Opinions on 5850 CF or 6950 (2gb)

[Gepidae]

So Im currently running ati 5850 on my Asrock Extreme 4. Been looking to upgrade my vid card since games like Batman and Skyrim are out and the games running as smoothly as I would like.

I either have the option on buying another 5850 used for $180 or buying a new ati 6950 (2 gb) for ~$200 and NOT go CF. Looking at the raw VGA charts at guru3d it seems like a no brainer but Im hesistant about how games aren't optimized for CF and have to wait for drivers. Im gaming with 1920x1080 resolution by the way.

Anyone with opinions that can sway me one way or another?

 

[TakeNoPrisoners]

A 5850 for $180 is a bit much.

$150 max on one of those.

 

[Larnz]

I would personally sell your old card and go 6950. I have 2x unlocked 6950's and recent crossfire issues with new games really get me down, skyrim/rage/tor beta etc. Disabling 1 card for games like skyrim and still getting 80+ fps @ 2560x1440 sort of shows me that 2 cards were not really needed anyways.

I'll be selling my cards and going a single 7xxx series when i can, im over crossfire, games come right once a CAP is released but they seem to always be atleast 2 weeks after a game is released these days, not good enough imo.

 

[hdfxst]

you can get 5850's for 120 dollars new (unless your not in the us),but right now i wouldn't spend 180-200

 

[Termie]

I went with the 5850 crossfire route myself, and I am not disappointed. Remember that an overclocked 5850 comes within 5-10% of the 6950's performance. Sure you can overclock the 6950 (doubtful you can unlock any of the current ones though), but it doesn't have nearly the same headroom as the 5850.

Thus, if you're looking for a significantly different gaming experience, it's crossfire or bust. You could sell your 5850 and buy two 6950s, but that's a whole bunch more transactions, and therefore more complicated. And it's way more expensive.

The only caveat is that $180 is definitely too much to pay for a 5850. You should be able to find them for under $150. Also, crossfire still doesn't work for Skyrim on the 5000 series, but I assume they'll get it to work soon. It works great for BF3, but that's not one of the games you listed.

 

[Gepidae]

Nvm. Must've not done a good search. I see it selling used for 138 at amazon.

Yeah I am getting pretty fed up and new games not being optimized for CF and honestly I only play new games and hardly go back to older ones when the CAP is released later. Honestly the biggest sway is the money issue, a 70 dollar difference is quite significant IMO if there isn't much benefit as people are saying here

 

[Zanovar]

I think the 5850 is a brilliant card,i would say this as im a bit biased .the refcards could have huge overclocks.cant wait for the new cards though

 

[dpk33]

I personally wouldn't blow over $100 on a 5850, but that's just me. The reasoning for this is that the new cards are coming out very shortly, and spending money on a graphics card right now would be pointless.

 

[WMD]

Neither option is best. CF support for new games is bad lately. And no point upgrading to a 6950 for a very marginal gain this late in its product cycle with the 28nm cards coming in a month or two.

 

[Zanovar]

I personally wouldn't blow over $100 on a 5850, but that's just me. The reasoning for this is that the new cards are coming out very shortly, and spending money on a graphics card right now would be pointless.

sure i agree with cards on the horizen

 

[Gepidae]

Thanks guys. I think I should probably wait for the new gen cards and just settle for overclocking my vid card a bit more

 

[Zanovar]

Thanks guys. I think I should probably wait for the new gen cards and just settle for overclocking my vid card a bit more

not sure about you guys but im realy lookig forwrad to these new cards.damn my spellin is atrocios hahah

 

[SlowSpyder]

Thanks guys. I think I should probably wait for the new gen cards and just settle for overclocking my vid card a bit more

I would wait as well... but, if you insist on making a move now, I have to say my experience with 5870's in CF has been very pleasant, other than power draw. I game at 1920x1200, and for the most part seem to be ok with 1GB. But, that probably won't be sufficient too much longer.

*edit - Just because I was curious, I ran the Furmark burn-in test. My two slightly oc'd 5870's (875/1250) and Thuban are not very efficient..! 730 watts on the Kill-a-Watt. :/

 

[Gepidae]

Well Im sort of an impatient guy but if something good is coming around the corner I can contain myself

 

[Zanovar]

Well Im sort of an impatient guy but if something good is coming around the corner I can contain myself

hehe

 

[Silverforce11]

Skyrim has CF support at release, use some tweaks and it works fine.

BF3 CF scaling is extremely good.

Batman has >80% CF scaling.

