I had just ordered a 7870 ghz xfx for 170 bucks, but realized i problaby need more horsepower for da future, so i'm considering to get a second one. 770's and 7970s (if they do exist) generallly go for around 340 bucks. I will be upgrading my entire system soon with a 600-800 dollar budget without the gpu in the summer. Right now I have a mobo that's only x16 and x4 lanes, and my cpu is only a i3 3220. psu is 500w which i think should be fine, and i plan on using that psu for my next build as well. so, which would suit me better? i don't really want to wait later on to sell my 7870 ghz and blah blah blah.
thanks beforehand.
Consdiering you only have an i3 and 500w PSU, I'd definitely avoid crossfire. Even if you had enough power in your PSU, there's still a lot of driver problems when using multi gpu setups. Your i3 will bottleneck in some games though, probably even with your single 7870 ghz as well
really? cause my friend had an i3 3220 and a 770 and only experienced around a 5% bottleneck in some games such as bf4. And i think a crossfire 7870 ghz setup is around the same as a 770. Also im upgrading this entire thing in around 3 months, excluding the gpus which i will put in my new system.
If you think a 770 will ever perform even close to a 7870 crossfire setup you're a fool. 7870 crossfire performs better than a 780TI or just on par if the scaling is good.
whoa now chico... pretty sure the 780ti would eat it up... but yea the 770 is nowhere near a Xfired 7870 GHz... let's leave it at that ;)
Nah,7870 crossfire performs way better than a 780 ( not ti) , depends on what 7870's you're running. If they are 1100mhz ones like the one from msi asus gigabyte two of them will perform just like a 780TI. Look at some benchmarks. If the scaling is good two 7870 have alot of power
i see that you allready have an active topic open about GPU's.
https://teksyndicate.com/forum/gpu/760-vs-7870-ghz/173937
You could keep these questions, at one central topic next time. Its not realy needed to open new topics everytime you come with a diffrent GPU setup idea.. You can allways edit the topic title aswell.
keeping things central at one topic, is easier for other users, but also for your self.
It's just a tip
Grtz Angel ☺
well, its not really the same, as this is a crossfire setup compared to a 770 instead of a single 7870 ghz vs a 760... so i decided to make a new topic :P
btw its a xfx 7870 ghz
so, how big of a difference are we talking about between the 2?
cough*
IM COUGHING*
CHOKING***
yes but so i can make tons of useless topics you know ☺
you can update the topic title. if you have your ansewrs.
Its just a tip, just to make it easier for your self, and other users. What you do with it is upto you, but you dont win anything with XP points.. lol ☺
Anyway CF on 500W is out of question, that doesn´t gonne work. Also im personaly not a big fan of dual gpu setups, for a simple reason, it uses more power, so i need a powerfull psu to handle it, cost extra money, Offcourse CF7870 will do great if you play games that are good optimized for it, but there are also alot of games with a bad optimization for it, and those particular games gonne be a pain in the ass.
Im personaly more a fan of a single highend gpu.
It really depends on the game. If you are playing a game that is well optimized for Crossfire and the drivers work for you, (the 7870 is particularly difficult to Crossfire) then it could be a considerable jump over a 770.
That being said it will generate more heat, more noise, and use more power so you'll need a different PSU and need to make sure your case has enough airflow.
If I were you I'd sell the 7870 you have now and go out and but a single GPU set up. I've used multiGPU setups in the past and they are usually more trouble than they are worth. Sure you can get nearly 80+% improvement in some games and others see a performance hit or even have the game fail to run at all with an average increase of about 20%-40% in FPS. Really not worth it IMO. Sell your GPU and get a 770 or save up and get a 780.
I vote for the 770 or 780. I have a crossfired 7870 set up running at 1100 core and 1280 memory, and while its really really nice there are a lot of games that it just doesn't work for. I'll be upgrading to a 290 or a 290x ASAP, because that way my performance is guaranteed because of single GPU support. So yeah, stick with the single card solution, especially with the PSU and i3. The i3 might only be a little bottleneck with one gpu, but adding in another doubles what it has to process, as well as regulate the communication between the two. So you'll be noticing a much larger bottleneck with crossfire than a single card.
How does xfire handle bf4? Kind of a thread hijack, but I don't care. Mill has been bugging me for the past week about this. Get the 770. I think I already suggested that in steam chat.
I might pick up a second 7870 once the miners start dumping them on the market.
first you have to look at which games you are going to play:
the 7870 is a very power full card (i personally have 1 in my system). i am playing a lot of games that are a few years old, thanks to humble bundle, and the 7870 is running at 50% in most games, but then again they are a few years old. Even if you look at new games like BF4, titan fall, and other AAA games it is still able to push 60FPS (some with out AA, but still powerful).
also a thing to look at is that all games do not support Crossfire Scaling, a lot of the GPU limited games do, but not all. and in the game that do not have Crossfire support it is like having a single GPU.
now to the point of Crossfire 7870 vs 7970/280(x), or the 680/770.
in order to find benchmarks for it (PCper and Tomshardware have done XFire benches of these and i am not looking for them right now) you have to go back to 2012 i think when they first came out. in every bench game that used XFire the 7870x2 was 20-40% than a 7970 or 680. again only games that use XFire.
if you are wanting a newer performance benchmark that include crossfire 7870, i haven't been able to find them; but a single R9 290 is a 2560-cores @974+, which is very close to the combined 7870 2560-cores @1000+. and i have found that the comparison between the 290 and the 770 or 280x to be close to the same performance levels i seen in comparing the dual 7870 and 7970 or 680. but using the R9 290 will give you a rough 'what you should expect' from dual 7870 because some games will not use xfire or use it properly.
but for 1080p gaming i would use the 7870 until you can find a second card for cheap or wait a year and pick them up when they are very cheap.
Crossfiring is something you should not even consider with your current rig. It would serve you better to get the strongest card you can afford.