Radeon 5970 > 7970

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Verosend

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Dec 22, 2011
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I'm looking to build a new system .. not entirely sure yet, I don't game on my PC as much as I use to (but still want something that will last)

So .. currently I am running

Intel Core i7-920
6GB Kingston HyperX T1 (PC3-16000)
Asus Rampage ii Extreme
Diamond MM (UGH) Radeon 5970

And looking to go toward a
Intel Core i5-3570K
Asrock Z77 Extreme4
8GB G.Skill Ripjaw

and maybe a .. Radeon 7970.

I've been doing alot of reading. I orginally got the card to run 3x monitors, but have scaled back a single one. I mainly game at 1920x1080, which is fine for me. And from what I've read, besides a few bells and whistles, there are not alot of upgrades unless I dump alot of money on a high end vid card (this current monster cost me $730 back in 2010).

I got my money out of it, but feel I can stretch is a bit more. Any other ideas? I only see the 7970 as a viable upgrade (everything else cost alot more than what I want to spend now)
 
I haven't really played anything at that res .. 1920x1080 works for me.

The one thing I might do is ride this card out, but track down and replace the fan (it works fine, just planning ahead). I tried tracking down a Arctic Cooling Accelero for it, but can't find any .. or any that are reasonably priced.
 
I would assume the upgrade would be worth it based on the fact that more and more games are using in excess of 1 gig. Also you can get 2 free games with the card which is a nice bonus.
 
Yeah, that's been the one issue I have with some games. Certain ones will only see the 1gig per GPU rather than all of it combined. Usually only a problem if trying to go a higher texture setting.

One thing I did learn about this card .. Diamond MM .. is terrible for support.
 
Lol, your card only has 1 gigabyte of "useable" ram. Each gpu has 1 gig of ram because they have to mirror the same information. This has to be one of the biggest misunderstood attributes of multigpu
 
Well, my mistake aside .. it still performs solidly.

The only 2 things that have taxed it so far at my normal running res has been Crysis 2 and FC3
 
If you don't really game anymore then there is no reason to upgrade your video card.
 
Grab a 7970. I've owned a 5970 and it just ran super hot, loud, had many issues. It didn't perform as well as I had hoped, either.
 
Verosend said:
I haven't really played anything at that res .. 1920x1080 works for me.

The one thing I might do is ride this card out, but track down and replace the fan (it works fine, just planning ahead). I tried tracking down a Arctic Cooling Accelero for it, but can't find any .. or any that are reasonably priced.
Click to expand...

You could sell your card at a reasonable price and let whoever buys it worry about finding a fan for it. ;)
 
Actually, his card has 2 GB of usable ram, if his GPU had 1GB of usable ram, the 2 gpus would share bandwidth to access it, which they don't hence, 2 gb of usable ram, 1 GB per gpu.

Anyway, the 5970 was OK at best, xfire sucked on the 5870 for some odd reason, so the 5970 suffered too, the 7970 should be both faster and smoother.
 
Well .. being I haven't changed anything in this rig since the tail end of 2009 and into 2010 .. I want to upgrade it. I might just do everything but the card and see how it stands. If I then feel the need, 7970 it is.

income tax ftw.
 
HD 7970(1100 mhz) >= HD 7950 (1150 Mhz) > HD 6990 > HD 5970. sell your HD 5970. its hot and loud. consumes a lot of power. performs poorly in modern DX11 games like BF3, Farcry 3, Crysis 2. with HD 5970 (which is basically HD 5870 CF at 725 mhz clocks) you will face microstuttering issues. also you will not be able to play games like BF3 Ultra 4x MSAA , skyrim with mods at 1080p as you easily exceed 1GB VRAM. when you run out of vram there will be drastic fps drops and the game will be unplayable.

http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/HD_7950_X2_Boost/31.html

BF3 1920 x 1200 4xaa

HD 6970 - 40.3
HD 7950 iceq x2 boost - 67.5
HD 7970 Ghz (1050 mhz) - 78.9
HD 7950 iceq x2 boost (1210 mhz) - 82.9

HD 6970 CF in best cases scales at 1.8x. HD 7950(1150 mhz) will easily outrun the HD 5970. try and sell the HD 5970 for 200 - 220 bucks. spend another 80 - 100 bucks and get a HD 7950 boost.
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
Actually, his card has 2 GB of usable ram, if his GPU had 1GB of usable ram, the 2 gpus would share bandwidth to access it, which they don't hence, 2 gb of usable ram, 1 GB per gpu.

