5970 vs ASUS 7970 Matrix Platinum

[Whitestar127]

Hi, I need some help on deciding if I should upgrade from the 5970 Crossfire to the ASUS Matrix Platinum.

The last review where I saw the 5970 included was in AnandTech's review of the GTX 690. But since then there has been several driver releases. Has anyone seen any recent benchmarks where the 5970 is included? And/or does anyone know if the driver releases has increased fps in favor of the 7970s/7970Ghzs/Matrix compared to the 5970?

I play a lot of Skyrim so the extra vram would finally allow me to use some heavy graphic mods. But is that alone worth it? Hmmmm, not sure.

I guess I will also get smoother gameplay given it's single-GPU.

Will the benefits be bigger in newer titles, like Far Cry 3 and Crysis 3, by going with the Matrix?

Help would be appreciated.

 

[Jacky60]

I haven't seen any review but I upgraded from 5970/5870 trifire to two 6990's. Big difference and improvement BUT a 6990 is a bit quicker most times than the 7970 so I don't think it will be much of an upgrade except in vram limited situations (of which I admit there must be quite a few). One 6990 was inferior in performance to my trifire setup and one 6990 is quicker than a 7970. In the UK the Matrix platinum is £500 which is £200 more than a standard 1 ghz can be found for. In my opinion that's insanely overpriced and I honestly think only a fool would pay that much extra for what is essentially the same card with a better cooler. Put another way you could buy two 7970's for £100 more or better still get 2 7950's and overclock them for the same £500 and have far better (pretty much double) the performance with the 3gb of memory per card. One 7970 vs 2x5970's is a downgrade/sidegrade except where that extra memory is essential.
Sell the 5970's to bit coin miners on ebay and get a real upgrade!

 

[Jacky60]

Actually to clarify the 6990 was about equal maybe marginally better than trifire setup but I needed two to really feel I'd upgraded and to make a noticeable improvement in games. I see you have only 1 5970 but my advice is unchanged, 7950 crossfire for the same money is what I would buy and recommend, one 7970 can't really deal with Crysis as well as I would expect.

 

[aaksheytalwar]

A 7970 is about as fast as a single 6990 and feels much smoother than a 6990. I would have a stock 7970 over a stock 6990. An oced 7970 leaves the 6990 in the dust in terms of real world game play performance and experience.

However in games of 2011 or older the 6990 will have a 20%+ lead over a stock 7970. But in modern games they are very close, and a highly oced 7970 is a bit better mostly. But since cf isn't as smooth as a single gpu so the 7970 actually feels like a whole new level in modern games when oced past 1150 1575.

Think of it as comparing a 5870 to 7950. Comparing 5970 to 7970. Huge difference.

 

[DiogoDX]

Is hard to find benchmarks of 5970 today. But a brazilian site did a awesome vga chart that includes Asus Matrix Platinum and 5970.

The test was lauch in 12/12/2012 and the drivers used were 12.8 beta 8 and 310.33.

http://adrenaline.uol.com.br/tecnol...012---a-batalha-das-placas-de-video.html?pg=1

 

[Durvelle27]

AMD HD 5970 vs AMD HD 7970 GHz

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/587?vs=618

 

[Whitestar127]

AMD HD 5970 vs AMD HD 7970 GHz

http://www.anandtech.com/bench/Product/587?vs=618

Thanks, but those are old drivers for the 5970 (I know because I'm now playing Skyrim in 1920x1080 with at least 85 fps. Admittedly that's at high/medium without AA) against much newer for the ghz. But for the Matrix I guess I can add another 5 fps or so on top of those fps for the ghz.

 

[Whitestar127]

Actually to clarify the 6990 was about equal maybe marginally better than trifire setup but I needed two to really feel I'd upgraded and to make a noticeable improvement in games. I see you have only 1 5970 but my advice is unchanged, 7950 crossfire for the same money is what I would buy and recommend, one 7970 can't really deal with Crysis as well as I would expect.

The Matrix is about £418 in Norway (incl. VAT), so it's not as bad as in the UK apparently.

7950 CF sounds nice, but I wonder if 7xxx CF is more ms-stuttering than 5xxx CF. I have in a way gotten used to the level of ms-stuttering in 5970, so I suppose it wouldn't be so bad if it's not worse in 7xxx.

 

[Whitestar127]

A 7970 is about as fast as a single 6990 and feels much smoother than a 6990. I would have a stock 7970 over a stock 6990. An oced 7970 leaves the 6990 in the dust in terms of real world game play performance and experience.

However in games of 2011 or older the 6990 will have a 20%+ lead over a stock 7970. But in modern games they are very close, and a highly oced 7970 is a bit better mostly. But since cf isn't as smooth as a single gpu so the 7970 actually feels like a whole new level in modern games when oced past 1150 1575.

Think of it as comparing a 5870 to 7950. Comparing 5970 to 7970. Huge difference.

So you think a Matrix would be a nice upgrade for me? Do you know anything of ms-stuttering levels on 7xxx platform compared to 5xxx CF?

You think I would feel a clear difference in smoothness with a single Matrix contra 7950 CF?

I would like to go single-GPU and stay single-GPU, but if the CF stuttering isn't worse on 7950 CF than 5970 then I guess it isn't so bad that I can't live with it. But it sure would be nice to try and see the smoothness of single-GPU again. Hmmmm, not easy this.

