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How long will CF/SLI last?

J

jumper

n00b
Joined
Sep 16, 2011
Messages
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I am thinking of getting neither a pair of HD 6870 or GTX 560 for gaming at1680x1050.. but I was wondering how long these will last before any major upgrade is needed?
On a 2500k and a 8gb memory system that is....
Thanks in advance.
 
Its gonna be overkill but you it should last you atleast quite a while. You could probably get 4-5 years at that resolution.

Alot also depends on the type of games you play also.
 
Go for it. You will see some benefit in games like Crysis 2 with SLI'ed 560 Ti's at 1680x1050. But you can't go wrong with the 6870's either, and they're usually cheaper. Either way, it should keep you going for a few years at least.
 
I read that at 1680x1050 a single card is sufficient, but I wanted to play up coming games with some decent eye candy level. i.e BF3 ( I know I know.. still beta.). and since a 6950 is already around 250, I might as well throw in a little more and get two cards, so I can install and forget about it:D
Thanks for the feedback, now I can buy them with confidence.
 
teletran8 said:
Won''t he need 2GB cards to last that long?
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nah, at his resolution 1GB is plenty.. now if he wanted to upgrade to a higher resolution say 1920x1200 then the 1GB vram might become a slight limitation but even then 1GB is still enough unless you wanted to run 8xMSAA or higher which quite frankly isn't needed. i mean hell even my 8800GS can run 4xMSAA in dirt 3 at 1920x1200 with 384mb of video memory so it really depends on the game.
 
why bother with crossfire if you dont need too tho?

there are plenty of single card out there with the performance of 6870's in crossfire.

for example a single 6970 is almost as good but withou the headache of a game not supporting crossfire properly.

i have 2 6870's and would much rather have a single 6970.

only reason i have 2 6870's is because when i got them (needed to get them before xmas) 6970's were not out yet. so i didnt have the choice people have now.

imo crossfire is usually only for high end systems and is usually not needed for midrange systems becasue there tend to be single gpu's just as powerful and midrange crossfire. unless you are getting a super deal on 2 cards making them alot cheaper than the single card solution.
 
Wildace said:
for example a single 6970 is almost as good but withou the headache of a game not supporting crossfire properly.

imo crossfire is usually only for high end systems and is usually not needed for midrange systems becasue there tend to be single gpu's just as powerful and midrange crossfire. unless you are getting a super deal on 2 cards making them alot cheaper than the single card solution.
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Agreed. Get a single 6970 or 570/580 and be happy. Then later on down the line if it isn't enough, get a 2nd one when they are much cheaper. Crossfire/SLI works well nowadays, but it absolutely causes more issues and hassle than a single card. If your SLI/Xfire setup with low-end cards isn't that much stronger than a single high end card, go for a single card.
 
single card solution would be better like most ppl said.

as for upgrade it depends on how picky you are about settings/fps.
 
Got my GTX 460 SLI and my 5850 CFX for about 1.5-2 years now, and haven't had the itch for a GPU upgrade. The only thing I'm worried about is the lack of ram each set up has. I haven't had any issues maxing out EVERYTHING on either set up. Should last me another 1.5 2 years. Considering the 6870 is a bit quicker than the 5850 and GTX460, I think you'll be sitting pretty for a while.
 
Ok, I'm a pretty big proponent of CFX and SLI. I have a single 6850 in my HTPC in my living room, and no problems. I have a single GTX460 in my bedroom's HTPC, no problems. In one office I have a 5850 CFX set up, no problems. In my other office I have a GTX460 SLI set up, again no problems. I have 300+ games installed on each machine through Steam and non have issues. Not saying that they don't exist, I just have not come accross any. I would personally pick a GTX560 in SLI or 6870 in CFX over a GTX580 or Radeon 6970 because in some cases it's cheaper, and you get better performance.

Make sure you have a PSU capable of using two cards. If you have a 650w PSU or less, you may want to go with a 6970. However a quality 750w+ pushes SLI/CFX really well. I have a 750w Corsair running my 5850's and a BFG 1000w running my GTX460's. I tried SLIing two GTS450's with a 600w PSU, and the machine shut down while I was stress testing them. Make sure your PSU can support them.
 
Dude im running 3 6970's in Tri-Fire at 1920X1200 and i like all the eyecandy plus The highest AA and let me tell you when you start enabling SuperSampling you need some Horse Power, Once you start playing games like that you will never go back!
 
