6870 Crossfire or 6950?

[thirdeye]

I'm pretty sure I know the answer to this but I wanted some opinions. Since I've been playing a lot games on my TV, I tend to run most games at 1920x1080. Most games run well on my 6870 but I've noticed that several games run less than optimally at that res. The Witcher 2 is one of them, my card struggles in more than a few areas of the game even at medium settings at that resolution.

My dilemma is this,for about the same amount of money I could do either option (assuming I sold my 6870 for the average going price) but I'm not sure which would be better. My gut says the Crossfire setup would be better but I have no experience in the dual GPU realm since I've been out of PC gaming for a rather long time.

What say you?

 

[trollolo]

the 7950

 

[thirdeye]

I'm assuming you meant to say 6950?

 

[WMD]

I think he meant the unreleased 7950. I personally would take 7970 if it turns out less disappointing than 6970.

 

[lehtv]

Upgrading from 6870 to 6950? Crazy. Wait for 7950.

 

[thirdeye]

Well that was kinda my reasoning for this thread. I generally only follow pc hardware stuff when I'm ready to purchase something so I'm out of the loop more often than not. Any idea on when the next gen GPUs will be out?

 

[lehtv]

Both the AMD and NVIDIA cards should be in production this year. As far as I know, NVIDIA cards will not make it to stores this year though, whereas AMD cards probably will.

 

[thirdeye]

Ok good to know then. I may just wait it out then and see what happens. I'm not suffering with what I have, it could just be better.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

Like others have said, wait for the new-gen cards to come out. From the leaks, it appears that the HD 7870 will have the same core configuration as the 6970, but with higher clock speeds. It should be 5-10% faster while consuming a lot less power, and will probably be in the $220-250 range.

 

[TheAdvocate]

So the 7870 wont be a continuation of the Barts tech?

I've seen the specs that closely resemble the 6950, but I was kind of hoping it would be as small and low power/low heat as the Barts 6870's, which are wonderful for HTPC builds.

 

[lehtv]

It will probably consume less power and output less heat than 6870, given that it's 28nm.

 

[LOL_Wut_Axel]

So the 7870 wont be a continuation of the Barts tech?

I've seen the specs that closely resemble the 6950, but I was kind of hoping it would be as small and low power/low heat as the Barts 6870's, which are wonderful for HTPC builds.

No. Barts doesn't have the necessary core configuration for the performance AMD wants. Similar performance to Barts should be had in the HD 7700 series.

The leaked specs resemble the 6970's core configuration but with higher clock speeds. It'll also use VLIW4. In the end, 5% faster than the HD 6970 or so.