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Crossfire 7950's vs GTX 670

M

Muyoso

Senior member
7950's have gotten to the point where I can get a pair of them for roughly what my one GTX670 cost me. I always planned on picking up another 670 when prices came down a bit, but the massive price difference between crossfire 7950's and SLI 670's has really caused me to take a step back and rethink my plans.

I can get a pair of 3gb Sapphire 7950's for $540 with 4 game codes which I could sell for roughly $110. So $430 for a pair of 7950's. I spent $370 on my single 2GB MSI GTX 670 PE OC.

Questions are, how bad seriously is crossfire? I game at 2560x1440. I want vsync to be on when gaming most times. Is there noticeable micro-stuttering and does V-sync alleviate it at all? Why should or shouldn't I sell the 670 for a minor loss and pick up a pair of 7950's? Would SLI 670's be worth a nearly $300 premium???

I know this type of thread has been done a trillion times, so please no AMD vs Nvidia rivalry nonsense. Just looking at what would be best for gaming for multiple years.
 
It is so bad in many games that the second card makes the overall experience worse. I would just buy a 7970 matrix or 670 sli based on your preference.
 
This is a no-brainer, get another GTX 670. If you are prepared to go second hand then you will get it for the same price as you would get the 2x brand new 7950s. The $110 for the game codes is not a guarantee. Then you would have to sell your GTX 670 which would net you a lot less than you think if you sell through eBay and Paypal.

SLI is a far better experience out of the box and while 7950s in CF can be made to work they are a lot more hassle than SLI.
 
It's against the TOS to sell the games, also they go for far less than you're expecting. $30 tops, you can grab the original bundle for $30 for all 3 free titles.

CF is a dead zone, but it might be fixed at some point. If you're not in a hurry...

So while you're waiting on CF to work, wait on buying CF, trust me when I say the price is never going to get higher.
 
ICDP said:
This is a no-brainer, get another GTX 670. If you are prepared to go second hand then you will get it for the same price as you would get the 2x brand new 7950s. The $110 for the game codes is not a guarantee. Then you would have to sell your GTX 670 which would net you a lot less than you think if you sell through eBay and Paypal.

SLI is a far better experience out of the box and while 7950s in CF can be made to work they are a lot more hassle than SLI.
Click to expand...

Read the OP, he wants to play with vsync. This already makes CF work out of the box.

Even better OP, get Radeon Pro and turn on dynamic vsync. You get all the benefits and superior performance for much cheaper.

There's no way SLI 670 with its $300 premium over CF 7950 is worth it, when you spend a few minutes to dl radeon pro and set it up.
 
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I've heard extremely mixed things about crossfire and sli, with the usual consensus being that if you get dual gpus, it's generally a slightly better experience from Nvidia. I have an extremely hard time believing that two AMD cards will net less performance than one, but wouldn't be surprised if it's just they have more inconsistencies/problems that still makes it a waste of time and money. they're working on new drivers that should be here in a couple of months hopefully, so we'll see how those go. Also V-sync will save you a lot of trouble with either company. Either one will give you trouble but it's hard to say whether you'll notice stuttering from one company, both, or neither. We've all heard all three.
 
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I have owned both, a pair of 7970's and a pair of 680's. The pair of 7970's was the worst gaming rig I ever owned. I played with vsync on, off, forced triple buffering and tried literally everything out there to make it work well for 6 months. Getting a game to work requires a lot of fiddling and some of that fiddling can crash your machine. I have owned 5970, 4870X2 and so I can compare AMD's previous generation crossfire and the current crop of cards and the drivers are worse than ever. 7000 series crossfire isn't worth it, its dreadful, its so much worse than all the alternatives its not worth considering.

Pcper.com showed what the vsync stutter looks like, it was horrid. Just don't do it, you already have a decent card just double up on the 670's and get twice the performance and none of the hassle and aggravation.

But the AMD crowd will be in soon and they will tell you the exact opposite, that its all good with vsync on and if you just tweak this one setting etc. Been there, tried that, doesn't work. If you can see stutter just avoid AMD. I wouldn't go back now I have the pair of NVidia cards, I can't face the rage that comes with owning AMDs cards.
 
BrightCandle said:
But the AMD crowd will be in soon and they will tell you the exact opposite, that its all good with vsync on and if you just tweak this one setting etc. Been there, tried that, doesn't work. If you can see stutter just avoid AMD. I wouldn't go back now I have the pair of NVidia cards, I can't face the rage that comes with owning AMDs cards.
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Have you or have you not tried Radeon Pro with your 7970s? If you haven't, then you are plain mistaken.
 
