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5970 Quadfire thoughts

GotNoRice

GotNoRice

[H]F Junkie
2FA
Joined
Jul 11, 2001
Messages
12,820
I'm currently running 2x 4870x2 and I was just offered 2x 5970 by a friend who is retiring his bitcoin rigs. He offered me both together for $550 total. He also offered to sell me his 6990 for $550 if I wanted to go that route. If this had been a few months ago I probably would have jumped on the offer without hesitation, but now I'm not so sure. This what I've come up with.

Pros:
-I already run a quad-fire setup and am familiar with all the quirks associated with such a setup.
-Retarded amount of GPU power for the price.
-2x 5970 would actually use less power than my 2x 4870x2, though not by much.
-Finally able to jump on the DX11 bandwagon (though 10.1 hardware has hardly held me back)
-I would be able to upgrade my secondary rig from 2x 4850 to my current 2x 4870x2.

Cons:
-1GB VRam is potentially limiting, and may not let me utilize the full potential of all that GPU power. Though I run at 1080P and this may not be as big of a deal as it would at eyefinity resolutions.
-Cards have been used for Bitcoin farming and may fail prematurely.
-5xxx series cards purported to have worse crossfire scaling than 4xxx series (though I have my doubts about this).
-My main game is World of Warcraft where my existing cards are already good for 120+ FPS. I play other games such as Shogun 2: Total War and BF3 that will clearly benefit however.
-Committing to an old architecture months before new cards are supposedly going to be released.

The 6990 is tempting also since it would be a single card that is faster than both my current cards combined and it has 2GB VRam per GPU. I would definitely get a 2nd 6990 at some point next year, though $550 for a used 6990 doesn't seem like quite as good of a bargain.

Any thoughts on the subject will be appreciated.
 
I'd wait for the new cards to release. The 6990 is tempting but I've heard it has issues Skyrim, which no doubt will eventually be patched out. In any case if you wait you'll prob be able to spend 550 and get performance as good if not better from the new gpus that'll be released.

Yet, you might want to put this grain of salt with my opinion. I'm the guy that was using 4gb of dd2-800, a PII 940, a GA-MA770 until this month. It ran everything at more than acceptable fps, but it had it's performance issues. I was content to wait through all the BD delays to see which way I should upgrade. So, if you have that kind of patience, then waiting for the next line-up of cards would be the choice to make. If you have that itch so many system builders have then you might just have to scratch it, though I doubt it seeing as you're running 4870's.
 
Buy the 6990.

I have one. (+ a 6970) It's crazy good. It has 2GB per.
$550 is a good price considering the new ones are still over $700.

I'll sell you my 6990 when the new nvidia cards are released.:D
 
Well since BF3 doesnt play well on tri or quad fire and eyefinity it isnt worth it anyway for just that..
 
macksomerville said:
Well since BF3 doesnt play well on tri or quad fire and eyefinity it isnt worth it anyway for just that..
Click to expand...

Let me rephrase - you will want the extra vram for a two-GPU crossfire setup in BF3 at a resolution of 1920x1080. Ultra settings w/ MSAA off and FXAA on I regularly break the 1.5GB mark.
 
GotNoRice said:
I'm currently running 2x 4870x2 and I was just offered 2x 5970 by a friend who is retiring his bitcoin rigs. He offered me both together for $550 total. He also offered to sell me his 6990 for $550 if I wanted to go that route. If this had been a few months ago I probably would have jumped on the offer without hesitation, but now I'm not so sure. This what I've come up with.

Pros:
-I already run a quad-fire setup and am familiar with all the quirks associated with such a setup.
-Retarded amount of GPU power for the price.
-2x 5970 would actually use less power than my 2x 4870x2, though not by much.
-Finally able to jump on the DX11 bandwagon (though 10.1 hardware has hardly held me back)
-I would be able to upgrade my secondary rig from 2x 4850 to my current 2x 4870x2.

Cons:
-1GB VRam is potentially limiting, and may not let me utilize the full potential of all that GPU power. Though I run at 1080P and this may not be as big of a deal as it would at eyefinity resolutions.
-Cards have been used for Bitcoin farming and may fail prematurely.
-5xxx series cards purported to have worse crossfire scaling than 4xxx series (though I have my doubts about this).
-My main game is World of Warcraft where my existing cards are already good for 120+ FPS. I play other games such as Shogun 2: Total War and BF3 that will clearly benefit however.
-Committing to an old architecture months before new cards are supposedly going to be released.

The 6990 is tempting also since it would be a single card that is faster than both my current cards combined and it has 2GB VRam per GPU. I would definitely get a 2nd 6990 at some point next year, though $550 for a used 6990 doesn't seem like quite as good of a bargain.

Any thoughts on the subject will be appreciated.
Click to expand...

I would get the 6990 over the quad 5970. 1GB isn't as good as it used to be ( if we're talking at 2560x1600 resolution). The 6990 has better GPU scaling compared to the old 5xxx series. But for $500 you could get a single low power next gen card in a few months. It's really painful to recomment "old" tech unless you really really need it or want it.
 
macksomerville said:
Well since BF3 doesnt play well on tri or quad fire and eyefinity it isnt worth it anyway for just that..
Click to expand...