This +1

Marcdaddy said:
Dude im running 3 6970's in Tri-Fire at 1920X1200 and i like all the eyecandy plus The highest AA and let me tell you when you start enabling SuperSampling you need some Horse Power, Once you start playing games like that you will never go back!
Click to expand...
 
sirmonkey1985 said:
nah, at his resolution 1GB is plenty.. now if he wanted to upgrade to a higher resolution say 1920x1200 then the 1GB vram might become a slight limitation but even then 1GB is still enough unless you wanted to run 8xMSAA or higher which quite frankly isn't needed. i mean hell even my 8800GS can run 4xMSAA in dirt 3 at 1920x1200 with 384mb of video memory so it really depends on the game.
Click to expand...

Recently I've seen my vram usage maxed out with a modded Fallout 3 and a modded Doom 3 install at 1080p on a GTX570. I've seen vram hovering around 1GB in more games than you would think at that res and I never use more than 4x AA.

Personally I would buy one card and invest in a nice 120hz 3d ready monitor. That will last you longer than the cards.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Sure, SLI or Crossfire top-end cards, but 6870s...?
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Umm...5850's in CFX are in the same ballpark as a 6870 in CFX and it decimates the 6970 and GTX580 in performance.As well as the GTX460's,they area about on the same level as 6870's and again make mince-meat out of a single GTX580 or 6970.

As a single monitor gamer, I don't think Ill get another top-card again. I'm hoping that the 7870 (hopefully available only as a 2GB Card) provides similar/better performance as a 6970, so I can get two in CFX and still be ahead of the game. Only issue is I don't see a GTX460 in SLI or a Radeon 5850 in CFX ever lacking in horsepower (for One Monitor) in the foreseeable future so upgrading them to 7870's and GTX660's would seem foolish.

However if you intend to use Eyefinity, I could see wanting to use GPU kings like the GTX580 and Radeon 6970 in SLI or CFX.
 
No telling but games are getting more demanding. On one hand you have post process AA growing in popularity and that is LESS memory demanding and on the other hand the new game engines are really taxing vram and GPU's. I would get 2GB cards just to future proof for a few years. 1GB cards may hold you back if;

You decide to upgrade monitors
Fall in love with high Res Texture packs (I did)
Play the highest end games and they get more demanding
Like to max all your games and hate post process AA
 
Marcdaddy said:
Dude im running 3 6970's in Tri-Fire at 1920X1200 and i like all the eyecandy plus The highest AA and let me tell you when you start enabling SuperSampling you need some Horse Power, Once you start playing games like that you will never go back!
Click to expand...
+1

i run 3 unlocked 6950s at 1080p on my 42in plasma tv and its and amazing feel to play whit every thing maxed and full aa af and every thing else. is it over kill yes but i used bitcoins to buy the 3td card so i didn't cost me any thing. would i have bought the 3td one whit out them nope but im glade i have them now
 
Rauelius said:
Umm...5850's in CFX are in the same ballpark as a 6870 in CFX and it decimates the 6970 and GTX580 in performance.As well as the GTX460's,they area about on the same level as 6870's and again make mince-meat out of a single GTX580 or 6970.

As a single monitor gamer, I don't think Ill get another top-card again. I'm hoping that the 7870 (hopefully available only as a 2GB Card) provides similar/better performance as a 6970, so I can get two in CFX and still be ahead of the game. Only issue is I don't see a GTX460 in SLI or a Radeon 5850 in CFX ever lacking in horsepower (for One Monitor) in the foreseeable future so upgrading them to 7870's and GTX660's would seem foolish.

However if you intend to use Eyefinity, I could see wanting to use GPU kings like the GTX580 and Radeon 6970 in SLI or CFX.
Click to expand...

Pretty much exactly my thoughts on the situation. There's no reason to get a top-end card for $500 when you can get 2 $250 cards that outperform it by 50% or more.

The only real reason to upgrade is once cards reach a limit where the two mid-range cards you have are not as fast (or are about as fast) as one of the newer mid-range cards. Then it makes sense to upgrade and possibly go SLI/CFX later on if needed. Also, if you want new bells and whistles like DX11/etc.

I find for me that is about every other generation of cards.
 
MavericK96 said:
Pretty much exactly my thoughts on the situation. There's no reason to get a top-end card for $500 when you can get 2 $250 cards that outperform it by 50% or more.