 

[Durvelle27]

remember the HD 79xx series did get a big performance boost from CCC 12.11 & then another from CCC 13.2


Edit: MS in the 79xx series isn't as bad as 5xxx or 6xxx

 

[aaksheytalwar]

From what I have read the ms in 7xxx is worse. Anyway just buy the cheapest 7970ghz and oc past 1150.

 

[BrightCandle]

From what I have read the ms in 7xxx is worse. Anyway just buy the cheapest 7970ghz and oc past 1150.

Agreed MS is dramatically worse. I came from a 5970 and went to a pair of 7970's because a single one was a side grade really, performance wise the 5970 is about even with a 7970 (at least it was at launch). What I didn't realise however was that the microstutter would get dramatically worse than the 5970, and even on a single card it was worse than the 5970.

I can't recommend this path if you already perceive ms on the 5970, the 7970 will be much worse, I have traveled the same route through cards a year ago and now own 680's.

 

[Whitestar127]

Agreed MS is dramatically worse. I came from a 5970 and went to a pair of 7970's because a single one was a side grade really, performance wise the 5970 is about even with a 7970 (at least it was at launch). What I didn't realise however was that the microstutter would get dramatically worse than the 5970, and even on a single card it was worse than the 5970.

I can't recommend this path if you already perceive ms on the 5970, the 7970 will be much worse, I have traveled the same route through cards a year ago and now own 680's.

But then you haven't had a Radeon with the latest drivers, which I can tell myself significantly reduce ms, at least on my 5970.

You even think a single 7970 is worse than the 5970? I would say the latest reports from techreport disagree strongly with you, perhaps with the exeption of Far Cry 3.

Edit: Wait a minute. You are playing on 3 screens aren't you? From what I've seen in reviews the ms gets much worse in those high resolutions. I play in 1080p.

 

[parvadomus]

7970 should be much more smoother, and faster.

 

[Jacky60]

I did initially experience MS with my trifire setup most of which disappeared when I bought 2 SSD's. I'd be wary of taking advice from some people here, granted my 6990's don't suffer perceptibly for me unless we're down at under 30fps but from the people who own 7series crossfire ( apart from one or two of dubious origin or extreme sensitivity) most don't complain about the 'appalling' crossfire driver issues and/or MS. Many Nvidians do complain about AMD issues but most haven't ever owned or used crossfire and are here for other reasons. Having said that the Prophet character in Crysis 3 does have some intermittent annoying graphical corruption for me so it's not all plain sailing. One 7970 may be OK for Skyrim as per linked charts but I'd get 2 7950's if I was buying today and if they didn't rule I'd sell/return them. That said I think xfire is borked with Skyrim for reasons best known to the developers.

 

[Termie]

The Anandtech benchmarks are what you should be looking at. The only thing that's different is the 7970 is about 10% faster than it was in that test.

So the 7970 is about 30% faster generally, but about 100% faster in Skyrim. If that's your game, you would do well to upgrade, but only you can decide if it's worth it to you.

 

[Whitestar127]

Hi Termie.
You shouldn't be looking at those Skyrim scores for the 5970. Those are from old drivers where CF was broken in Skyrim. It's fixed now however and I guess 7970ghz is about 20-30 % faster than 5970 in that game too.

Thanks for your input though.

 

[Termie]

Hi Termie.
You shouldn't be looking at those Skyrim scores for the 5970. Those are from old drivers where CF was broken in Skyrim. It's fixed now however and I guess 7970ghz is about 20-30 % faster than 5970 in that game too.

Thanks for your input though.

Crossfire isn't the only problem. You don't have the VRAM to run at those settings. Try AA and see what you get. You'll be at less than half the speed of a 7970.

Honestly, it sounds like you're happy with the performance of your card, so it's probably not worth it to you to get a 7970 for that game.

But no, the crossfire fix didn't address this:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6359/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-650-ti-review/6

 

[Whitestar127]

Crossfire isn't the only problem. You don't have the VRAM to run at those settings. Try AA and see what you get. You'll be at less than half the speed of a 7970.

Honestly, it sounds like you're happy with the performance of your card, so it's probably not worth it to you to get a 7970 for that game.

But no, the crossfire fix didn't address this:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/6359/the-nvidia-geforce-gtx-650-ti-review/6

You bring up a good point about the VRAM.
I was also looking at 670 SLI. They cost significantly less than a 690, and SLI is supposed to be much smoother than CF. Do you have any experience with SLI?

 

[Termie]

You bring up a good point about the VRAM.
I was also looking at 670 SLI. They cost significantly less than a 690, and SLI is supposed to be much smoother than CF. Do you have any experience with SLI?

I only tried 670 SLI for a couple of days. I had just upgraded from 5850 crossfire and was still using my i7-860 @3.5, which was a big bottleneck. Still, it was incredibly smooth, and easier to set up than crossfire.

But I didn't use it extensively, so I'm not an authority on it. I can tell you, though, that a single 670 will be smoother than your 5970, if not hugely faster.

I'd personally recommend that if you're generally happy with your current performance, try one high end card before going with two. It might be sufficient. And while the 7950/7970 are the single card winners right now, I wouldn't use them in crossfire based on what I've read.

 

[badb0y]

A single 7970 will improve game play experience for you but if I was going multi-GPU I would go with SLi simply because it has less problems as of this post.