Crossfired 6950s versus 670

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Dominus Anulorunm

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I currently have one 2gb 6950 on my rig. I plan on doing a few upgrades soon and the one at the top of my list is the video card. However, I am not sure which option to go with. A second 6950 would offer more brute power at the cost of some stability, whereas a 670 would offer stability and good performance, but cost more. What would y'all suggest?
 
If you already had 6950's in crossfire, I would say to stick with them. (That is what I have.) However, I would go for the GTX 670 in this case unless you can get another 2GB 6950 real cheap.
 
I was in a similar situation as you were but I just did an upgrade from a 6950 1gb to a 670 and i won't go back. Having a single card ran okay for most games and ran a bit better when i unlocked them. But as soon as i added that second 1gb card everything went to hell.

Either 12.4 has problems with the games i'm playing or the cards didn't match up. I tried everything from putting them back to stock shaders and running stock no overclock and i still had lingering stutter problems in BF3 and even dota 2. Once Diablo 3 hit and was getting "AMD Display drivers not responding" issue and did the safe mode driver sweeper routine with no avail i buckled down and got a 670.

I've only had it for a day but everything runs so much better. Crysis 2 is so buttery smooth i think im going to restart the campaign. BF3 finally runs at max (probably more has to do with the 2gb VRAM) and icenhancer gta4 is maxed out. Finally D3 and dota 2 have never been more smooth on VSYNC using the adaptive vsync that nvidia has i dont get anymore screen tear with my wild map clicking in dota.

To top it all off nvidia just came out with a driver this morning whereas amd is still a month behind.

TL;DR
I had 2 6950 1gb in Xfire but got fed up with AMDs driver issues and bought a 670 instead,
 
xero404 said:
I was in a similar situation as you were but I just did an upgrade from a 6950 1gb to a 670 and i won't go back. Having a single card ran okay for most games and ran a bit better when i unlocked them. But as soon as i added that second 1gb card everything went to hell.

Either 12.4 has problems with the games i'm playing or the cards didn't match up. I tried everything from putting them back to stock shaders and running stock no overclock and i still had lingering stutter problems in BF3 and even dota 2. Once Diablo 3 hit and was getting "AMD Display drivers not responding" issue and did the safe mode driver sweeper routine with no avail i buckled down and got a 670.

I've only had it for a day but everything runs so much better. Crysis 2 is so buttery smooth i think im going to restart the campaign. BF3 finally runs at max (probably more has to do with the 2gb VRAM) and icenhancer gta4 is maxed out. Finally D3 and dota 2 have never been more smooth on VSYNC using the adaptive vsync that nvidia has i dont get anymore screen tear with my wild map clicking in dota.

To top it all off nvidia just came out with a driver this morning whereas amd is still a month behind.

TL;DR
I had 2 6950 1gb in Xfire but got fed up with AMDs driver issues and bought a 670 instead,
Click to expand...

Could have been 1gb related, because my 6950 2gbs run great in xfire.
 
I recently considered the same and went with a 670. I recently sold my 6950 2gb, and after fees/shipping I got $170, and now have a GTX 670. So the total upgrade cost was $230, which is about $30-$40 more than another 6950 would have cost me. I feel like perceived performance with dual GPU is 40-50% less than what the actual frame counter shows (based off personal experience with micro-sutter). So if you're getting 100% scaling, you're really only netting a perceived 50-60% increase in performance. That's why I just decided to go with a 670, as that is close enough to the performance boost I'd get using CF, and while using much less power.
 
Dominus Anulorunm said:
So the two 6950s are more powerful in terms of raw performance, but a single 670 is more stable? Is that the case?
Click to expand...



Yes, that's essentially it. Plus, if you decide to go with a dual video card solution down the road you can get a second 670 when it gets cheaper and not have to worry about micro-stutter.
 
Dominus Anulorunm said:
So the two 6950s are more powerful in terms of raw performance, but a single 670 is more stable? Is that the case?
Click to expand...

They're going to be fairly close though in terms of performance (within 10% I would wager). A 670, assuming you were to overclock will be roughly around 480GTXs SLIed. A 480 is slightly more powerful than a 6950.

Personally, if performance is so close, I would always choose a single card over SLI/XF.
 
I would go for a single GTX 670 over CFX 6950 2GB, especially when ATI is so slow in adding proper CFX support.

As a matter of fact, that's exactly what I just did. And I still got one reference HIS 6950 2GB card to sell, if you decide to go that route :)
 
I went from 6950 2gb cfx to a 7970, and I had no complaints, even though I did lose a little performance in select games. I never had any real issues with crossfire that I can remember either. So considering a 670 and 7970 are close in performance, I'd say go single 670.
 
Last edited:
xero404 said:
I was in a similar situation as you were but I just did an upgrade from a 6950 1gb to a 670 and i won't go back. Having a single card ran okay for most games and ran a bit better when i unlocked them. But as soon as i added that second 1gb card everything went to hell.

Either 12.4 has problems with the games i'm playing or the cards didn't match up. I tried everything from putting them back to stock shaders and running stock no overclock and i still had lingering stutter problems in BF3 and even dota 2. Once Diablo 3 hit and was getting "AMD Display drivers not responding" issue and did the safe mode driver sweeper routine with no avail i buckled down and got a 670.

I've only had it for a day but everything runs so much better. Crysis 2 is so buttery smooth i think im going to restart the campaign. BF3 finally runs at max (probably more has to do with the 2gb VRAM) and icenhancer gta4 is maxed out. Finally D3 and dota 2 have never been more smooth on VSYNC using the adaptive vsync that nvidia has i dont get anymore screen tear with my wild map clicking in dota.

To top it all off nvidia just came out with a driver this morning whereas amd is still a month behind.

TL;DR
I had 2 6950 1gb in Xfire but got fed up with AMDs driver issues and bought a 670 instead,
Click to expand...
on the same boat. going to ditch the CF setup tomorrow. not sure whether to get HD7970 or GTX670 though. i really like the Adaptive V-Sync thingy,
 
I am running 2x6950 2GB since Jan. 2011 and I will nerver, EVER go dual card again. It has been nothing but issues and subpar performance. Was also my first, and last, experience with AMD cards.
 
Well, I think I always advise people to go with the most powerfull single card that they can afford and I would advise you to do the same.

But I am going to add this, just in case you do decide to go crossfire to save money. This year I changed from 6950's in crossfire to a 680gtx. I had no problems with the 6950's in any game. They worked perfectly in the 14 months that I had them. In fact I have had more problems with the 680 than I ever had with the 6950's.
 
I have CFX 6950 2gb and they run perfectly fine, zero issues with drivers or games. BF3 runs buttery smooth. For people having problems, it is either an issue with one of your cards, software issues(clean install + drivers, or a driver sweeper should fix), or it is a 1gb memory limitation.
 
I've been running watercooled 6950 2GB for over 2 years now, Never had issues with drivers in both my Intel and AMD systems..

I recently upgraded also to the GTX670s, then my wife got my a second one. Now I have have the GTX670 in SLI and both water cooled. Best cards I have used so far...

My other system that was running SLI GTX470s were also upgraded to a single GTX 670.. performance was night and day...
 
670 = much nicer than 6950's, but it comes at a price. I would recommend it to any of my friends however. I've never been too in love with CF/SLI.
 
My 6950 were Crossfired and never had issues... As along as drivers are updated 99% of the time I haven't ran into problems..
 
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