I am thinking about building a 7970 CF setup, I was wondering for multi-monitor should I get a 6GB card as the main card and 3GB for the rest, or would they then all have to be 6GB cards? If they don't all have to be 6GB cards would there be any performance increase if you did go all 6GB in CF as apposed to 6GB+3GB.
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Question on 7970 CF setup
- Thread starter DeGumbia
- Start date
No point in buying a 6gig card to crossfire with a 3gig. You'll only use 3gig of memory per card, as the memory needs to be mirrored on the 2 cards. 2x6gig cards would give you the benefit of the additional RAM in games that can use it. I think Hitman Absolution is the only current title that can exceed 3 gig even with Eyefinity 5760*1080/1200 (Someone correct me if I'm wrong.). If you mod games you might find some mods that can use more than 3gig. After the PS4 releases though you might find more games using greater than 3gig, seeing as it's going to have 8gig shared RAM (System and Video combined).
7970 has 3 GB of VRAM.
7990 has 3 GB of VRAM per GPU. All the marketing touts "6GB of memory!!!!!" but it's a sucker punch. You gain nothing with a 7990 except that you have Crossfire on a stick instead of having two separate 7970s, which are actually cheaper.
I can see absolutely no advantage to buying a 7990 at this time, excepting the space saving.
I have EyeFinity with three 24" 1920 x 1200 monitors and have yet to see any of my games get close to using 3 GB of VRAM.
If you really want 6 GB of VRAM per GPU you'll have to buy a Titan.
7990 has 3 GB of VRAM per GPU. All the marketing touts "6GB of memory!!!!!" but it's a sucker punch. You gain nothing with a 7990 except that you have Crossfire on a stick instead of having two separate 7970s, which are actually cheaper.
I can see absolutely no advantage to buying a 7990 at this time, excepting the space saving.
I have EyeFinity with three 24" 1920 x 1200 monitors and have yet to see any of my games get close to using 3 GB of VRAM.
If you really want 6 GB of VRAM per GPU you'll have to buy a Titan.
7970 has 3 GB of VRAM.
7990 has 3 GB of VRAM per GPU. All the marketing touts "6GB of memory!!!!!" but it's a sucker punch. You gain nothing with a 7990 except that you have Crossfire on a stick instead of having two separate 7970s, which are actually cheaper.
I can see absolutely no advantage to buying a 7990 at this time, excepting the space saving.
I have EyeFinity with three 24" 1920 x 1200 monitors and have yet to see any of my games get close to using 3 GB of VRAM.
If you really want 6 GB of VRAM per GPU you'll have to buy a Titan.
...or a 6gb 7970.....
I didn't realize that Sapphire had a 6GB version.
I would think, however that before you'll need 6 GB of RAM, there will be new GPUs released that are more than what we have now, and may even be equipped with higher RAM as standard.
That's_Corporate
[H]ard|Gawd
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I didn't realize that Sapphire had a 6GB version.
I would think, however that before you'll need 6 GB of RAM, there will be new GPUs released that are more than what we have now, and may even be equipped with higher RAM as standard.
Well, I think the nVidia Titan has almost 6 GB, and if I'm not mistaken [H] said that it's usable in modern games. So it sounds like 6GB is completely rational at this point.
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That totally right... From this point the games will start to consume lot amount of ram, with the arrive of the next gen games.... Of course full ultra gigh resolutions, at 1080p/1200p. The increase of vram consumtion will be like 500mb - 1GB more... Thats why mainly almost all medium-end to high-end cards comes with at least 2GB of ram. A oldie game like skyrim wih the high definition texture DLC the games consume up to 1400-1500mb of vram...
Also to the main topic its no point of waste that amount of ram.. In fact if one card is 2GB and other 1GB 1 card will loose 1gb of ram.. And that make a hit of performance... Its better to go 3gb+3gb
With the type of coolers those cards have, you'll need a large case with really good airflow to them cool. Also, they take up 2.5 slots each so make sure that won't be a problem for you.
Shouldn't be an issue, I run a Mountain Mod Ascension case, and the cards are going in my old EVGA 4-way SLI mobo
EDIT: Actually rethinking my card choice, what are the best 7970's for OCing, as in voltage unlocked, possible watercooled setup. I'd like the best cards for possible 4 way CF on air first, but WC'd later. My case and MB are huge, but still 2 slot width per card is my max for 4 way. I am currently running GTX 580's, but NvIDIA blows at bitcoin mining.
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If you are going to watercool you will want to find reference cards, might have to go used to find them though, not sure if there are many still for sale new.
If you are going to use air for now, and want excellent air cooling, then possibly go water, the Asus DCII and Matrix both have excellent cooling stock and you can get full coverage waterblocks for them. The MSI Lightning and PE (same card except for clocks) also have full coverage waterblocks available. Other than that reference is the way to go. While the cooling is effective, it will get quite noisy if you push some voltage through them for heavy O/C'ing.
Air for now, but my requirements are full coverage waterblock with unlocked voltage, do either of those 2 cards listed have unlocked voltage?
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Yes both are unlocked same with the FTW Edition of EVGA.. Unlocked too. The main difference its the MSI PE comes with triple overvoltage adjust levels (GPU, memory and PLL).. More secure and precise OC...