Anyway, the 5970 was OK at best, xfire sucked on the 5870 for some odd reason, so the 5970 suffered too, the 7970 should be both faster and smoother.
Click to expand...

No, actually the 5970 has 1GB ram per core, it's only 1GB of useable ram.

I agree with you about the 58xx cards, for some reason they didn't crossfire well at all.
 
Better yet, found a Sapphire 7950 Boost OC Vapor-X for $320ish(I hate newegg, damn tax!)
 
I was debating getting another 5870 for crossfire, or simply upgrading to a current gen card for months before I pulled the trigger on a new 7950.

Going from 1GB of ram to 3GB has made an enormous difference, something I would not have seen going with 5870 crossfire. I don't know if you'll see a drastic difference by upgrading to a 7970, but it opens the door to a nice jump in performance. One 7970 is good, but 2 is fantastic. When my 7950 starts to show its age, I think I will just slap in a used one simply because this generation of cards scale so well in crossfire.
 
I could step up to a 7970, but I would make a worthwhile one, and I don't wanna drop that kind of cash right now on just a vid card. I'd rather get a SSD, and a real sound card (finally).

All these upgrades will definetly smooth everything out.
 
When I went from a 5970 to the 7970 I was really disappointed. The 7970 and my Intel X79 system has had more than its fair share of issues. When I got the 7970 last year the 5970 was faster in every game I tested. It even has a better Bitcoin hash rate. Not that it matters but you get the idea. The last few drivers have helped the 7970 a lot so making the move now it less troublesome but I still have DX9 issues in some games. They have fixed some and I have hopes for the rest. That said, this was my worst build ever. :(

The 7970 is a little slower but with one GPU you don’t have to worry if the game supports crossfire correctly or at all but you’re not going to get that speed bump you would hope for moving 2 card generation up. If money is no big deal then do it, otherwise wait until next year.
 
reaper12 said:
No, actually the 5970 has 1GB ram per core, it's only 1GB of useable ram.

I agree with you about the 58xx cards, for some reason they didn't crossfire well at all.
Click to expand...

No actually, the 5970 has 2GB of usable memory ,1 GB per chip, that is still 2GB of actual used memory! 2 GB used by the card.
The card has 2 gpus, 2 GB of ram is actually used, 1gb by each gpu
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
No actually, the 5970 has 2GB of usable memory ,1 GB per chip, that is still 2GB of actual used memory! 2 GB used by the card.
The card has 2 gpus, 2 GB of ram is actually used, 1gb by each gpu
Click to expand...

Look:

It is TWO(2) 1GB cards running crossfire in a single housing. EVERY texture is duplicated on the cards. This means that if you have 512MB of textures, you use 512 PER CARD. If 4X AA at the given resolution costs you 512MB, that is also PER CARD.
 
Solomutt said:
Look:

It is TWO(2) 1GB cards running crossfire in a single housing. EVERY texture is duplicated on the cards. This means that if you have 512MB of textures, you use 512 PER CARD. If 4X AA at the given resolution costs you 512MB, that is also PER CARD.
Click to expand...

Look:

Point 1:
You are purchasing a SINGLE CARD not "TWO CARDS RUNNING CROSSFIRE", 1 card, on that card, resides 2GB of memory, not 1. Regardless of HOW the card uses the memory, it uses all 2GB of it.

Point 2:
Now each "GPU" on the card has access to 1GB of memory, because EACH GPU needs to render the next frame, so each GPU needs probably the same textures. if the card actually had 2 GB of "shared' memory, it would probably need double the bandwidth to achieve the same results, and a new memory controller to deal with "shared" textures, chances are, the same textures would have be retained for an additional frame now to allow the other GPU to render the next frame.

So while each gpu on the SINGLE CARD you have only has 1GB of memory, the card it self has 2GB of memory. To say it has 1GB usable memory is not true, if you really want to make your point, it's easy.

