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480x2 SLI to single 7950: How much of a downgrade?

W

wbynum

Senior member
I picked up the $300 7950 from Newegg yesterday. Planning on replacing my 480x2 SLI setup with it. Less power and heat will be nice. Question is, how much of a downgrade will this be in terms of raw performance? If the 7950 is oc'ed to around 1100 mhz will I be in the same ball park as the stock clocked 480 SLI setup? My system is an i7 920 running at 3.8 ghz. Thanks.
 
7950 ~ GTX580: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/517?vs=550
GTX 480 SLI versus GTX 580: http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/310?vs=305

IFu29.png
 
I concur with Don here,670 is just better compared to 7950.Now considering downgrade it is hard to get recent numbers for 480sli but it should be ~40-45%.
 
Like I said, the 7950 was $304. Quick search of Newegg shows the cheapest 670 being $400. Hardly the same money.

Seems like y'all are quoting 7950 benchmarks at stock speed. Guru3d shows the 7950 overclock to 1150 mhz only a tad slower than the GTX 590. The 590 is basically equivalent to my 480 SLI setup, correct? Note that I can not overclock my 480 SLI setup because of power supply limitations. So it seems like a pretty even trade.

Are Guru3d's numbers incorrect or am I not understanding something? Thanks.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-7950-overclock-guide/12
 
wbynum said:
Like I said, the 7950 was $304. Quick search of Newegg shows the cheapest 670 being $400. Hardly the same money.

Seems like y'all are quoting 7950 benchmarks at stock speed. Guru3d shows the 7950 overclock to 1150 mhz only a tad slower than the GTX 590. The 590 is basically equivalent to my 480 SLI setup, correct? Note that I can not overclock my 480 SLI setup because of power supply limitations. So it seems like a pretty even trade.

Are Guru3d's numbers incorrect or am I not understanding something? Thanks.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-7950-overclock-guide/12
Click to expand...

I think it will be a good upgrade. Roughly the same performance, but with a single GPU and twice the video memory. $300 is also a steal for that card.
 
wbynum said:
Like I said, the 7950 was $304. Quick search of Newegg shows the cheapest 670 being $400. Hardly the same money.

Seems like y'all are quoting 7950 benchmarks at stock speed. Guru3d shows the 7950 overclock to 1150 mhz only a tad slower than the GTX 590. The 590 is basically equivalent to my 480 SLI setup, correct? Note that I can not overclock my 480 SLI setup because of power supply limitations. So it seems like a pretty even trade.

Are Guru3d's numbers incorrect or am I not understanding something? Thanks.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-7950-overclock-guide/12
Click to expand...

A 7950 at 7970 clocks is about 5% slower than a 7970. If you get a good overclocking 7950 you might be able to touch 670/680 reference speeds. Odds may be pretty good since it seems that the 7950s overclock pretty well. At worst you should be about 20% slower than your SLI setup.

Great price btw, you can easily achieve 7970 performance with a 7950.
 
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It's a downgrade and I don't get it. No matter how hard you try to justify your purchase it is just not worth it. And how did you get a 300$ 7950 on the egg???
 
Crap Daddy said:
It's a downgrade and I don't get it. No matter how hard you try to justify your purchase it is just not worth it. And how did you get a 300$ 7950 on the egg???
Click to expand...

I guess my thinking is how much of a downgrade is worth it for less heat, noise, and not having any SLI hassles. Also, it moves me up to a more current video card for possible crossfire in the future.

See following link for the $304 deal:

http://slickdeals.net/f/4752212-XFX...on-Nexuiz-PC-Game-Coupons-304-after-20-rebate
 
wbynum said:
I guess my thinking is how much of a downgrade is worth it for less heat, noise, and not having any SLI hassles. Also, it moves me up to a more current video card for possible crossfire in the future.

See following link for the $304 deal:

http://slickdeals.net/f/4752212-XFX...on-Nexuiz-PC-Game-Coupons-304-after-20-rebate
Click to expand...

Its a very large downgrade (between 35 - 45%), you should have just gotten a pair of 50$ coolers for them and keep em cooler and quieter for 1/3 the cost.
 
Also take into consideration:

GTX 480s cost $200 right now. 2 of those run you $400. They create a ton of heat and power.