BrightCandle said:
I have owned both, a pair of 7970's and a pair of 680's. The pair of 7970's was the worst gaming rig I ever owned. I played with vsync on, off, forced triple buffering and tried literally everything out there to make it work well for 6 months. Getting a game to work requires a lot of fiddling and some of that fiddling can crash your machine. I have owned 5970, 4870X2 and so I can compare AMD's previous generation crossfire and the current crop of cards and the drivers are worse than ever. 7000 series crossfire isn't worth it, its dreadful, its so much worse than all the alternatives its not worth considering.

Pcper.com showed what the vsync stutter looks like, it was horrid. Just don't do it, you already have a decent card just double up on the 670's and get twice the performance and none of the hassle and aggravation.

But the AMD crowd will be in soon and they will tell you the exact opposite, that its all good with vsync on and if you just tweak this one setting etc. Been there, tried that, doesn't work. If you can see stutter just avoid AMD. I wouldn't go back now I have the pair of NVidia cards, I can't face the rage that comes with owning AMDs cards.
Click to expand...

I even notice micro stuttering sometimes on my single GTX670. Very very sporadic, so it doesn't really bother me, but if it was a regular thing I would probably lose my mind. Its really disappointing that crossfire seems to be at best a mixed bag. AMD seems to be killing it with regards to overclockability, price and bundles. All I really want out of a gaming rig is a setup that runs all games at the highest settings at a constant 60fps synced to my display, and that lasts for at minimum a couple of years. Sure wish AMD would figure out the crossfire problems soonish.
 
You need to ask yourself if you really need it. Can you get along until next gen and then buy a high end card next year. That seems to be the best case for you.
 
Xarick said:
You need to ask yourself if you really need it. Can you get along until next gen and then buy a high end card next year. That seems to be the best case for you.
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The only way I upgrade to a new card next year is if it is a ridiculous bump in performance and I can still get a good price selling my GPU/GPU's on craigslist. I kinda just want to build out a very nice system this year and let it last me for multiple years.

I mean what I would do in a perfect world is get 3x7950's and let them last me for a ridiculous long time, but since crossfire seems to be broken and its not even recommended by most people to do triple SLI, I guess I am going to have to stick to looking out for another GTX 670.
 
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Termie said:
Read this article: http://techreport.com/review/24553/inside-the-second-with-nvidia-frame-capture-tools/9

I've linked to the specific page that will describe for you why in some very specific cases, two HD7000 cards may feel slower than one. In most cases, that simply isn't true, but there's no question that SLI is better right now.
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Very interesting read. Certainly seems to be major issues with Crossfire. Did read a different article the other day that said that some Crossfire issues were alleviated by enabling V-sync, but until AMD addresses the issue directly through drivers, I don't know if I am comfortable switching over.
 
Silverforce11 said:
Read the OP, he wants to play with vsync. This already makes CF work out of the box.
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I know CF works perfectly fine as long as you use RadeonPro to create a game profile.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=34810452&highlight=#post34810452

Silverforce11 said:
Even better OP, get Radeon Pro and turn on dynamic vsync. You get all the benefits and superior performance for much cheaper.
Click to expand...

See my linked post above. RadeopnPro is an excellent 3rd party tool, without it CF would be almost totally worthless. I know 1st hand that CF works and give a massive performance boost if you know how to use RadeonPro. The issue in this case is that the OP will need to sell his current GTX670 and that he expects to make $110 for the games bundles. He is overestimating what he will get for the bundles and assuming he sells his GTX 670 on eBay he will need to factor in 10% selling feels plus the Paypal cut.

Silverforce11 said:
There's no way SLI 670 with its $300 premium over CF 7950 is worth it, when you spend a few minutes to dl radeon pro and set it up.
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This is only a $300 premium if you are purchasing from scratch. The OP already has a perfectly good GTX 670 which cuts the cots massively. He might make $250-$270 on his current GTX670 after selling fees/postage if he is lucky (they are $300 brand new with mail in rebate). He then must spend $540 on his 2 new 7950s if he wants the bundles to sell on. He will make possibly $60 on the bundle codes, $80 if he is lucky.

So he ends up spending maybe $200-$220 for 2x 7950s after all the mucking about selling his GTX 670 and games bundle keys. That is why my advice was to simply purchase GTX670 because in the end his savings are not going to as much as he is expecting.
 
Give it some time. It will be fixed... well, shall I say it better be fixed. They have had more than enough time to get them right.
 
Muyoso said:
Wow, seems to be the consensus that CF is just garbage. What a shame.
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CF is garbage out of the box, but fixable with RadeonPro. SLI is still a much better solution for anyone going multi-GPU from scratch, or in your case because you already have half the SLI setup.
 
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