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2x6950 overkill?

No such thing as too much power, the only real factor is how much money you have to spend.

A pair of 6950's flashed to 6970's would serve you well for a long, long time. Overall you'll have better performance than going with a single card of either the 570 or 6970 variety, and it'll likely last longer when you migrate them to a more powerful setup which lets Xfire stretch its legs more.

Plus folks talking about the 7000 series, it's going to be Xmas before you seen them, coming a full twelve months after the release of the 6000 series. I really don't think you'll see it sooner and far more likely later.
 
MaynardLD50 said:
I'm not going to get into a pissing match about release dates but when someone says soon I think soon refers to a month maybe 3. So telling someone to skip on a 6950 because it's coming out "soon" is silly.

As for the thread, that I read, that's like saying iPhone came out a few months ago I bet the iPhone 5 will be out soon.

My point is that telling someone to wait on a inexpensive great set of cards is not my recommendation. I would tell him get a 6950, unlock it and love it. If you wait because something new is coming out soon than you'll never buy anything.
Click to expand...

I totally respected your opinion about the OP to better not wait for the 7000 series GPUs. But what pissed me off was when you have to be mean by using profane language.
 
First off i have the 6950 and it is great. So far the only thing im worried about in terms of <30 FPS is Crysis 2 when its gets DX11, and curious how BF3 will perform.
Second, i am curious the opinion of if you already have a 6950, and you need a performance boost 6-10 months from now, does it make sense to spend $200+ on another to CrossFire, or to spend $200+ on a 7000 series? Im sure the 7000 series will be great, but it wont have a single card solution thats as powerful as two 6950's CF'ed under $300 right?
 
NathanP2007 said:
First off i have the 6950 and it is great. So far the only thing im worried about in terms of <30 FPS is Crysis 2 when its gets DX11, and curious how BF3 will perform.
Second, i am curious the opinion of if you already have a 6950, and you need a performance boost 6-10 months from now, does it make sense to spend $200+ on another to CrossFire, or to spend $200+ on a 7000 series? Im sure the 7000 series will be great, but it wont have a single card solution thats as powerful as two 6950's CF'ed under $300 right?
Click to expand...

We'll certainly find out when we get there :). There is some debate as to when AMD will be releasing the 7000's and I'm not going to speculate, but it is generally understood that they are taking a mature 40nm part to 28nm, which should very quickly eclipse the performance vs. price/watt of their 40nm parts, provided nothing goes wrong (like it did at 40nm, remember the GTX480?). They should be able to get more shaders and higher clocks out of the same silicon sizes and power envelopes that they are using now.

Personally, with one HD6950 at 4MP (2560x1600), I find performance more than adequate. I'm willing to deal with a lot however, because my upgrade path includes at least a new case, PSU, board, memory, and processor; I can't use Crossfire where I'm at.

I don't use AA and I may have to turn settings down, but I can play the games I want to and that's what matters to me. For the likes of BF3 and futher I'll be upgrading.

But to answer your question concerning having an HD6950 now, if it is worth the investment to you today to go Crossfire then do it today- if it isn't, then keep banging along with what you have and see what AMD brings to the table with the 7000's and Nvidia with the 600's (more RAM on all GPUs please!).
 
MaynardLD50 said:
I don't disagree with you at all man. I actually agree with you but do you really think that we will see a 7950 by June? Why? 6950 selling well, 6970 selling good, 590 bumping A/C sales. I just get frusturated with the "soon comment", maybe giving the OP the idea it will come out next month.
Click to expand...

I think so. If you have a product with good peformance/pricing combination and its selling well, that doesn't mean a product with even greater performance/pricing wouldn't sell. Infact, you'd expect just the opposite. Of course, a 6950 might be slightly cheaper to produce thus possible giving more profit per unit sold. A 6950 does not necessary sell more units than a 7950 though.

The difference being though is that ATI has a major competitor that is nVidia. Everytime someone goes to buy a GPU, they have to choose between ATI or nVidia. If ATI provides even greater performance/pricing, more people may pick ATI over nViida. ATI earns marketshare, brand loyalty/reputation and sells more overall units.

Keep in mind too, there's a certain portion of the GPU owner's market that will see a '7' at the front and immediately rush down to buy the latest and greatest or at least refresh their current generation card with the new model.

If they just sat on the card indefinitely until nVidia's next GPU, presumably the 6xx series came out, there's the possibility nVidia's card is more powerful and when ATI released their card they held-onto, it tarnishes their brand name, ATI's lost the opportunity to steal marketshare and ATI may not be able to push a large volume of cards with better cards out there.

That strategy doesn't seem very wise at all. Maybe thats just me though.
 
My opinion on dual-GPUs is usually 'don't'. It's a decent solution, but not a great one, and only really works if you're buying both cards now. As of the 6000-series increase in Crossfire performance and my move to a 30" primary screen it makes sense to me, but with anything smaller I don't think it does- but it also doesn't hurt to be prepared with capable boards and power supplies usually close in price (MSI has a board that does x8/x8 for $140, and most 650w PSUs have the four 6-pin PCIe cables).
 
NathanP2007 said:
Im sure the 7000 series will be great, but it wont have a single card solution thats as powerful as two 6950's CF'ed under $300 right?
Click to expand...

Its hard to say. That's the exciting part about the 28nm technology. You have to remember that chips are not 1 dimensional objects. They are 2 dimensional. So when comparing 28nm to 40nm. Its really like comparing 784nm^2 versus 1600nm^2. You can literately fit a bit more than twice as many objects in the same space with 28nm technology. So if previously, we had 1600 shaders as the maximum on a card, there's the potential to fit maybe up to 3200shaders.

A 7970 has the potential to perform equally to the dual-gpu card of the previous generation or nearly doubling performance as opposed to the yearly incremental +20-30% performance jumps.

Of course, there's a good chance due to 28nm process being new.... ATI might go for smaller chip sizes to improve yields and go for far less shaders that what's theroetically possible this first generation and then slowly ramp up as the 28nm process matures. Regardless, exciting times for PC enthusiasts.

The last time we had a fabrication process change was going from the 38xx series to the 48xx series. That was from 55nm to 40nm which is a bit smaller change comparatively since that's 3025 nm^2 to 1600nm^2. A bit under twice as much could be put into the same space as opposed to this change were its a bit over twice as much.
 
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