Thinking about upgrading my Crossfired 7850's, need some advice

[andycal]

The name of the thread says it all. I'm debating swapping out my crossfired Gigabyte 2GB OC'ed 7850's for a single 7970 or possibly a GTX 670 or 680. I noticed the 7850's handle BF3 extremely well, however Crysis 3 does not like my crossfire setup. Here are the cards I'm thinking of:

1) SAPPHIRE HD 7970 3GB - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202008
2) SAPPHIRE HD 7970 GHz Edition 3GB - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814202001
3) GIGABYTE GeForce GTX 680 2GB - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814125422
4) MSI N680GTX Twin Frozr GeForce GTX 680 2GB - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127672
5) MSI N670 GeForce GTX 670 2GB - www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127685
6) Galaxy GeForce GTX 670 GC 2GB - http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162109

Any and all advice will be greatly appreciated.

Currently I'm running a FX-6300 @ 4.5 GHZ
16GB (2x8GB) G. Skill Sniper @ 8-9-9-21-2T
Gigabyte 990FXA UD5 Board
675W Thermaltake PSU

 

[Norlag]

The best card out of those is the sapphire vapor-x 3 gb version.It stays cool, overclocks well, and performs extremely well.

 

[andycal]

Any other suggestions. are the the 670's or the 680's worth switching from radeon?

 

[Norlag]

No, the 7970 outperforms both the 670 and the 680, is generally cheaper, and overclocks better.

 

[unksol]

^Agreed. UNLESS you want physx. Its not worth it to me and if you are already on AMD i doubt it is to you.

Sapphire is an AMD board partner, makes great products, great cooling, and i had an excellent warranty experience with them for something that was my (cats) fault. So they are also my perferred choice.

The thing is, your current setup is faster than a 7970. Are you having issues with crossfire in crysis 3? If so that will get patched and i would wait. Going to a single card might help if you have stutter but AMD took care of most of that with recent drivers.

No matter what you do though if you go to a single card its going to be a downgrade for total performace, and i wouldn't do it just for crysis 3. They make it to break things. sometimes intentionally having background stuff rendered that you can't see like in crysis 2. and even a 7970 can't max it at 60FPS.

I'd much rather turn down settings or wait for a crossfire fix than blow money on a new card.... And crysis 3 is high profile for AMD since they give it away free. I'd expect them to jump on a crossfire issue ASAP.

 

[SvRommelvS]

Judging by your desire to upgrade what is effectively a still-current machine, have you considered a Geforce Titan? While expensive and hard to come by at date of post, it will handle the games mentioned well and not feature any problems which you may be experiencing due to the dual-card setup rather than the pure "Oomth" available.

 

[unksol]

Judging by your desire to upgrade what is effectively a still-current machine, have you considered a Geforce Titan? While expensive and hard to come by at date of post, it will handle the games mentioned well and not feature any problems which you may be experiencing due to the dual-card setup rather than the pure "Oomth" available.

Before recommending Titan to anyone, which is MASSIVELY overpriced for its performance. And recommending it to somone looking for a $400 card. You need to at least look at benchmarks. Especially when the issue is Crysis 3. The whole "single card is better" argument flies right out the window when titans frame variance is WORSE than AMD crossfire setups, and only marginally better than the bad performance of nvidia SLI setups

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crysis-3-performance-benchmark-gaming,3451-6.html

 

[andycal]

^Agreed. UNLESS you want physx. Its not worth it to me and if you are already on AMD i doubt it is to you.

Sapphire is an AMD board partner, makes great products, great cooling, and i had an excellent warranty experience with them for something that was my (cats) fault. So they are also my perferred choice.

The thing is, your current setup is faster than a 7970. Are you having issues with crossfire in crysis 3? If so that will get patched and i would wait. Going to a single card might help if you have stutter but AMD took care of most of that with recent drivers.

No matter what you do though if you go to a single card its going to be a downgrade for total performace, and i wouldn't do it just for crysis 3. They make it to break things. sometimes intentionally having background stuff rendered that you can't see like in crysis 2. and even a 7970 can't max it at 60FPS.

I'd much rather turn down settings or wait for a crossfire fix than blow money on a new card.... And crysis 3 is high profile for AMD since they give it away free. I'd expect them to jump on a crossfire issue ASAP.

Thanks for the info unksol. You just save a noob some money. Using Catalyst I tuned the Core Clock back to 1015Mhz and the Memory Clock to 1250Mhz. Crysis 3 seems to be running smoother right now.

 

[andycal]

Best answer selected by andycal.