The only real reason to upgrade is once cards reach a limit where the two mid-range cards you have are not as fast (or are about as fast) as one of the newer mid-range cards. Then it makes sense to upgrade and possibly go SLI/CFX later on if needed. Also, if you want new bells and whistles like DX11/etc.

I find for me that is about every other generation of cards.
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At his resolution, he doesn't even need a $500 top end card or 2 $250 cards, hell I saw a MSI 6950 2GB Twin Frozr II at Frys today for $230. I have a Twin Frozr III and I can game at 1080p with no problems in any game, I don't dip below 45FPS on BF3 Beta on high/ultra settings. Wouldn't it make more sense to spend $230-$250 now on a 6950, be able to game just fine w/o any driver headaches and when needed then go XFire? If 6950s are $230 now, they'll marginally cheaper used/new in 6-12 months when the next gen video cards come out.
 
Yeah, that was meant to be part of my point but I guess I forgot to add that. :cool: I mentioned it in another thread, but anyway...

Grab one card now, if it's good enough, cool, if not, get SLI/CFX sooner...or later when the next gen comes out and used cards are cheap.
 
TwistedAegis said:
Agreed. Get a single 6970 or 570/580 and be happy. Then later on down the line if it isn't enough, get a 2nd one when they are much cheaper. Crossfire/SLI works well nowadays, but it absolutely causes more issues and hassle than a single card. If your SLI/Xfire setup with low-end cards isn't that much stronger than a single high end card, go for a single card.
Click to expand...

I disagree. I feel CFX allows you to get better performance than a single card for less money. By the time the single 6970 is getting obsolete a new generation of ATI cards will exist and the availability of getting another 6970 will be limited so the price will approach a single new gen card making it useless.
 
Gizmotron said:
I disagree. I feel CFX allows you to get better performance than a single card for less money. By the time the single 6970 is getting obsolete a new generation of ATI cards will exist and the availability of getting another 6970 will be limited so the price will approach a single new gen card making it useless.
Click to expand...

You are both right and wrong -- CFX gives you a nice kick in the pants performance wise for not too much money (since you already have 50% of the hardware running)

Your logic about a time in the future when the 6970 is "old" and "the same price" as current gen hardware is pretty much wrong. Yes there is a supply and demand curve for the 6970, however next gen cards will cost anywhere from 300 to 600 dollars. Even with a limited supply of 6970's there is no way they are going to cost THAT much.

Think about it this way -- if your logic was true there would still be people out there willing to pay 350 dollars for my GTX280 since they are "very rare" these days. This obviously isn't the case.

Not trying to be an ass or anything. Hell, I'm buying a 6950 2GB card today from newegg because my GTX280 is too damn old. While I really wanted to wait for the 7000 series, it could be 6 months before they hit and there are just too many good games coming out to wait and play on a 280.

In 6 months the 6950 2GB will be even cheaper and can get some wicked crossfire performance for maybe only an additional 175-200 dollars.
 
Honestly, at this point, and at that resolution, I would only recommend you go SLI/CFX if you already have at least one of the cards needed. That's the only reason I went with CFX with my 6950 2GB Twin Frozr III's (well, my friend wanted to buy my reference 6950 2GB, so I bought 1 of my Twin Frozr's with that money, and then used whatever money I had laying around for the second).
 
collegeboy69us said:
You are both right and wrong -- CFX gives you a nice kick in the pants performance wise for not too much money (since you already have 50% of the hardware running)

Your logic about a time in the future when the 6970 is "old" and "the same price" as current gen hardware is pretty much wrong. Yes there is a supply and demand curve for the 6970, however next gen cards will cost anywhere from 300 to 600 dollars. Even with a limited supply of 6970's there is no way they are going to cost THAT much.

Think about it this way -- if your logic was true there would still be people out there willing to pay 350 dollars for my GTX280 since they are "very rare" these days. This obviously isn't the case.

Not trying to be an ass or anything. Hell, I'm buying a 6950 2GB card today from newegg because my GTX280 is too damn old. While I really wanted to wait for the 7000 series, it could be 6 months before they hit and there are just too many good games coming out to wait and play on a 280.

In 6 months the 6950 2GB will be even cheaper and can get some wicked crossfire performance for maybe only an additional 175-200 dollars.
Click to expand...


