Radeon 6850 Crossfire comparison

[stat30fbliss]

Hey guys,

I asked a question last night about upgrading my Graphics Card to get better performance in Planetside 2 mainly, but also boost my system in General.

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/394236-15-upgrade-planetside

I feel pretty confident in going with a Gigabyte Nvidia 670, however I got thinking. I currently have a Gigabyte 6850 in my system which runs most larger scale games like BF3 and Planetside 2 on High settings, and more dated games like WoW, TF2, or CS:GO on Ultra/Max settings. My Mobo is Crossfire ready, so I could in theory pick up another 6850 to try and squeeze as much performance as possible out my current setup for the cheapest price.

My question is, what does a Crossfire 6850 equate to in current gen cards? All of the 6850 Crossfire Benchmarks I found on Google were dated to the Gen they were released, and nothing compared them against the current 7000 Radeon's or 600 Nvidia's cards, or current games, like BF3. Does a 6850 in CFX equate to a current gen 7850, 650?

I've heard most people report that 6850's in CF will give about a 50% boost to performance, which does seem a bit incremental. Also seen posts here on TH where people advise against doubling up on mid-range cards. I am prepared to drop $380 on a Gigabyte 670 on Amazon. However if I went with the second 6850, I could pick that up for $120-ish, and have enough left over in my budget to upgrade my CPU to an i5 3570k and upgrade my Power Supply.

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated.

Just in case, here's my current build:

ASRock z75 pro3
i5 2320 3.0Ghz
(2) 4GB Corsair Vengeance
Gigabyte 6850
120GB OCZ Vertex 4
(2) 500GB WD Black HDD Raid

 

[iam2thecrowe]

i had crossfire 6850's a couple months ago, i sold them for a single gtx660. In benchmarks the 6850's come out on top. In real world playability the single gtx660 offers a much smoother, stutter free experience. I would never use crossfire again, it worked well in about 50% of the games i played, and even then tweaking was involved to get it to work well. Any game that maxes out 1gb vram will also benefit from the 2gb on the newer cards, like skyrim, bf3 etc.

 

[stat30fbliss]

Since no one else is really offering an opinion on this thread, I will gladly take your word for it and jump on the GTX 670 for now. I'll be excited to experience this stutter free gameplay everyone seems to mention, as well as PhysX.

Thanks for the response!

 

[iam2thecrowe]

just be careful with MSI cards, a recent article has shown that they may have a design fault, although i dont know which cards exactly, where they are putting more than double the recommended voltage through some components on the board http://www.tomshardware.com/news/MSI-GTX-660-670-overvolting-PowerEdition,18013.html

 

[bobusboy]

I had two Asus 6850 in crossfire, and I never experienced micro stuttering. Some games had tearing even with V sync though. I loved my xfire 6850s and I would definately reccomend them to anyone who asked. That said they are an older card and if I was going to buy now a days I'd look at the 7870xfire/single7950 or 670/680 or SLI 660.

 

[iam2thecrowe]

I had two Asus 6850 in crossfire, and I never experienced micro stuttering. Some games had tearing even with V sync though. I loved my xfire 6850s and I would definately reccomend them to anyone who asked. That said they are an older card and if I was going to buy now a days I'd look at the 7870xfire/single7950 or 670/680 or SLI 660.

it took me a while before i noticed the mirostuttering, but when you see it it ruins games. and going to a single gtx660 i didnt realise how smooth games could be, i would never go back to crossfire.

 

[stat30fbliss]

I am just now finding out that the Gigabyte Model 670 I want has a suggested 550w power supply. So I am assuming that my 500w Cooler Master eXtreme wont have the juice? Or would I be able to squeeze it out for a couple weeks?

http://www.amazon.com/GIGABYTE-GV-N670OC-2GD-GeForce-Windforce-Graphics/dp/B0080I06WQ/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=2KI2B6E0FCEVL&coliid=I2BL5KLP2TL26E

I am looking at this for my PSU upgrade

http://www.amazon.com/XFX-PRO850W-Edition-Certified-P1850SNLB9/dp/B0045L4BNW/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_nS_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=2KI2B6E0FCEVL&coliid=I12TY793NB1D5X

 

[the great randini]

i have never had microstuddering either, and you can see from my 3dmark score with my setup i beat alot of higher end cards.
if i was in the market now, I think it would be a tough choice, and that article the other day about the 3 660's out performing 2 680's was interesting when you factor in physx, i just like the idea of old hardware not going to waste when you upgrade...

 

[iam2thecrowe]

i have never had microstuddering either, and you can see from my 3dmark score with my setup i beat alot of higher end cards.
if i was in the market now, I think it would be a tough choice, and that article the other day about the 3 660's out performing 2 680's was interesting when you factor in physx, i just like the idea of old hardware not going to waste when you upgrade...

nvidia cards suffer a lot less from microstutter, probably why you havnt noticed it.