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Crossfire 6870

HardUp4HardWare

HardUp4HardWare

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Aug 30, 2005
Messages
4,274
I have heard tell that more recent drivers have made crossfire performance better.
I am running a single 6870 and am desperate to upgrade my GPU.

For a drop in the bucket I can get a second 6870 used for around $80 and crossfire, but I am wondering if I am asking for trouble.

Is this a smart move or should I just start saving pennies?
 
I ran crossfire 6870s for about a year. They really never gave me any problems except for games that did not support crossfire even when forcing crossfire on games without a profile.

Those are few and far between.

A second 6870 will get you a pretty decent speed increase.

The new drivers do help a bit. As it was, I never really had the stuttering that other people complained about with my 6870s.

Is your 6870 a 1GB or a 2GB version?

If 1GB and playing at 1920x1080 or higher, you will be limited by how high you can set the detail in games and keep good framerate.

I ran the 1GB ones, and never really ran into that issue very much. I tend to keep the shadow detail at medium or low though as I do not like sharp edged shadows as that is not like how shadows are in real life. Gimme some nice fuzzy shadows and I am a happy camper.
 
I had some good times with my xfire 6870's, though my one GTX 760 is roughly the same performance as both 6870s just a tad slower. If you want to upgrade and have the need to upgrade right now, it would be fine, but if you don't really need the performance right now, then I would save your money. Dual 6870s are good and will play most everything at 1080p with good quality.
 
After very much reading I don't see much downside to trying the crossfire option.

2x6870 in the reviews I have read is pretty decent and any card better than that is >$300
Unless I am missing something, if I can get one for around $100 I may be doing pretty well until next upgrade time...

Is Microstutter an issue at 1080P or just higher resolutions?
 
I ran 2x 4870x2 in quad crossfire for years before my current setup. I don't think you really have anything to fear from crossfire, it was almost always a good experience for me.

You do have the potential to be VRam limited if you're talking about 1GB cards. A lot will come down to the resolution you plan to run at and what settings you use. Monitor your VRam usage in-game if possible.

I wouldn't worry about Microstutter. It's not about the resolution but the FPS imo. Microstutter doesn't become particularly noticeable until you're below ~50fps and moreso once you are down to 20-30fps or lower. The easy solution is to simply maintain a higher FPS...
 
Scaling is nearly double in some games. If you're only paying $80 it's more than worth it to add a second card. My 6870s still run most games nice and smooth on high settings @1080p.
 
Got my 2nd 6870 from a great eBay seller on Friday. Had it installed and did a complete removal and reinstall of my AMD ATI drivers.

After that the card(s) are playing together very nicely. Can max out everything in my Steam library for the first time ever. Looks and runs fantastic. Was concerned about noise and heat but this second card is very quiet I honestly can't tell the difference in sound. Heat may be a concern, but so far so good.

All in all I am getting the almost exact same benchmark as in Guru3D's 6870x2 review and that is excellent.

So far I have noticed ZERO issues with any game I have tried and they are all playing as smooth as butter. Maybe even better than before!

I expect a slight increase when I get my 4770K installed and from there I will be set for some time.

Thanks to all who responded and helped me decide to pull the trigger on this, I am very very pleased.
 
Glad to hear about your success! My 6870s in crossfire treated me very well until I upgraded to my 7950s.
 
I ran two XFX HD 6870's in Crossfire in my rig for about 2 years until I just recently bumped up to an r9 290. My Gosh, what an increase going from those to this. I wouldn't recommend buying another 6870, put the money towards something better. I never overclocked either of them, and the increase in performance going from 1 to 2 was substantial I don't think it's even worth $80 at this point. Example: You can run BF4 at all Med settings with those with no AA and stay mostly above 60fps but large servers the framerate spikes were almost unbearable. Turn on 2x AA and there goes all your vram. They scaled out well for Far Cry 3 - bad fps fluctuations and stuttering for me though, and for Bioshock Infinite. I don't remember if they even made those cards with 2GB? I think the standard ones had 1GB and there were a few with 1.5GB. Either way, I wouldn't do it. Bumping up to an r9 series has been nothing but wonderful for me.
 
Dr3amCast said:
I ran two XFX HD 6870's in Crossfire in my rig for about 2 years until I just recently bumped up to an r9 290. My Gosh, what an increase going from those to this. I wouldn't recommend buying another 6870, put the money towards something better. I never overclocked either of them, and the increase in performance going from 1 to 2 was substantial I don't think it's even worth $80 at this point. Example: You can run BF4 at all Med settings with those with no AA and stay mostly above 60fps but large servers the framerate spikes were almost unbearable. Turn on 2x AA and there goes all your vram. They scaled out well for Far Cry 3 - bad fps fluctuations and stuttering for me though, and for Bioshock Infinite. I don't remember if they even made those cards with 2GB? I think the standard ones had 1GB and there were a few with 1.5GB. Either way, I wouldn't do it. Bumping up to an r9 series has been nothing but wonderful for me.
Click to expand...

Too late!

Also considering a single 290 is around $600 and I don't play BF4 I am very happy where I am now performance wise.

I consider it an excellent way of extending my original investment in the first 6870. I tested every game including FC3 and am getting amazing performance on max/ultra settings @1080.
Not bad for $90.

Next time maybe I will drop the big bucks for the top end card but considering my needs and desires currently it is all about bang for the buck.
 
CFX 6870s is still a decent setup for 1080p, you can max just about everything and it will be playable, though once you step into 1440p, they will not cut it, my SLI 760s are cutting it just enough to have everything maxed on MWO, my lowest FPS was about 42 so far. Glad you are satisfied witht he 6870's mine served me well while I had them :).
 
If your budget is high then a single new card always wins, but your budget is under $100 adding a second 6870 is still a great upgrade. The 1GB limit is a bit of a bummer and will show its limit on some games but most games will run like a champ.
 
Just finished doing my system upgrade. So now I am running a i7-4770K on a Asus Z87-PLUS with just 4GB of 1600Mhz ram.
After doing this I ran 3DMark Vantage to compare the overall performance to my old setup, a I7-960.
My P Score in Vantage was over 31000!
Prior to the CPU upgrade I was getting around 27K

Most newer card reviews do not use 3Dmark vantage so I cant really do an apples to apples comparison with newer cards.
A Guru3D review of 7970 in crossfire was 36K so to get 31K is awesome.
Also is very stable and quiet so far (knock on wood right?)

I am going to be getting more ram soon, but I don't expect huge gains from that.

Not sure if I want to go 4GBx2 or 2GBx4 any real difference? Will post this in the memory section here later.
 
How has that cpu upgrade impacted your other games? I'm running an OC'd AMD Phenom II 965 @4ghz and would like to replace it with a 8350. Did you notice a perceivable increase in performance?

I also get a bit of stutter in some games due to my crossfire setup. Woud a faster cpu help speed up the frame times?
 
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