Another 3870x2...or?

P

phaelinx

Gawd
Joined
Mar 12, 2003
Messages
535
So I have a 3870x2 that I bought for $499 when they first came out.. it's now about 3 years old and while still allows me to play most games fine in 1920x1200 and high/ultra settings, I'm looking to upgrade.

should I dump another 3870x2 in there for about $80-$90 bucks for quad crossfireX? or should I put the money towards something like a single 6970?

I've tried to search for benchmarks on this and I really can't find much.. there's tons of talk of the 3870x2 vs older cards like the 4870, but I want something newer..

would I see a decent perf boost with adding another 3870x2?
 
CrossfireX scaling in the 3xxx generation is absolute shit beyond 2 cards, and lags behind the 4xxx/5xxx/6xxx series in almost all cases. You'd see almost zero performance increase 90% of the time, and the 10% or less of titles where it would scale effectively, you'd already be running 200FPS or something stupid with the original 2 GPUs. It's a pointless upgrade, money thrown away. Not to mention the noise and heat of 4 GPUs in the same box. That'd be torture.

I never owned a 3xxx series card, but I did have Tri-SLI 8000GTXs, and I can tell you that third card never did a damn thing for me. I remember the exact same results looking at benches for ATI cards in CrossfireX with 3 cards or Quadfire. It seems to be an architectural thing -- both companies have greatly improved scaling in the last few years. ATI, even in this last generation. Oddly the 4870s don't scale that well, the 4890s a little better, the 5870s not that well, the 6970s far better... No idea what's going on there, I haven't looked in to the hard tech enough, but I can tell you it clearly isn't as simple as a driver tweak or they would've done it already.

At this point, sell the 3870x2 for whatever you can get for it and pick up a 2GB 6950. It performs extremely well at stock, and you have a very good chance of getting one that'll unlock to 'full' shaders and OC to 6970 speeds for a good bit less cash than a 'real' 6970. Or you could buy my 4890s. :)
 
Is there a brand 6950 I should be looking for? or is it random?

I saw the 6970's at Fry's for like $329.. I didn't even notice the 6950's price because I was oogling over the 6970's..

I've been so out of the loop on video cards/prices so I'm a born again noob.
 
Nah they're all the same, reference cards. Make sure you get the 2GB, the 1GB won't unlock. Only difference between them at this point is warranty. XFX if you're paranoid and want excellent warranty support / maybe a small bump in resale value due to their double-lifetime warranty. Anyone else if you don't really care. Sapphire / HIS / Powercolor / ASUS, whoever.
 
no any brand of the 6950 should work get the 2gb version and if you want to sell the 3870 x2 for the right price i may buy it, im making a light duty lan rig soon
 
Yeah 3870X2 QuadCF is very poor, you won't see much of a benefit.
One 3870X2 is only as fast as an HD4850 in a best-case scenario. Two 3870X2s will therefore be slower than two HD4850s. Two HD4850s are slower than one HD6850, which is less than $175 after rebates.
In short, you can either go with 4 GPUs at 400W+ of power, lots of heat and noise, many first-gen QuadCF woes, or you can get a quiet, cool 130W card for <$175 with none of the above problems.

If you're willing to spend more than that, you'll do well with an HD6950 for $250 at 1920x1200.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top