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4870x2 power consumption vs 7970
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dragonstongue
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7970 are quite efficent overall, they use very little power considering what under the hood sort of speak, hell you can probably overclock them to thier upper edge to equal a 4870x2 and it would most certainly blow anything else out there out of the water, and consume less still Spec wise, 7970 is 250w, they fall far below this, one place I was reviewing showed even with a mass overclocked version it was just barely touching this load while running furmark no less, so they are by far power efficent.
lavaheadache
Gawd
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I'm fairly certain Dragonstongue was referring to power draw when he said oveclocking a 7970 would be equal to an HD4870X2
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dragonstongue
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yeppers, from what I can see, a heavy test on 4870x2 will chew close to 300watts, 7970 on the other hand will be hard pressed to get near its 250w tdp, taking overclocking into the mix, then you probably push maybe 275w at most I would imagine, but this is with some major stress testing.
I would throw rough actual consumption for the 4870x2 in the 250+watt average without overclocking
7970 200w with some moderate overclocking. 7970 will be easily as powerfull if not a fair deal faster.
6870 is pretty much 2x as powerfull as my older 4870 was at stock clocks, 7970 is at least another good chunk ahead, so maybe 3x as powerfull which to say the least will make it faster then 4870x2 5990 or for that matter even 6870x2 I imagine, to top it off, what it may lack in horsepower compared to some of them, it easily trumps them when overclocking comes into play, not needing that much power, and gaining a significant more horsepower.
I would throw rough actual consumption for the 4870x2 in the 250+watt average without overclocking
7970 200w with some moderate overclocking. 7970 will be easily as powerfull if not a fair deal faster.
6870 is pretty much 2x as powerfull as my older 4870 was at stock clocks, 7970 is at least another good chunk ahead, so maybe 3x as powerfull which to say the least will make it faster then 4870x2 5990 or for that matter even 6870x2 I imagine, to top it off, what it may lack in horsepower compared to some of them, it easily trumps them when overclocking comes into play, not needing that much power, and gaining a significant more horsepower.
dragonstongue
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940BE at stock clocks or overclocked?
Either way, for a single gpu your fine. I have a 955, Have it clocked anywhere from 4.1 to 4.2, memory 1333-1866 cpu/nb 2400-2800 I play all the games I have with no issue with a 6870 also overclocked 965/1135 core/mem, the frame rates do fluctuate but very small amounts.
I play BF3 medium/high settings, with a couple things turned off or what have you, 1920x1080 anywhere from 58-90fps @60Hz, if anything I am seeing my gpu not have enough oomph to run it all high/ultra.
Most games and single card users do not "benefit" from Intel chips, notice I said most, there are some that do yes, but overall any AMD modern 4-6-8core is plenty fast for just about anything. So to be honest, there is no need of upgrading if all you are doing is gaming. 2500k/2600k are faster yes, but not that many games show that much advantage.
Alot of my clan uses AMD chips, and alot use Intel, there are just as many on both sides that use Nvidia or Radeon, they all get similar setting, frame rates, and are all plenty happy. So if you are just "wanting" to get something newest, best, thats one thing, but don`t base it on anything other then your needs, you may not get what you feel you are looking for out of it
Either way, for a single gpu your fine. I have a 955, Have it clocked anywhere from 4.1 to 4.2, memory 1333-1866 cpu/nb 2400-2800 I play all the games I have with no issue with a 6870 also overclocked 965/1135 core/mem, the frame rates do fluctuate but very small amounts.
I play BF3 medium/high settings, with a couple things turned off or what have you, 1920x1080 anywhere from 58-90fps @60Hz, if anything I am seeing my gpu not have enough oomph to run it all high/ultra.
Most games and single card users do not "benefit" from Intel chips, notice I said most, there are some that do yes, but overall any AMD modern 4-6-8core is plenty fast for just about anything. So to be honest, there is no need of upgrading if all you are doing is gaming. 2500k/2600k are faster yes, but not that many games show that much advantage.
Alot of my clan uses AMD chips, and alot use Intel, there are just as many on both sides that use Nvidia or Radeon, they all get similar setting, frame rates, and are all plenty happy. So if you are just "wanting" to get something newest, best, thats one thing, but don`t base it on anything other then your needs, you may not get what you feel you are looking for out of it
phiberoptik
Limp Gawd
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Yeah i'd stick with the 4870x2 it's a beast of a card
Flyinfinni
[H]ard|Gawd
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With your system, I would probably upgrade the CPU/Mobo (Maybe RAM?) first -especially if you are on AM2+/DDR2- and then increment with the other parts. PSU will be ok for a bit, and the upgrade to a 7970 will probably be held back a little from its full potential by your CPU.
dragonstongue
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cpu at 3.4-3.6-3.8-4.0-4.1-4.2 you should almost see an incremental gain in performance at 4.0-4.3 it really takes alot of voltage and a nice chip and is certainly held back by temps to hit ~4.2+
Am3+ and DDR3 will let it breath a little better, but it may not gain that much?
2048 res will probably see a very decent performance improvement by the newer card, and will probably make a very significant boost on the cpu being higher speed.
As far as the being held back bit, maybe a tad, but upping the clock speed and only using a single card, will probably not show much justifiable difference(unless using programs that can take advantage of more cores/raw speed) but at this point, resolution wise, you are tapping the gpu more then anything else, so faster cpu, better board, better cpu/nb and HT will feed gpu more effectively, but, is it really worth the cost.
I say just get the new card first, clock up the cpu if you see the need, clock the card up, and see the differences at different points, if you are bottlenecking the cpu, it should be plainly obvious if you keep an eye on the performance such as FPS or Mhash/s or whatever, this might help you get the best performance out of your $.
Am3+ and DDR3 will let it breath a little better, but it may not gain that much?
2048 res will probably see a very decent performance improvement by the newer card, and will probably make a very significant boost on the cpu being higher speed.
As far as the being held back bit, maybe a tad, but upping the clock speed and only using a single card, will probably not show much justifiable difference(unless using programs that can take advantage of more cores/raw speed) but at this point, resolution wise, you are tapping the gpu more then anything else, so faster cpu, better board, better cpu/nb and HT will feed gpu more effectively, but, is it really worth the cost.
I say just get the new card first, clock up the cpu if you see the need, clock the card up, and see the differences at different points, if you are bottlenecking the cpu, it should be plainly obvious if you keep an eye on the performance such as FPS or Mhash/s or whatever, this might help you get the best performance out of your $.