Upgrading from 6990 Crossfire.... Yes, Seriously

Hiijinx

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Mar 26, 2012
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Long story short I bought the 2 beasts after reading Toms review on it for BF3 - little did I know though that they are indeed a dual chip card - I thought they just had extra ram ... I am having issues with some games which are not crossfire friendly at all and even disabled, am having to sacrifice quality for performance.

So I am looking to upgrade to 1 or 2 SINGLE chip cards which will yield higher performance than the 2 6990s - not an easy task I know so thought I'd ask you guys, the pros. :)

Current System:

i5 2500k 3.3 Stock
Asrock Z68 Extreme7 gen3
8GB Corsair 8GB DDR3 1866MHz
MSI 6990 X2
1200W PSU
Win 7 64
Biiiiiiiiiig Case - size not an issue!

Resolution 1900x1200 Dual Monitors

Over the years I have usually alternated between Nvidia/ATI without really having a favorite but recently, not sure if its just the grass looking greener on the other side, but seem to find Nvidia offering more support with drivers and game compatibility.

Budget wise I want high spec but without paying £900 for a single card!
500-600 for 1 or 2 cards which will give me and my system a good time within the next month or so.

Games I play often are BF3, Skyrim, Secret World and soon to be GW2.
BF3 I average 50-60 fps on ultra with no MSAA/motion blur but get sudden spikes.

I am in the UK and usually buy from Overclockers/Novatech .... any better sites?

So in short - I am looking for:

- £600 Budget for 1/2 SINGLE chip cards
- Nothing Silent!
- Leaning towards Nvidia unless convinced otherwise
- Good quality Brand
- Not really into overclocking cards - but would like the option.
- Within the next month


Thanks in advance,

Hiijinx
 

jstanley11

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Jul 23, 2012
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Maybe 2 GTX 670's? I can't really think of much else that could come close to 6990's. BTW, with two 6990's your non OC's CPU is prolly bottlenecking your cards XD
 

Hiijinx

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Thanks for the input all - am gonna try OC'ing my CPU again, put it back to stock after some BSOD's.

I am fairly new to leaning about how to spot a bottleneck but know in BF3 the handy in-game performance graph shows that my CPU slightly hinders my 6990 (will see what the OC does) - could a single, on paper "worse" card, potentially increase my performance or don't bottlenecks work like that?

Same with Secret World, I cannot run smoothly in directx11 mode at all, yet my friend who has a 550 can max it out with no problems.

I also read somewhere that a higher resolution will ease the strain from the CPU and put it on the video card - could this be another possibility of why my 2 6990's seem to under perform whilst held at 1900 x 1200?

 

srftwhm

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Really shouldnt be having a lot of trouble running bf3 or secret world at those resolutions. I would try an OC of 3.9-4.2ghz it is pretty simple with the 2500k.
 

Tac134

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Honestly a 2500k @ stock clock isn't going to be your bottleneck. There is no way any game is using 100% of all 4 cores. When I play bf3, one of my cores is usually at 90%ish and my other ones are being used a little.
 
Out of your price range, but if you have any credit left on the card the GTX 690 is marked down from 950 pounds to 780 pounds this week. That seems like an outta sight deal. Stick with your gut on the 6990's, those Crossfire driver issues are well documented.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-277-AS&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=

If not that, then you can take your pick of GTX 670's in SLI from KFA2, Palit, and Gainward for just about 600 pounds a pair. That will get you into 6990 Crossfire territory.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/productlist.php?groupid=701&catid=1914&subid=2294&sortby=priceAsc
 

maxh22

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It doesn't matter if it doesn't use all of the available resources, after all it has to feed 4 gpus and at 3.3ghz its a major bottleneck!


If it were clocked up to 4.5 ghz+ there would be a significant performance increase to the minimum fps :D
 

mohit9206

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LOL. why did you buy 2 6990s? maybe you took toms review way too seriously. just sell them off and buy a single 680 and overclock the hell outta it . that the best option for you at this point.
 

