Have a 6970 - skip a generation?

[skipsneeky2]

1080p

games i play are Diablo 3, Left 4 Dead 2, Fallout 3/New Vegas, etc... plays them all on high settings with anti-aliasing enabled butter smooth

Fun games that don't require much hardware wise,not a bad thing really.

My freaking 7850 drops into the 40's in BF3 if i max out the settings on my temporary 1280x1024 17'' lcd....i have to run medium with hbao enabled with 2x msaa to get 55+ minimums on some maps...its insane.

 

[Zorander]

1080p

games i play are Diablo 3, Left 4 Dead 2, Fallout 3/New Vegas, etc... plays them all on high settings with anti-aliasing enabled butter smooth

Of those, my old 5850 managed Fallout 3/NV (and also Deus Ex HR) just fine even at 2560x1600. The 6850 will comfortably handle those games at 1080p.

 

[futurefields]

i could even play Battlefield 3 @ 1080p i would just have to play on "high" instead of "ultra" and i mean really does it look that much different between high and ultra? i doubt it

 

[RussianSensation]

Ugh, no need to remind me of that aspect of it
Depends on how much I can fetch for my Sapphire reference 6950 2GBs.
IINM though, I think I would be only able to recoup ~$150/card after shipping/fees/etc, so it would have to double performance for it to be worthwhile.

Not if you pay electricity costs. 2 reference 6950s are making what 330 Mhash/sec? maybe 350. But they are using almost 170W each I bet. At 1.05ghz 7970 = HD6990 for games.
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Powercolor/HD_7870_PCS_Plus_Vortex_II/27.html

That's a no brainer swap after selling the 6950s since you don't need to deal with CF scaling issues. Also, for BTC, your power consumption will drop a lot and production will drop less in % terms. Or maybe get 2 7970s.

Fun games that don't require much hardware wise,not a bad thing really.

My freaking 7850 drops into the 40's in BF3 if i max out the settings on my temporary 1280x1024 17'' lcd....i have to run medium with hbao enabled with 2x msaa to get 55+ minimums on some maps...its insane.

Is it overclocked? 7850 can hit 1150-1250mhz. Man up! :thumbsup:

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Your figures are pretty much spot on (power consumption and MH/s).

Heh, I wish I had a CF setup. One 6950 is with me, the other with my brother.
Just caved and bought two of the Diamond 7970s

Will do the upgrade shuffle. Main rigs = 7970, 6950 2GB @ 6970s -> work puters, 6950 1GBs -> bye bye

 

[RussianSensation]

It's actually very easy to calculate the hashing rate since it's purely a function of ALUs (or Stream Processors by marketing). You just need a starting point, say 6950.

HD6950 @ 1536 SP @ 880mhz with proper flags in GUIMiner = 390 Mh/sec
HD7970 @ 925mhz in GUIMiner = (2048 * 925mhz / (1536 * 880mhz) = 547 Mh/sec or so

The flag I found that works best for 7970 in GUIMiner is -w 256 -f1 (but you can raise -f1 value to 15, 20, 30 if you need more CPU speed for something).

On the 6950, the -v helped, but it hurts performance on my 7970. I've seen some guys run 925mhz 7970 at far lower voltage than 1.175V, if noise levels become a concern for a reference 7970 card.

 

[Jeff007245]

^ That's what I keep telling myself, especially since my backlog of games is embarassing (haven't touched Metro, ME2, ME3, Shivering Isles, Skyrim, etc. ).

But then this f*cker comes along :|
http://slickdeals.net/f/5252174-Dia...Game-Coupon-312-after-20-rebate-Free-Shipping

Thats exactly the link I posted.

 

[RaistlinZ]

1080p

games i play are Diablo 3, Left 4 Dead 2, Fallout 3/New Vegas, etc... plays them all on high settings with anti-aliasing enabled butter smooth

For those games and that resolution you might as well just wait. If you already play on maxed settings and it's "buttery smooth" it's not going to be any more buttery smooth with a 7950/70.

I'd save up and put some cash to a nice larger monitor first.

 

[3DVagabond]

I have a Sapphire Dual Fan 6970 that I'm really happy with. Very quiet card and plays all games at 1080p maxed out.

Newer cards offer faster tessellation and big energy savings (not that it makes much difference cost wise), but there doesn't appear to be many games to upgrade for.

I'm thinking when the new consoles arrive next year, games will quickly appear that require tessellation performance. So, is it wise to skip this generation and wait for the GPU's that can handle the next gen console ports?

I would. You're half way there now and the 6970 is an excellent card.

 

[futurefields]

For those games and that resolution you might as well just wait. If you already play on maxed settings and it's "buttery smooth" it's not going to be any more buttery smooth with a 7950/70.

I'd save up and put some cash to a nice larger monitor first.

actually it was the OP looking to upgrade not myself. i truly believe its silly to upgrade a 6970 at this point, definitely wait for the next generation or even the next one after that.

 

[skipsneeky2]

Is it overclocked? 7850 can hit 1150-1250mhz. Man up! :thumbsup:

I got mine at 1150/5800@1.225v,the highest stable core wise is 1180 but for some reason the only game that makes a huge fuss is Hard Reset,so for the sake of all my games being completely stable,i run it at 1150/5800.

Love this card so much,i might crossfire it when i get a new 1080p screen.