With a single 7950 @ $304 that is 45% slower at stock. You can narrow that gap with a decent overclock to 20% while running cooler, quieter and much much less power. Win-win IMO.
 
Could have sold the two gtx480 cards and have went for a gtx670,but at $304,the 7950 isn't a bad deal either,but downgrading just sucks,how hot did the top card get anyways?

I had a reference 7970 and was not to fond of the noise and heat it put out and when i overclocked it,it turned into a clusterf*ck so the only gpu purchase i ever regret purchasing and i sold it pretty quickly right before the gtx670 came out.

The 7950 when overclocked if on a reference cooler may be like my 7970 experience and i think crossfiring those would be more hellish then your gtx480 cards and much more noisier.

Get into water cooling cause dumping gtx480 sli cards are such a waste just cause of heat unless you need more vram.
 
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Rvenger said:
Also take into consideration:

GTX 480s cost $200 right now. 2 of those run you $400. They create a ton of heat and power.

With a single 7950 @ $304 that is 45% slower at stock. You can narrow that gap with a decent overclock to 20% while running cooler, quieter and much much less power. Win-win IMO.
Click to expand...

Dont forget the GTX480's can overclock as well, for 1/3 the price they could have been kept evern cooler and quieter than a 7950 could have (aftermarket coolers)

The 7950 uses 200w, whikle the 480 uses 250. Not much savings in power per card.
 
Any way you cut it, this is a performance downgrade. My 5850 crossfire set was nearly as fast as my 670...your 480SLI would crush it. Forget about the 7950...no amount of OC'ing will bring that to the level of stock 480SLI.

If you don't care about performance and are doing it only for noise/heat/power, than that's fine. But don't fool yourself into thinking OC'ing will somehow bring a 7950 in line with 480SLI.
 
Smoblikat said:
Dont forget the GTX480's can overclock as well, for 1/3 the price they could have been kept evern cooler and quieter than a 7950 could have (aftermarket coolers)

The 7950 uses 200w, whikle the 480 uses 250. Not much savings in power per card.
Click to expand...

Don't forget how much power a 7950 can use when overclocked....the 7970 picked up heat and noise very quickly in my experience and 1200mhz core on that card was a disaster heat and noise wise,i had to downthrottle it to 1125 core just to shut it up.:|
 
skipsneeky2 said:
Could have sold the two gtx480 cards and have went for a gtx670,but at $304,the 7950 isn't a bad deal either,but downgrading just sucks,how hot did the top card get anyways?

I had a reference 7970 and was not to fond of the noise and heat it put out and when i overclocked it,it turned into a clusterf*ck so the only gpu purchase i ever regret purchasing and i sold it pretty quickly right before the gtx670 came out.

The 7950 when overclocked if on a reference cooler may be like my 7970 experience and i think crossfiring those would be more hellish then your gtx480 cards and much more noisier.

Get into water cooling cause dumping gtx480 sli cards are such a waste just cause of heat unless you need more vram.
Click to expand...

7950s use half a the power a 480 uses.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7950/25.html

He would be using 380-420W less power now.

The difference isnt very large if we look at the 590. Since you can probably OC it to a 1ghz, you won't be able to tell the difference. Also you won't have to deal with SLI issue. I hardly ever have any, but whatever.

The differ
 
Skurge said:
7950s use half a the power a 480 uses.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/HD_7950/25.html

He would be using 380-420W less power now.

The difference isnt very large if we look at the 590. Since you can probably OC it to a 1ghz, you won't be able to tell the difference. Also you won't have to deal with SLI issue. I hardly ever have any, but whatever.

The differ
Click to expand...

I can vouch and say with the current generation of nvidia cards,sli is pretty mature and haven't ran into any issues and this is my first sli build,that's if i don't count the gtx295 i purchased.

Since the gtx295 to now,there is a difference in sli maturity and can certainly eat any bad words i may have said about sli between the time i sold that card and today.

As for sli,it just isn't as easy to cool or keep quiet trust me to keep my top gtx670 card under 70,i have to ramp all the case fans on my df-85 to high,put the card fans to 80% and have the ac blasting at 65 degrees fah and yes i simulated this test so its 100% truth and sometimes depending on gpu load and usage...it can still hit 70 cel and beyond.
 
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