Looking for the right cards

[ncclp4f]

Hi thinks for looking

I have a msi 970a-g45 motherboard with crossfirex pci 2.0, amd phemon 2 quad core black, 8g ram I need to go cheep as I can on the video cards but I want to run the the newest high end games on max everything what cards should I get ????

I would like to play on 1680x1050 or higher and run the games like battlefield 3 cod black ops 2 crysis 3 and newer games for the next 6 mos. on uitra and I hope for 200.00 for both thats 100.00 each yea thats why im asking for help.

Im running a msi radeon hd2600xt 256m core clock is 850 it ran star craft 2 on ultra for about 25 hrs now will only run it on high at lower res.

does running crossfire dbl the cards , you know the speeds and all that ?

please; only respond if you know what your talking about

 

[festerovic]

Crossfire occasionally scales pretty well. I have 2 x 6850s and I think they are about as powerful as a 6950- 6970. ON SOME GAMES. On others, its like I only have 1 card in...like Diablo 3.

It is better to get one solid card as opposed to 2 unless you can get 2 cards for less than the equivalent single card. If I was to buy a video card right now, I personally would get the 7850. To me, its diminishing returns on cards more powerful(and expensive) than that. Also 1680x1050 is not as demanding a resolution for modern cards (no offense to your 2600xt!!)

 

[moornix]

It mostly depends on if you're PSU can handle it.

Your best bet is a single GTX 480 with that budget.

http://www.techspot.com/review/458-battlefield-3-performance/page3.html

 

[bigcyco1]

+1 Agree with moornix if you have a PSU that can handle it. $210=GTX480

 

[ncclp4f]

Crossfire occasionally scales pretty well. I have 2 x 6850s and I think they are about as powerful as a 6950- 6970. ON SOME GAMES. On others, its like I only have 1 card in...like Diablo 3.

It is better to get one solid card as opposed to 2 unless you can get 2 cards for less than the equivalent single card. If I was to buy a video card right now, I personally would get the 7850. To me, its diminishing returns on cards more powerful(and expensive) than that. Also 1680x1050 is not as demanding a resolution for modern cards (no offense to your 2600xt!!)

Thank you for your time

 

[ncclp4f]

+1 Agree with moornix if you have a PSU that can handle it. $210=GTX480

it seems most people on this site are telling me to get gforce for crossfire, gforce is for sli and radeon is for crossfire thats what the manufactories say

 

[ncclp4f]

It mostly depends on if you're PSU can handle it.

Your best bet is a single GTX 480 with that budget.

http://www.techspot.com/review/458-battlefield-3-performance/page3.html

it seems most people on this site are telling me to get gforce for crossfire, gforce is for sli and radeon is for crossfire thats what the manufactories say but thank you

 

[ncclp4f]

Crossfire occasionally scales pretty well. I have 2 x 6850s and I think they are about as powerful as a 6950- 6970. ON SOME GAMES. On others, its like I only have 1 card in...like Diablo 3.

It is better to get one solid card as opposed to 2 unless you can get 2 cards for less than the equivalent single card. If I was to buy a video card right now, I personally would get the 7850. To me, its diminishing returns on cards more powerful(and expensive) than that. Also 1680x1050 is not as demanding a resolution for modern cards (no offense to your 2600xt!!)

thats a pci 3.0 card

 

[festerovic]

pcie 3.0 is backwards compatible, and shouldn't have any effect on the performance. Haven't seen the numbers on saturation of the bus yet, but the 6xxx series was fine at 8x on pcie 2.0.

 

[ncclp4f]

pcie 3.0 is backwards compatible, and shouldn't have any effect on the performance. Haven't seen the numbers on saturation of the bus yet, but the 6xxx series was fine at 8x on pcie 2.0.

Im not new to all this but I am new to the pci 2.0 and the pci 3.0 I thought I I could only use 2.0 with 2.0 and so on , so your saying I can use any pci 3.0 on a pci 2.0 slot the motherboard is a msi 970a-g45 and Im just lost on this part of it all so you will have to be simple

 

[festerovic]

I will make this noobish analogy - sorry if its a little off.

PCIe is your highway. The version number, 1.0, 2.0, 2.1, 3.0, they are like different speed limits. Your car (your graphics card) can only go a certain speed since it's based on which card you get - a better one is faster (duh). If it is on a highway with a low speed limit, it will get slowed down to the speed limit. If you are on a fast highway (3.0 = autobahn?) then you can go as fast as your card can go.

If you have a real fast card on the old PCIe 1.0 bus, you will get slowed down because the bus cant transport all the data it needs to. A slow, old card from PCIe 1.0 days is not going to get faster on later PCIe revisions. PCIe 2.0 is 2x faster than PCIe 1.0. Not sure how fast 3.0 is, wiki that if you want.

 

[moornix]

it seems most people on this site are telling me to get gforce for crossfire, gforce is for sli and radeon is for crossfire thats what the manufactories say but thank you

Not suggesting for you to SLI at GTX 480, though you can if you can afford it, and if your PSU can handle it. For $200 a single 480 will run BF3 on ultra.

If you insist on having two cards, then the best you can get within budget is either two radeon 6770s or 7750s. Both are mid-end cards and the crossfire setup won't perform as well as a single 480.

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