Well I already have a quadfire setup and BF3 runs great, so i'm not particularly concerned in that regard. One thing that seems to help a lot for me is using Edge-detect AA. I run at 12x AA (4x w/ edge-detect) and I get great performance at "High" settings. Edge-detect uses your stream processors to help with AA calculations instead of loading up your VRam.

Mr Mean said:
I would get the 6990 over the quad 5970. 1GB isn't as good as it used to be ( if we're talking at 2560x1600 resolution). The 6990 has better GPU scaling compared to the old 5xxx series. But for $500 you could get a single low power next gen card in a few months. It's really painful to recomment "old" tech unless you really really need it or want it.
Click to expand...

Well I'm running a 27" 1080P monitor. The lower res doesn't bother me honestly, and if/when I upgrade my monitor I'm more likely to try and make the jump to 120hz than I am to try and go for a bigger resolution.

It's hard to resist the temptation of 5970 quadfire as i've had my eye on that for a long time. It's just that these 4870x2 cards have been so good to me that it's been easy to put off the upgrade. I think i'm getting the picture now though that for a true upgrade I really need to go to a card with more VRam. If i'm going to go to another 1GB VRam setup I might as well just keep my current setup instead.

One thing i'm wondering is how much the price on current cards will go down once the new stuff is released. I got my 4870x2 cards used right after the 5870 came out and was able to buy them for amazing prices, especially considering that the performance still held up against the newer tech. I'm sure the new tech cards will be good, but i'm doubtful a single-GPU card will outperform a 6990. If that is the case then maybe the thing to do is wait until the new stuff is released - and then go for 2 6990s. At least then I would have the benefit of seeing what the newer tech is actually capable of while getting better prices than i could now.

I'm also considering nvidia. Mainly because WoW is my main game and it has always had an nvidia bias. I could probably afford a used GTX590. It's a real shame you can't tri-fire that with a GTX580 AMD style, but I could see myself getting a 2nd GTX590 down the road. Then the question becomes, is 1.5G enough compared to 2GB per GPU with a 6990 quadfire setup? At 1080P?
 
GotNoRice said:
I'm currently running 2x 4870x2 and I was just offered 2x 5970 by a friend who is retiring his bitcoin rigs. He offered me both together for $550 total. He also offered to sell me his 6990 for $550 if I wanted to go that route. If this had been a few months ago I probably would have jumped on the offer without hesitation, but now I'm not so sure. This what I've come up with.

Pros:
-I already run a quad-fire setup and am familiar with all the quirks associated with such a setup.
-Retarded amount of GPU power for the price.
-2x 5970 would actually use less power than my 2x 4870x2, though not by much.
-Finally able to jump on the DX11 bandwagon (though 10.1 hardware has hardly held me back)
-I would be able to upgrade my secondary rig from 2x 4850 to my current 2x 4870x2.

Cons:
-1GB VRam is potentially limiting, and may not let me utilize the full potential of all that GPU power. Though I run at 1080P and this may not be as big of a deal as it would at eyefinity resolutions.
-Cards have been used for Bitcoin farming and may fail prematurely.
-5xxx series cards purported to have worse crossfire scaling than 4xxx series (though I have my doubts about this).
-My main game is World of Warcraft where my existing cards are already good for 120+ FPS. I play other games such as Shogun 2: Total War and BF3 that will clearly benefit however.
-Committing to an old architecture months before new cards are supposedly going to be released.

The 6990 is tempting also since it would be a single card that is faster than both my current cards combined and it has 2GB VRam per GPU. I would definitely get a 2nd 6990 at some point next year, though $550 for a used 6990 doesn't seem like quite as good of a bargain.

Any thoughts on the subject will be appreciated.
Click to expand...

You'd be going for bragging rights....I have a single 5970 and getting 70+ fps in BF3 which is more than acceptable. There is too much tearing for my eyes and so I have turned vsync on anyway limiting to 60 fps at 1920 x 1200 with all settings maxed, but it is still silky smooth with the single dual-gpu card. IMHO, quadfire would be overkill esp for running at 1080. The 6990 would probably be the better route to go.
 
-Sn1PeR- said:
Let me rephrase - you will want the extra vram for a two-GPU crossfire setup in BF3 at a resolution of 1920x1080. Ultra settings w/ MSAA off and FXAA on I regularly break the 1.5GB mark.
Click to expand...
CF still sees the gpus as two individual gpus instead of one complete rendering engine.
Also even if you have the added vram you still need the horsepower to be able to utilize it.
 
Spooony said:
CF still sees the gpus as two individual gpus instead of one complete rendering engine.
Also even if you have the added vram you still need the horsepower to be able to utilize it.
Click to expand...

:rolleyes::rolleyes:

Yeah.... What's your point?
 
-Sn1PeR- said:
If you play BF3 you will want the extra vram.
Click to expand...

Even though BF3 can consume up to 1.5GB of Vram, it still doesn't mean that performance is affected by just using 1GB. I've seen benchmarks of 6950 1GB vs 2GB and they have the same performance at 1080p no AA.
 
the cards out there currently are "old"
with the new generation out in just a few months i see very little reason to buy now
 
crawlgsx said:
And? Turn the AA on you will see that change dramatically.

If I were you OP I would either get the 6990 or wait.
Click to expand...

Even with AA, there will be no dramatic change. Both cards will not handle the game well.
 
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