I had a GTX 280 from sophomore year of college and I'm a senior now and I just replaced it with 2 HD 6870's. The 6870's kick ass in every game at 1920x1080 even BF3 Beta. That's with a core i7 920 @ 3.6 Ghz. 2 6950's would obviously be even better but compared to just one, my rig stomps all over a 1 6950 rig.
 
I'd say you're more likely to upgrade from that because of lack of features (uber-tesselation kinds of things) than running out of power.
 
Gizmotron said:
I had a GTX 280 from sophomore year of college and I'm a senior now and I just replaced it with 2 HD 6870's. The 6870's kick ass in every game at 1920x1080 even BF3 Beta. That's with a core i7 920 @ 3.6 Ghz. 2 6950's would obviously be even better but compared to just one, my rig stomps all over a 1 6950 rig.
Click to expand...

No shit, those two 6870s also cost a lot more than a single 6950. A 6950 isn't even that much more expensive than a 6870 yet is a much faster card.

Crossfire and Sli isn't perfect either. There are still issues like microstutter and performance doesn't always scale. I would never buy a couple of mid range cards like GTX460s in an attempt to get the same performance as a high end card like a GTX570. The 570 will be the more reliable performer and will also be a smoother experience.
 
Rauelius said:
Umm...5850's in CFX are in the same ballpark as a 6870 in CFX and it decimates the 6970 and GTX580 in performance.As well as the GTX460's,they area about on the same level as 6870's and again make mince-meat out of a single GTX580 or 6970.

As a single monitor gamer, I don't think Ill get another top-card again. I'm hoping that the 7870 (hopefully available only as a 2GB Card) provides similar/better performance as a 6970, so I can get two in CFX and still be ahead of the game. Only issue is I don't see a GTX460 in SLI or a Radeon 5850 in CFX ever lacking in horsepower (for One Monitor) in the foreseeable future so upgrading them to 7870's and GTX660's would seem foolish.

However if you intend to use Eyefinity, I could see wanting to use GPU kings like the GTX580 and Radeon 6970 in SLI or CFX.
Click to expand...

6870 CFX creams 5850 CFX. IIRC 6870=5870 and last time I checked AMD 5XXX series scaling was never that impressive
 
TwisedGenius said:
6870 CFX creams 5850 CFX. IIRC 6870=5870 and last time I checked AMD 5XXX series scaling was never that impressive
Click to expand...

No, 6950 performs closer to 5870. 6870 is just a little faster than 5850 but doesn't overclock half as well.

Also Barts and Cayman crossfire scaling is much better than Cypress.
 
BababooeyHTJ said:
No, 6950 performs closer to 5870. 6870 is just a little faster than 5850 but doesn't overclock half as well.

Also Barts and Cayman crossfire scaling is much better than Cypress.
Click to expand...

I think you got that wrong bababooeyHTJ. The 6850 is just a little bit faster than a 5850. The 6900 cards aren't amazingly faster than 5800 cards though. 6950 performs just under a GTX 480 and 6970 performs about GTX 480 or 5% faster.

Edit: Sorry Bababooey I meant 6870
 
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perfrel_1920.gif
 
Gizmotron said:
I had a GTX 280 from sophomore year of college and I'm a senior now and I just replaced it with 2 HD 6870's. The 6870's kick ass in every game at 1920x1080 even BF3 Beta. That's with a core i7 920 @ 3.6 Ghz. 2 6950's would obviously be even better but compared to just one, my rig stomps all over a 1 6950 rig.
Click to expand...


:)

I just ordered my XFX 6950 2GB Dual fan card today from the egg -- 279 free shipping, free Dirt3, and a 30 dollar mail in rebate. So $250 dollars for a huge huge upgrade :) I'm happy!

I'm working a 2500k sitting at 4.5Ghz - 16GB of ram, and a 750W PSU, so I should be pretty damn golden. If I feel the need, I might pick up another card at the end of year, maybe when there are some cool christmas or new years sales going on. If I can score the same card ( i really want them to be 100% matched, not only for the compatibility factor, but it just looks way cooler :) Maybe by new years we will have solid figures on the 7000 series along with prices. If the next generation can push the price down another 50 bucks I'll be jumping all over it.
 
If there's one thing that makes me cringe, is gamers going high-end with their hardware but getting stingy when it comes to the display. :eek:

Should be excatly the opposite. :D

My rule of the thumb is, your display should always cost as much as your entire rig. Only then do the ends meet ;)
 
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