Widescreen Gaming Forum

Hi guys!

To start off, I want to thank everyone in the community, since the site has been extremely helpful past (found the forum after getting my first Eyefinity setup 2 years ago). Great work! Special thanks to the creators of WidescreenFixer and Flawless Widescreen!

I started off with a Sapphire Radeon HD 6950, which by that time was perfect to suit my needs. However, about half a year later I started to get into Battlefield 3 Multiplayer, where I coulnd't maintain a stable frame rate 30 or above, even on Medium/Low settings. I decided to ignore the warnings some people gave me and bought a second, identical video card (can you believe the guy in the store wanted to convince me not to buy a second card??)
This gave me a good increase in performance, yet also a few microstuttering issues, which I had known about before. #
After playing BF3 for almost a year on medium settings with 5960*1080 resolution at around 30 fps, my performance seemed to become worse and worse... It got really unplayable when the thing got so slow that I couldn't compensate gun recoil anymore and couldn't kill an enemy unless I snuck up from behind and eliminated him with the first shot.
So I decided to switch back too single-monitor Full HD gaming, which got me an entirely different game and about doubled my accuracy, K/D etc., with beautiful High graphic settings.

However, I want to go back to triple-mon again, maybe increasing the FOV a bit, so my center screen matches the picture I'm seeing now in single-monitor mode. Another thing is, I have a growing list of games that I want to play once I have a more powerful system, starting off with Far Cry 3, which is definitely a game suitable for an Eyefinity/Surround experience.
I've been watching the market since last year, but still couldn't find a viable solution that doesn't include me getting a 2 or 3way GTX Titan SLi setup, which, in all honesty, is a little too expensive for my budget.

Now I'm asking you guys, what video card(s) would you recommend me? Of course a single-card setup would be perfect, but I don't think there's a GPU out there that can achieve this, as AFAIR even the Titan comes to its limits on a large 64 player map...

I was playing around with the thought of getting 2 7970 GHz editions, since they seem to be quite good and have become affordable as well. But then I also heard, despite a formally sufficient frame rate, lots of games appear stuttering with that combination. My plan was to wait for the next generation of GPUs to be released, but I don't really want to wait until next year...

So I decided to finally register here and kindly ask for your suggestions, as some of you seem to have lots of experience with different setups!
Thanks in advance for your help!

P.S.: I might also consider to get a new CPU, if necessary, but so far, according to CPU-Z, I have never used more than about 80 % of its power, even with the 2 GPUs both being at 100%.
P.P.S.: I tried overclocking the cards once (only as far as that OCing tool in Catalyst went), but did not get any noticeable effects, except for a few games running worse and/or crashing).

TL;DR: Have 2 HD 6950s now, need better performance, don't have a very tight budget but not a huge one either. Can anyone give me some recommendations?

shouldn't you put the TL:DR on the top ? no one reads is this way ^^

To your problem, you tought of CF 7970? Why not Triple Fire ? Test MP, Test SP




Or the GTX780, TITAN LE, way cheaper, nearly same Performance. But if you think that a TriFire7970 gets 101 FPS and a SLI Titan 77. But you pay 1200$ for Tri-7970 and 1300$ for a SLI-780.
Or just a simple 7970 CF for 800$ ^^ Still gives 70 FPS acording to these Benchmarks.

btw: What CPU ?

And about OC'ing..... tried on my HD6970... from 880mhz to 960mhz, but really doesn't bring much performance, while on GCN you get around 1% more Clock = 1% more Performance.

Hey! I was kinda in the same boat as you were and I went with 2x Sapphire 7970 GHz cards and it's wonderful
I don't see any stuttering as long as v-sync is disabled and games like Bioshock and BF3 runs on high/ultra without a problem. Supposedly there's some new drivers coming soon(ish) which will make the frame render time better so might get even better soon

@Haldi:

Thanks for posting all these benchmarks and tips! This kind of confirms what I've researched before. I was even thinking about Tri-Fire (maybe adding the third card after a while if it's necessary) before. But that would mean I'll either need a new (bigger) mainboard and case or having a dual-GPU card that only takes up one slot...
This made me look into the rather new HD 7990 a little closer, since it sounds like it might be a real alternative. Obviously, frame rates are very good for this card, but what kept me from a decision was the fact that I've read quite a couple of reviews/comparisons who more or less stated that "it feels like a lot less FPS than it is". There are two different reasons I could imagine for this:

a) notorious Nvidia fanboys

b) strongly differing frame times, as this image suggests (as I understand it at least ):

The entire article (which made me rethink my decision) can be found here: http://www.techspot.com/review/663-amd-radeon-hd-7990/page4.html

A 7990 video I've watched on YouTube kinda confirmed this, but then again - it's YouTube, including sometimes bad compression and limited framerate, which might not be giving an accurate impression. Also, I suppose a game might feel choppy if you're not playing it yourself, not knowing how the player moved his mouse exactly.
It would be great to hear some opinions about this!