RAGE was and is a crap game that runs at 60 fps regardless.

If you cant be arsed to do some tweaking then CF or SLI is not for you because theres bound to be games that its not going to be great out of the box. But they often are the exception and not the general situations.

Edit: And for the record in your situation gaming at 1080p, nothing beats the potential of CF 5850s if all you are spending is ~$120 now for the 2nd card. They OC like nuts (easy 950/1200) and essentially perform like CF 5870 OC (or 2x stock 6950s), so how fast is that? A lot faster than top single gpus.

 

[Gepidae]

Just read the new ati 11.11b drivers, support for xfire skyrim seems to be only for the 6000 series. "5000 series support will be released soon," lol

 

[Silverforce11]

Just read the new ati 11.11b drivers, support for xfire skyrim seems to be only for the 6000 series. "5000 series support will be released soon," lol

A little bit of searching will point out that all radeons have CF working in skyrim a long time ago. You can do it via software or downloading an updated dx9.dll.

 

[Zanovar]

skyrim, wow what a game

 

[Larnz]

Skyrim did not have CF support at release.. you can make it work through radeon pro or ranaming the file or many methods but installing the game then running it without intervention was defo bung++ and that is what people are fed up with currently. The fact is you have to tweak new games to ~dodge around the gfx glitchy CF issues. I have argued for ages that CF is awesome etc but the last 6 months of missing every single major game with native support release have really got me down tbh. I am looking forward to 7xxx and just being able to double click a game icon after installing it and have it work 100%.

 

[Silverforce11]

So enthusiasts who opt to go multi-gpus can't be bothered to troubleshoot once in awhile? Really besides skyrim, what recent game did you really need CF/SLI to run which wasn't available? Rage? No, 60 fps cap.

It took NV 4 weeks to fix SLI and general bugs with Dragon Age 2. Shit happens. Nothing new to PC gaming if you've been around long enough.

 

[MrK6]

I've had all of the above (5850, 5850 CF, and 6950 2GB) and I agree with the general sentiment expressed in this thread to stay where you are. CF, and pretty much any multi-GPU is not worth it. I think if I ever try it again it will be with Tri-SLI, but for the time being, a fast, single GPU still gives the best experience IMO. If you check the comparison I did in my signature, going to a 6950 won't net you much more performance (I did it because I wanted something to tinker with).

 

[Gepidae]

I've had all of the above (5850, 5850 CF, and 6950 2GB) and I agree with the general sentiment expressed in this thread to stay where you are. CF, and pretty much any multi-GPU is not worth it. I think if I ever try it again it will be with Tri-SLI, but for the time being, a fast, single GPU still gives the best experience IMO. If you check the comparison I did in my signature, going to a 6950 won't net you much more performance (I did it because I wanted something to tinker with).

Generally if I can spend ~100 to get a fps increase ~50% Im usually pretty happy. With that being said if you already gone this route and recommend my current setup, I would be more inclined to do so since you already have experience in this. Its just seeing how I bought a board with the intentions of CF and a PSU for it, almost seems like a waste lol. I usually have no luck in selling my cards so if I upgrade to 7000, got to try to fig out what to do with this 5850

 

[Termie]

Generally if I can spend ~100 to get a fps increase ~50% Im usually pretty happy. With that being said if you already gone this route and recommend my current setup, I would be more inclined to do so since you already have experience in this. Its just seeing how I bought a board with the intentions of CF and a PSU for it, almost seems like a waste lol. I usually have no luck in selling my cards so if I upgrade to 7000, got to try to fig out what to do with this 5850

The only way you'll ever do that is to crossfire or wait until the end of the next generation before upgrading. I got close to a 100% increase going from an 8800gt purchased in Nov. 2007 to a GTX460 purchased for $120 in Nov. 2010. It took three years to get that increase. I could have had a 50% increase buying a GTX260 a year before for about the same price.

I got an 85% increase going 5850 crossfire for $150. Not quite as good as my previous example, but I only waited 18 months. There's no way you'll do better than that in the next year. AMD's new cards, whenever they arrive (December, January, June, whatever...) will probably offer 50% faster speeds than a 5850 for $300. Not even in your ballpark.

What MrK6 is highlighting, however, is that crossfire has its drawbacks. More crashes, more delays for driver support, some games that never scale, more power use, etc. There's also the dreaded microstuttering, although I've concluded that I can't detect it, so I no longer worry about it. I'm having a fantastic experience in both BF3 and Crysis 2, two of the most demanding games out there, so it was the right upgrade for me.