Upgrade or Crossfire?

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Ryboodle

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Sep 28, 2012
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I have an FX-6300 and 2 PCI-E 2.0 lanes of (x16/x16)(So bottle necking there is out of the question.) and a 990fx northbridge. My current power supply/gpu is the 600w OCZ MODX Stream Pro and a sapphire radeon hd 6870(I use 1080p).

So here is my question while currently this card monsters everything I throw at it. However I am going to need to upgrade at some point. I am looking at two options(feel free to suggest other options) to upgrade and my question is which offers the best cost/performance/future proofing/power consumption(having to upgrade PSU is most important) ratio.

P.S. The keen observer will notice I did not list the option of 2 6870s in CFX this is because severe micro-stuttering problems have been noticed with just 2 6870s in CFX

Option 1
get a powercolor or vision tek HD 6870 x2 and tri-fire with current 6870
Cost: approx($350 plus power supply upgrade)
Performance: ? is it more powerful than a 7950? it is definitely more expensive
Power Consumption: more power hungry
Future Proofing: dead end :(

Option 2
HD 7950
Cost: approx $300
Performance: I believe it is more powerful than the single 6870
Power Consumption: more power hungry than standard 6870 but still within power supply capabilities
Future Proofing: not dead end
 
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Definitely not option 1 as sooner or later AMD will stop support for it and that not many games scale well past two cards. Option 2 is your best bet. Though if you ever plan on Crossfire with that HD 7950, get a new PSU as that PSU isn't of good enough quality to handle that much power.
 
I would honestly just wait for the next gen cards from ATI. You say you have no problems with the 6870. The 7XXX were pretty power hungry for their performance so I imagine the 8XXX series will be better performance with less power as the next step in progression for ATI. Around this time I am betting there will be more games that will be even more demanding than right now (aka more tessellation and DirectX 11, etc.) so the 8XXX series might actually be more perfectly timed for you to grab. Feel free to shoot me down if anyone else knows something I don't about the future cards though.
 
Thanks for the advice I am wondering what the performance difference is like between the 6870 and 7950 I imagine it would be big(can't find a comparison readily available)? I will probably wait till the 8xxx series and get one of those or scoop up a 7xxx series because the price is sure to drop tremendously then:D. I also wonder when those next gen cards are coming out?
 
Thanks for the info and help. The website that the last poster put up is great! I think I will upgrade to 7950 when that time comes. I don't the the cool factor of having 3 6870's are worth the insane amount of power it takes. At any rate Thanks:D!
 
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