"The card has 2GB, but only 1GB per gpu, so games that use more than 1GB of memory will suffer":
 
Digital Viper-X- said:
Look:

Point 1:
You are purchasing a SINGLE CARD not "TWO CARDS RUNNING CROSSFIRE", 1 card, on that card, resides 2GB of memory, not 1. Regardless of HOW the card uses the memory, it uses all 2GB of it.

Point 2:
Now each "GPU" on the card has access to 1GB of memory, because EACH GPU needs to render the next frame, so each GPU needs probably the same textures. if the card actually had 2 GB of "shared' memory, it would probably need double the bandwidth to achieve the same results, and a new memory controller to deal with "shared" textures, chances are, the same textures would have be retained for an additional frame now to allow the other GPU to render the next frame.

So while each gpu on the SINGLE CARD you have only has 1GB of memory, the card it self has 2GB of memory. To say it has 1GB usable memory is not true, if you really want to make your point, it's easy.

"The card has 2GB, but only 1GB per gpu, so games that use more than 1GB of memory will suffer":
Click to expand...

LOL, what that's the long way round of saying the exact same thing. To games the 5970 has only 1GB of ram, the exact same as two 1GB cards in crossfire.
 
reaper12 said:
LOL, what that's the long way round of saying the exact same thing. To games the 5970 has only 1GB of ram, the exact same as two 1GB cards in crossfire.
Click to expand...

Well, the 5970 is not a 5870 :p it's 2 in 1 card.

If you really want to look at it that way

the 5970 has 512bit memory interface. since both GPUs can pull data from it at the same time at 256bits each.
 
I hate ordering from multiple places .. UGH. Got everything yesterday and today, sans the video card (which comes Thursday).

Now to shop for my SSD and sound card.

Thanks for advice everyone.
 
Well .. got it all built (sans the SSD for now). I pressed the little OC button on my Sapphire and it kicked over to 950MHz on the GPU and 1250MHz on the memory for now. Guild Wars 2 runs great .. and currently downloading Crysis 3 to really grind it.

Has anyone played with this card and recommend any settings? I configured AMD Overdrive to run at those speeds too
 
to be honest your I7 920 / 5970 setup is still a solid all around system. Am guessing you just had a upgrade itch? you should of help on to your stuff until haswell came out and prices of current gen stuff came down.
 
*edit* Reading fail, realized you may not have upgraded yet */edit*

I have a 5850 and bought it for EyeFinity. But it's always been buggy on the 5-series (desktop use-wise, profiles don't work, etc). I gave up on it a year or so ago. Have you tested it on the 7xxx series yet? Have they improved the eyefinity desktop or made profiling switching actually work correctly? Does the 7xxx series suffer from the flicker issues? With the 5, the card has 2d draw issues when it powers down to save energy. The only real fix I think is to manually hex the underclock speeds or something.

I know in the 5 series the desktop user-space is just one monitor, so most apps get strewed across, your task bar is a mile long, and it's just otherwise annoying. The profiles always forgot to switch certain saved settings and made life hell.

NVgamer said:
to be honest your I7 920 / 5970 setup is still a solid all around system. Am guessing you just had a upgrade itch? you should of help on to your stuff until haswell came out and prices of current gen stuff came down.
Click to expand...

I think it probably was just an itch. I have an i7 920 (d0). I considered upgrading for Sata3 and USB3. But decided just to upgrade my heatsink fans so I can overclock it. Passmark shows the i7 at 5004 and i5-3570k at 7100ish. So that's an improvement. But are you going to use or need it? I do a lot of photoshop+3dsmax+video-encoding stuff and I don't even need it.
 
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My Core i7-920 Bloomfield/Raden 59070 was strong, but I like max detail in my gaming and the stuttering was annoying me with some games.

So far I've grinded Crysis 2 (w/DX11 and hi-res texture patches), BF3 and Guild Wars 2 on it and the setup is SPARKLING .. a huge improvement on the regular settings I had for my 5970, and I can max those out for instance and not even feel it.

So far .. it's been worth the upgrade. New case, CPU and video card .. just need a SSD still.
 
Cool, can some of the past owners of 5970 say the improvement they received upgrading to 7970? I'm considering an upgrade soon but probably to the new R9 280x, a 7970Ghz, but It seems to me the graphics card haven't really made big strides last few years.
 
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