BTW (thought this info, which I had put in my profile would carry over to all my posts automatically, so sorry I didn't tell in my original posting): my CPU is an AMD Athlon X6 1100T running at 3,3 GHz stock speed. Might become a bottleneck soon, but that might be a topic of its own

@Mawrtin:

Thanks for that info^^ I was hoping to hear that One guy even showed me a gameplay vid with a single 7970 GHz, which seemed quite a bit smoother (on higher settings) than my two 6950s!
What do you think about the new XT2 architecture based HD 7990? Would you have considered it if it had been released at the time you bought your cards? One thing that I also like about it is its relatively low TDP, compared to two single cards!

Np I actually got one 7970 before the other but I couldn't run BF3 in full resolution, so I added another one.
I was looking at the 7990 (wasn't released but most info was out) but the price was just too steep. Where I live I can almost get 3x 7970 GHz for the same price as one 7990 so I'm kinda leaning in the same direction as you are - buy a third card when BF4 comes out (or ditch one of these and buy a 7990 is the price is right)

Concerning the 7990, I also thought that the price tag is quite a bit higher than for single 7970s. However, when I looked again yesterday, I realized that you can "already" get one for around 850 €; while single 7970 GHz editions start slightly below 400 €, so I think I wouldn't mind about this 50-100 € difference (considering the card is not that cheap anyway

The most convincing argument for a 7990 in my case is - well - my case and the mainboard of course.
Guess I'll have to do some more price research tonight

yeah if you get a nice price go for it right now I'm getting 2.6x 7970 for the same price as one 7990 so it's a bit steep here

You don't need "ghz" edition, most old HD7970 are able to overclock to 1050 or 1100mhz !
The Problem ist that the new versions of 7970 do have a Voltage Lock (hardware), so you cant get more Voltage to overclock for more... but 1000mhz should run most of the time.

About Microstutter in Crossfire.... some see them, some other arent that difficult. for me, i don't have problems.
(2x 7970 overclocked to 1150mhz)

If you're going to use multiple cards go nVidia. Techreport has many articles now detailing the poor crossfire frame times. I used to own a 7970 but upgraded to 680 SLI. I sold my 7970 to a friend who is using it in crossfire. He complained from the very beginning that even though FRAPs reported a good framerate it didn't feel very smooth. Some of Techreport's findings show 7970 Crossfire to be equivalent to a single card. Depends on the game ...

Yes, there is a fixed AMD driver coming but really there's no excuse for it taking this long. The 7970 has been out since January 9, 2012.

Haldi wrote:You don't need "ghz" edition, most old HD7970 are able to overclock to 1050 or 1100mhz !
The Problem ist that the new versions of 7970 do have a Voltage Lock (hardware), so you cant get more Voltage to overclock for more... but 1000mhz should run most of the time.

About Microstutter in Crossfire.... some see them, some other arent that difficult. for me, i don't have problems.
(2x 7970 overclocked to 1150mhz)

Hey Haldi just wondering what vid cards are you using, factory oc or reference (925mhz) and what type of cooling, stock or lcs?

Do you think a ref 7970 with lcs could reach 1100mhz? Or would this cook it?

i use 2x XFX HD7970 BE, standard 1000mhz, overclocked them to 1150mhz on 1175mV Watercooled.
In Crysis 3 with 35-40FPS (maxed details 1xMSLAA or whatever it was...) it's horrible with Crossfire! But GRID 2 with 70-80fps (also maxed details, max AA ^^) works absolutly fine.

Im thinking of foing tri-fire with ref cards but this would probably micro stutter worse! There is a program you can try called RadeonPro (Like MSI afterburner but specifically for ATI) which shows promising results
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showth ... t=18499549
http://www.radeonpro.info/2013/03/cross ... adeon-pro/

It can be downloaded from here:
http://www.radeonpro.info/download/

Costs nothing and is worth a try!!!

PS - I have tried it but having errors atm, probably because im running 15 screens with a 3x3 square in the middle consisting of 3x matroxTH2G (I think these are causing the problem) in a 1x3 eyefinity setup (Works fine) RadeonPro comes up with an error (Wnat to build a dedicated PC with 3x3 so thats why im thinking of 7970 tri-fire or maybe even Quad...)

PPS - Does anyone know if 7970 Quad-fire scales well or is supported by games? Or is this really only for benchmarking?