Hiijinx

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Thanks for all the very constructive replies all :)




I guess I did - I was upgrading specifically for BF3 as my 4850x2 (another dual chip, silly me) was giving me 20fps on low! When I saw the 6990 review he mentioned that 2 of them in crossfire ate the game up - perhaps believing it a bit too much.
Although I have to admit - the fps difference between single player and online is massive - sometimes capping 200 in the campaign (as mentioned in the review) - never comes close to that in the important games.
 

Hiijinx

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Thats a brilliant site bud, thank you! Am I right in seeing that a 670 is near as good performance as a 6990 in BF3 yet a 680 is a lot worse - how is this possible?! Shame they do not review 670 in SLI - anyone here have it?
 

beethree

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I would say two GTX 670's or GTX 680's, hands down for your games.

Battlefield 3, when 680 came out, was about even with a 6990.
Skyrim, when 680 came out, BEAT a 6990.

I don't know about Secret World, but I have heard that GW2 favors nVidia.

So in summary, I would say get two 670's or 680's depending on your price. Your games favor nVidia, so go with them. The performance of two single cards, vs two dual cards, I could imagine would be much smoother. I play BF3 o two 7970's and they run smooth.
 

supersonic977

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RussK1

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Man I didn't know the 6990 was such a horrible card considering everyone here has owned one and played many hours of BF3 with it (them) to come up with the conclusion.

Recording murders the scaling on quad yet the FPS and "smoothness" are fine for me considering it's on a 64 player server.

[flash=853,480]http://www.youtube.com/v/HPP0JpRgYs0?version=3&hl=en_US[/flash]
 

Hiijinx

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Mar 26, 2012
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Thanks all for the help.
Very aware that my games are all Nvidia endorsed, kinda told me that I had the wrong card for the job.

So I have decided on NVIDIA!

Next step ....

670 SLI or 680 SLI - is there much, if any physical difference which cannot be gained through an overclock?

Plus any brands to go/avoid - being mainly ATI over the years I tended to go for Saphire or MSI - my last Nvidia was an 8800GTX EVGA and had a lot of issues with it.

 

I would say no difference that can't be solved through overclocking. I do recommend you keep your eye on that GTX 690 if you are willing to go as high as GTX 680's in SLI, that sale on the GTX 690 is really good.

If I were buying a pair of cards for SLI right now I would go for either the MSI GTX 670 Power Edition/OC or the Asus DirectCU II TOP. Both are factory overclocked, very quiet, and importantly keep the GPU cool, which is important for maxing out your Turbo Boost clocks. Most 670's are coming with a free copy of Borderlands 2 to help with the value.
 

EchoOne

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Get 2 670's or7970's OR 2 7950's and make sure they are say FLEX editions or Msi cards...they are beast...Especially in 1920x1200
 

Hiijinx

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@Matto - only reason (besides price) I didn't really look at the 690 is because isn't that a dual chip card? I don't want to shoot myself in the foot yet again and find it doesn't scale well with no way to disable it hehe. Atleast with 2 single cards if a game doesn't like SLI/CF, I can atleast turn it off.
 

Good reasoning, but I think you're a little snakebit from the 6990 crossfire quad-GPU. I just thought you should keep it in mind as you research prices, you should find that 690 deal to be quite a bit cheaper than a pair of 680's. Two Nvidia GPU's will be much more stable than that quad-GPU 6990 setup.
 

nacos

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GW2 most definitely does not favor nvidia. In fact it favors AMD. The Guild Wars 2 performance article is on the front page of Toms right now.
 

RussK1

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the 6990 is one of the worst offenders for multi-GPU problems.

Really? Please enlighten me about the problems that I'm experiencing that I'm unaware of. Or perhaps you've confused with the 5970/GTX 590?

My computer is on about 16 hours a day 365 days a year and I've yet to "see" what you're talking about.