• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

CrossFire 6950 vs Single GTX 680

RadioActiveLobster

RadioActiveLobster

Gawd
Joined
Mar 20, 2010
Messages
1,008
Is there anyone here that has recently gone from crossfired 6950's to a single GTX 680 that has an performance numbers?

I currently have two 6950's in crossfire. I game at 1920x1200 or 5760x1200 depending on the game.

My 6950's are great but I am getting tired of AMD's constant driver issues, late drivres, crossfire problems, micro-stutter, etc...

From the reviews I've read the 680 is a kick ass card (I am amazed it doesn't have more memory limitation issues at super high resolutions) and I am thinking of go to just one of them (maybe SLI down the road)
 
I'm in the same exact boat op. I can't find any xfire 6950 comparison charts to the new Kepler line. I want to upgrade or even make a lateral swap just to get rid of AMD drivers and microstutter. I can't even overclock or the stuttering gets worse, forget increasing the voltage.
 
S.T.A.L.K.E.R. said:
Is there anyone here that has recently gone from crossfired 6950's to a single GTX 680 that has an performance numbers?

I currently have two 6950's in crossfire. I game at 1920x1200 or 5760x1200 depending on the game.

My 6950's are great but I am getting tired of AMD's constant driver issues, late drivres, crossfire problems, micro-stutter, etc...

From the reviews I've read the 680 is a kick ass card (I am amazed it doesn't have more memory limitation issues at super high resolutions) and I am thinking of go to just one of them (maybe SLI down the road)
Click to expand...

I wouldn't expect much change in speed but the other benefits might sway you. What I would do, is try to ebay the 6950s while the resell price is still decent and use that towards a new setup.
 
I'm looking to not lose performance or if I do have it be a small amount. I do plan to SLI the card down the road as I feel nvidia is getting a lot better in the multiple monitor arena and their drivers seem to be a lot better as well.
 
Just went from crossfired 6970 with an unlocked 6950, so essentially the same thing. The single 680 is a tad bit slower, but it's not too noticeable. What is noticeable is the reduction in heat and noise. I never hear this card, while my 69's spun the fans up all the time and heated my office up to where it was unbearable. This last round of drivers was the final straw for me (completely hosed my rig). The 69's are great cards, it just depends on what's important to you. Also, it still cost me about another $175 to upgrade even after selling my old cards.
 
I'm thinking of waiting until some customer coolers/PCB versions of the 680 comes out, or even the single slot cooler version.

I know there will be some hit in performance but I don't know how much longer I can deal with AMD's drivers.
 
You'll lose a fair bit of performance in eyefinity, not so much at 1920x1200 because of the lower performance of the 6950s at that res.
 
I'm loving my 680, very quiet and a great overclocker to boot. The performance is top notch and, of course, no Crossfire issues. I still have nightmares about my 4870x2.
 
spacing guild said:
I did a mini-review of Crossfire 6950s vs a 7970. It's pretty much dead even. The 7970 was, of course, smoother.
Click to expand...

Interesting conclusion, given that the 7970 is often bested by the 6870x2, which is slower than 6950 crossfire.
 
spacing guild said:
I did a mini-review of Crossfire 6950s vs a 7970. It's pretty much dead even. The 7970 was, of course, smoother.

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1665100

Take the 7970 reviews and compare to a GTX 680 and there it is. For $499 vs $549, i'd take the GTX 680 without question.
Click to expand...

In theory, that's a really cool story because good luck finding a GTX 680 new from an actual vendor and not a private 3rd party for a good price. If you find one at a store it's going to be $600. I'm getting an HD 7970 for around $530. So. In theory, you are right, in reality, it isn't currently working like that.

I was looking at crossfire 6950s, but decided to save $100 and get a 7970 and have almost similar performance. Not to mention, not all games support crossfire.
 
If the 680 can't beat a 6990, I doubt it would be that close to crossfire 6950. Issue really is more on if the perceived less headaches is worth the change.
 
GotNoRice said:
Care to give a few examples?
Click to expand...

Trackmania United is the only one that really bugs me. It's not too much an issue for one HD6970 but does have settings that are so demanding you feel like needing crossfire. Again no problem because they don't look much different to the sensible settings. However, simply having crossfire enabled causes mipmap quality to go to minimum, making all the textures look like something from the 16-bit era. It's just infuriating to have to disable CF to play Trackmania and then re-enable it to play, for example, Battlefield 3. If disabling CF didn't reset the size of all your open windows to 640x480 due to the resolution change being part of the switching process this would bug me less.

Other than this I have almost no issue with CF at all, but stuff like this is still enough to swing otherwise marginal differences between single cards and equivalent CF setups.
 
I'd still go for the single card solution, all things being equal. As I understand it, Crossfire might not work on newer games unless AMD releases a CAP for it. They've lagged on CAPs recently from what I have read....sometimes it'll be a few months before a CAP is released that supports a game that just came out.
 
Despite having used crossfire for 4 years now, what I always tell people is 'if you can get a single card that's just as fast as this crossfire/SLI setup, even if it costs more, do it'. The prospect of greater performance for the price is appealing, but even though it's come on a long way, SLI/CF still isn't the sort of technology where you turn it on and forget it's there. It's still generally best to avoid it unless you need more power than the best single card can give, as has been my case, due to using 2560x1600.
 
Plus there is always the prospect of further doubling your power -- if you decide to take the plunge on multi-GPU later. But yeah, single card solutions generally are less hassle.
 
night_2004 said:
I'd still go for the single card solution, all things being equal. As I understand it, Crossfire might not work on newer games unless AMD releases a CAP for it. They've lagged on CAPs recently from what I have read....sometimes it'll be a few months before a CAP is released that supports a game that just came out.
Click to expand...

That's what really sucks about the whole multi-gpu thing, is that the drivers and/or the games have to support it, which generally means that the latest games (which likely could most benefit from it!) don't support it. =(
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top