Tri Crossfire 7970 Setup on sandybridge e 3930k

[FiLeZz]

Just got the rig up and running this weekend. Moved from a 3x6950 flashed to 6970's in a asus iv extreme board.

I have the sandy bridge e overclocked to 4600mhz at the moment and I have not really put any effort in getting more.. It was easy to get to that so I left it at that so I could play with the system.

I was really shocked at the preformance gain of the 6970's I would have to say easly 2-3 times faster.

My resolution is 4800x2560 (3x30" dell 3008wfp's)
In star wars old republic I was getting 25-40 fps I now get 90-110fps.

I really like the asus iv extreme x79 board as it give a space between each videocard. on my other p67 board the cards lived ontop of each other my cards would normaly reach 91 degrees easy.

Full system specs
X79 Asus rampage IV extreme
Intel 3930k Sandybridge E 6 core.
Corsair Force GT 2x240gb SSD's in raid0 for total of 480gb space on C:\ 1100mb's
2tb WD black
Custom Wate loop with swifttech block with 3x120 rad.
Corsair AX1200 Power Supply
Corsair 800d case
Corsair CMT8GX3M2A2000C9 PC3 1600 4x4gb plus 1 LED corsair kit (need another now I have quad channle)



Here are some photos.
https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-3aO5RCYSrWs/TxR2qDMnn7I/AAAAAAAABqM/CeWLxNICrbo/s800/photo.JPG

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-P3t-pXfJYnQ/TUncTjQAzCI/AAAAAAAABSo/e3DDxomgrOU/s800/IMG_0245.JPG

 

[badb0y]

Looks good

 

[OILFIELDTRASH]

Wow.. Nice...

 

[thilanliyan]

3x30" monitors!! :awe:

You should really WC those cards...might as well.

 

[pw38]

That's a hell of a rig.

 

[ViviTheMage]

3x30" monitors!! :awe:

You should really WC those cards...might as well.

Those cards probably run cool enough with that space inbetween now...he would probably need to add a new loop too...but then again, 3x30" and 3x7970's ... $$ might not be an object.

 

[FiLeZz]

3x30" monitors!! :awe:

You should really WC those cards...might as well.

Every time I think about adding water to the video cards I think the same thing, the water block are not reusable for my next card. I change cards about as fast as they come out to the market. So I would have wasted the old ones to have to get new ones.

Mybey I will do it who knows.

 

[thilanliyan]

but then again, 3x30" and 3x7970's ... $$ might not be an object.

Exactly...he doesn't NEED to...but in his situation I would...unless maybe it voids the warranty on the cards or something. I try to get cards from companies that allow the change of coolers without voiding warranties.

Every time I think about adding water to the video cards I think the same thing, the water block are not reusable for my next card. I change cards about as fast as they come out to the market. So I would have wasted the old ones to have to get new ones.

Mybey I will do it who knows.

Get universal blocks...and just use heatsinks for the rest of the components. I have been using my DD Maze4 GPU block since my X1800XL (!!) and it's still going strong. I just change and sometimes reuse the VRM/memory heatsinks and all is good. It won't look as good as a full cover block however.

 

[notty22]

Very nice.
That motherboard looks like the ultimate for 3 cards on air, with perfect spacing.

 

[Crap Daddy]

Nice.

 

[blackened23]

Wow...sick setup dude.

 

[Qbah]

Sweet setup! Now time for some numbers

 

[RavenSEAL]

 

[Lepton87]

Saying that 7970 is 2-3 times faster than 6970 is just pure fantasizing. (CF scaling is similar) It might be that much faster in some specific tests, but not overall.

 

[T_Yamamoto]

im so jelly

 

[FiLeZz]

Saying that 7970 is 2-3 times faster than 6970 is just pure fantasizing. (CF scaling is similar) It might be that much faster in some specific tests, but not overall.

I only ran my 6950's that were flashed to 6970's in 6950 mode due to the heat that these things produced due to NO SPACE between cards. So I am compairing 6950x3 to 7970x3

 

[Lepton87]

I only ran my 6950's that were flashed to 6970's in 6950 mode due to the heat that these things produced due to NO SPACE between cards. So I am compairing 6950x3 to 7970x3

Run some other tests besides highly unreliable MMORPG like metro 2033 or Crysis. It will be more like 50% faster.

 

[FiLeZz]

Run some other tests besides highly unreliable MMORPG like metro 2033 or Crysis. It will be more like 50% faster.

One thing your not taking into cunsideration is the Resolution and the memory size of the two cards, many things would bottle neck on the 2gb I was running vs the 3gb I now have.

This has been proven on the 580 2gb and 3gb cards, at super high res.

I will benchmark the stuff more but I asure you It is much much faster, I can not compair the two side by side as I have sold the 6950's.

I only recall what I got before and what I get now at My resolution

 

[gramboh]

Baller setup man, thanks for sharing and the pics. Games must be so fun on that.

 

[Lepton87]

One thing your not taking into cunsideration is the Resolution and the memory size of the two cards, many things would bottle neck on the 2gb I was running vs the 3gb I now have.

This has been proven on the 580 2gb and 3gb cards, at super high res.

I will benchmark the stuff more but I asure you It is much much faster, I can not compair the two side by side as I have sold the 6950's.

I only recall what I got before and what I get now at My resolution

50% IS much faster in my book. 4800x2560 I guess at that resolution it's not hard to use more than 2gb or even 3gb, but it's pointless to compare Vram limited setup to one that is not Vram limited, because the performance difference doesn't tell us anything other than that we have run into Vram limit so I just assumed you didn't do that. The other reason is that I didn't think you would play at a settings you didn't have enough Vram for.

 

[djnsmith7]

Very nice...

 

[FiLeZz]

Settings dx11
4800x2560
quality very high
AAA
AF 16X

Metro 2033 benchmark
•Total Frames: 2198, Total Time: 59.90579 sec
•Average Framerate: 36.79
•Max. Framerate: 134.16 (Frame: 1920)
•Min. Framerate: 4.33 (Frame: 1099)

 

[Riek]

Run some other tests besides highly unreliable MMORPG like metro 2033 or Crysis. It will be more like 50% faster.

...
A single 7970 will be close to 50% faster than a single 6950..
7970 has better scaling in 2 and 3way crossfire..

so yeah you'll probably looking at > double the framerate.

 

[Gikaseixas]

Monster rig, nice
You guys are getting so many 7970's that i'm just wondering what it will do to AMD profits in the coming quarters. I'm getting 2 myself soon, i hope

 

[Lepton87]

...
A single 7970 will be close to 50% faster than a single 6950..
7970 has better scaling in 2 and 3way crossfire..

so yeah you'll probably looking at > double the framerate.

Show me some proof that it has better scaling, 6950 already scales close to 100% in many tests just like 7970. It would take a massive increase(in most cases not possible even in theory) in scaling to jump from 50% faster to 100% faster. Even if it scales better it is on the order of 10% not 30%-50%.

As a proof:

although there is not 6970CF on the graph we can use 6990 instead for comparison. 6970to6990 has 50% scaling, 7970CF has a tad over that, but 6970CF is a little bit faster than 6990 so scaling is very similar.