7950 CF users I need your help

[Artie17]

Hey guys,

I was waiting patiently for the GTX 800 series, but from the leak I read the other day it sounds like Nvidia is going to follow the same process they did with a GTX 680 so instead of waiting for the card I decided to get something for now until Nvidia releases 880Ti or whatever it's going to be called.

I was looking for something to hold me over for now and I found a deal on 2 Sapphire Dual X cards for $350. What do you think? Is this a good setup for 1440p to hold me till the latest n greatest?

I currently have 2 X-Star monitors. Would these cards in CF be enough to run most games at their native 1440p resolution.

I checked the reviews for when the cards first came out and they didn't look that impressive, but I figured drivers would have matured by now. So if you're running 7950 CF, can you please chime in and share your experience. What type of performance you're getting, temp, heat, noise, and etc. ? That would be very helpful.


I noticed the card has 2 DVI sockets. One is listed as Dual link and the other single DVI. I have 2 monitors that run at 1440p and require dual link DVI. Will this support my two monitors? Or can I connect each monitor to a different card via dual link DVI and run them in CF that way?

Thanks!

 

[Fastx]

I was running 1080p so someone else will have to comment on 1440p experience. You can check out the following review link which include 7950 CF in the charts, but at 1920x1200 & 2560x1600 for a rough ideal for now.

http://www.techspot.com/review/738-gigabyte-geforce-gtx-780-ti-ghz/page3.html

I ran the below 1025/1400 OC gaming with a fan curve, Mid Tower 3 Aerocool Shark 120mm fans intake, side (right across from both cards), exhaust per temps below.

Sapphire 7950 Boost Dual X 3L cards below temps per gaming. Card fan noise for me was not loud imo on these cards.

1025/1400 oc
Top card 72-76c
2nd Card 69-73c

Below link you can check temps running Heaven 4.0 Extreme at the below overclocks.
7950 CFX
1150/1600
Card fans set 100%


Click pic twice to enlarge pic enough to see temps in the upper right hand corner.
http://s1296.photobucket.com/user/MidwestOCS/media/00008_zps41ea88ca.jpg.html?sort=4&o=24

I only sold them due to the mining craze which netted me $800+.

 

[Silverforce11]

You only need 1X R290 or 780 class GPU for 1440p, and you dont have to worry about CF or SLI scaling issues. It's good enough for most games at 1440p.

 

[Artie17]

@Fastx

Thanks for the info.

@Silverforce11

So you don't think it's a good deal to get two 7950s for $350?

What is a 7950 equivalent to? I know AMD rebranded all their cards and I'm not that familiar with the naming scheme.

I would rather have one card if I'm able to get the same/similar performance for the price.

I've been running SLI for a long time and haven't had many issues.

 

[Silverforce11]

No, I just think for 1440p, a single strong GPU is more than enough. Compare the recent results here, R290X class performance is nearly twice as fast as 7950.

Sapphire Tri-X or Powercolor PCS+ R290 (not X) running at 1ghz would give you very good performance comparable to R290X for cheap. Sure, 2x 7950 at $350 is cheaper, but not that much different.

 

[Yuriman]

HD7790 = 260X = 896 shaders (Bonaire)
HD7850 = 265 = 1024 shaders (Pitcairn)
HD7870 = 270 & 270x = 1280 shaders (Pitcairn)
HD7950 = 280 = 1792 shaders (Tahiti)
HD7970 = 280x = 2048 shaders (Tahiti)
R290 = 2560 shaders (Hawaii)
R290x = 2816 shaders (Hawaii)

New naming scheme came with a clock bump for most (all?) models but we're still looking at the same cores. Only Bonaire and Hawaii are GCN 1.1.

That's $175 per card for the 7950's? That would be pretty hard to pass up, and they're probably going to lose less absolute value than a single 290x when the next generation comes out. Normally I'd recommend going with a single card, leaving the option of throwing in a second later as well as avoiding the downsides of CF, but in this case it doesn't seem a bad idea.

 

[Artie17]

Thanks for the breakdown Yuriman!

Im pretty much decided on the cards. The only thing I'm still not sure if I can plug each monitor into a different card and still run CF. Any ideas?

 

[palladium]

With CF you can only use the primary card for display output. In your case you'd need a (m)DP to dual link DVI adapter. If you're running more than 2 non-DP monitors, you'd need active adapters.