get, since both are similarly priced. Thanks!

 

[dish_moose]

I have to say single card will have fewer headaches. Will run cooler, use less power, have better driver support.
-Bruce

 

[Rustyy117]

Well I think we would have to make an educated guess based on what info we have so,

A HD7850 is roughly equal to a HD6970
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/509?vs=549

So we could say a HD6990 roughly equals a GTX680
http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/509?vs=549

They both seem to win and loose some, so from a performance stand point I would say HD7850 CF and a GTX680 are fairly equal depending on what games you play.

So to save yourself from possible Crossfire driver issues and a PCI-E lane I'd opt for a GTX680.

Obviously my educated guess won't be 100% accurate but hopefully it gives you a rough idea of how the two solutions compare.

 

[auntarie]

I have to say single card will have fewer headaches. Will run cooler, use less power, have better driver support.
-Bruce

+100. Always go single-card if you can.

 

[17seconds]

This is an easy one, if you put any stock into these articles by HardOCP:
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/01/17/amd_crossfirex_drivers_opportunity_lost/
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/04/25/geforce_gtx_680_3way_sli_radeon_7970_trifire_review/9
http://www.hardocp.com/article/2012/03/28/nvidia_kepler_geforce_gtx_680_sli_video_card_review/9

 

[inzone]

There's a couple options to consider , one is the games you will be playing since AMD does better in certian games and Nvidia does btter in certian other games. If your going with BF3 and Call of Duty games then I would go with Nvidia , and AMD has thier games which thier drivers are optimized for.
Next if you are going to be adding a second 680 at some point down the road and that would give you an absolute beast of a gaming machine but it also means you would be going with the single 680 now.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-680-3way-sli-review/14

If you look at this benchmark you can see that the 680 is pulling 57 fps and a pair of 7950's is pulling 75 fps and a single 7950 is getting 40 fps so it's not quite double when putting two cards together. Now they didn't do two 7850's but the single card got 32 fps so a guess is that since you don't get double the fps with two cards then two of the 7850's would be somewhere around 60 fps.
My guess is that since we can't find a benchmark that will show two 7850's vs a 680 I would say that the two cards will give you better performance than the single card and unless you intend on getting another 680 later on then the two 7850's would give you the better performance. Having said that since the difference is only a few fps it then becomes a tossup and you won't really notice 5 fps difference when gaming and it's not like one side is better by 20 or 30 fps which would then be a clear cut reason to go with the better setup. So with this choice of one 680 or two 7850's the decision is which one do you prefer over the other , flip a coin ?

 

[Litirin]

Thanks guys, I think I'm heavily leaning on one 680 now.

From what I read, I think I know that you have to pre-config a radeon card for crossfire if you had one and wanted to crossfire later.

For the 680, will I have to pre-config it for SLI to pair it with another later on? Not sure if I understand the dual gpu stuff.

What I do know is that I'll pair 7850s with crossfire from the start or I'll go with one 680, and maybe add one later in a year or so if I really need to. The hardocp articles also seem to imply that nvidia is having less problems with drivers.

 

[inzone]

Nvidia does have the better driver updates and as for the preconfigure for SLI I have never heard of that so it must be an AMD crossfire thing. I have three GTX 580's and they did not have to be configured , just put them in and connect the bridge.

 

[wapda11]

Here is the review of the HIS HD7850 ICEQ x Turbo X In Crossfire

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/4798/his_radeon_hd_7850_iceq_x_turbox_2gb_in_crossfire_video_card_review/index2.html

From looking at the Benchmarks of this review it is clear that two hd 7850's can easily outperform a single GTX 680 in most games. But remember these 7850's are highly overclocked edition From HIS.

If you are worried about power consumption and temperature .According to the reviewer the hd 7850's in crossfire were only drawing 488watts(total system power draw) and temperature were between 60-70 degress during gaming .

 

[Mousemonkey]

This topic has been closed by Mousemonkey