Possible replacement of 7970 CF for 2560x1440

[jonathan_phang]

Hi all,

as per the title really. I've got a relatively old rig in terms of CPU/MOBO/RAM, but have been running 7970s in Crossfire for a while. I run a 2560x1440 rsolution monitor and wondered if there is anything single card based that it might be worth replacing them with? So that I don't have to worry/wait for new drivers/profiles etc.

Not saying that the performance is terrible. But if the tech has moved on sufficiently to game with equivalent performance in a single card, then its something that I might consider.

Thanks for any help
Regards

Jonny

[Jasp]

Tbh truthful answer is no, the GTX 970 or 980 would be the fastest two cards and would only just match or in the GTX 970 case be slower depending on if your running GHZ editions or not. You would only really gain the advantage of heat, power and driver compatibility (power v cost is debatable)

[dfour]

While the 970/980 and 290/290x will drive a 1440p they will all be slower in game (with a optimized game) than your 7970's. My 290x powers me though all my games at 1440p at over 60 fps at max settings so it can be done on a single card.

If you where to sell you should get roughly £100 for each of your cards depending upon the brand/cooler/version etc.

[jonathan_phang]

Thanks for the replies. I should probably have phrased it better, I run with Vsync enabled wherever possible, so I guess single card performance doesn't need to be exactly the same, but I would be looking for 60fps at 2560x1440. I've been out of the loop for a while so will do a bit of research on the 980.

I'm not running Ghz editions, but have them OC to GHZ frequencies. Hmmm... As ever there's probably no magic bullet without shelling out another £300 or so, but I'll start doing more research I guess.

[dfour]

If you sold both your 7970 for roughly £100 each and the bundled games for £25 or so a new custom cooled 290x would only cost roughly £70-100 and would be fine for 1440p.

Does a single 7970 struggle to get 60fps at 1440p ??

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

TBH,I would not change now - in the next six months we should see the R9 390X and the Nvidia equivalent. Going by previous AMD launches I expect the R9 390X will probably arrive by December or January.

[dfour]

True cat but the price he might get back for his hardware will be lessened by the new cards arrival. Sometimes its not always worth waiting for the 'new thing'.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

The new cards will push down the price of current cards even further though,and there are a lot of rumours one of the AMD cards might be 20NM,and they are moving to HBM.

Ultimately we have not even seen what AMD have to answer the GTX970 and GTX980 with anyway.

Having said that it is quite possible to get a GTX780 or R9 290 for around £200 to £200,so making GTX780 or R9 290 dual cards a possbility too.

[jonathan_phang]

Does a single 7970 struggle to get 60fps at 1440p ??

I wouldn't say it struggles, though I would really need to go and test again on a manner of games. The only thing recently that had made me even consider it is in Shadow of Mordor, because I had to switch CF off due to menu flickering. That made me have to push the settings down more than I would have wanted.

The new cards will push down the price of current cards even further though,and there are a lot of rumours one of the AMD cards might be 20NM,and they are moving to HBM.

Ultimately we have not even seen what AMD have to answer the GTX970 and GTX980 with anyway.

Having said that it is quite possible to get a GTX780 or R9 290 for around £200 to £200,so making GTX780 or R9 290 dual cards a possbility too.

The more I have started to look into it, the more I think that the single card option is not really the best option at this point in time. I might have come into this a bit too blind, and thought that GPUs might have moved on a bit more since the 7970. I guess I'll have to keep fiddling with custom profiles every now and then. Its not dire, but its not clear cut enough to make it a simple decision by the looks of it.

[dfour]

No its all a bit in the air because of waiting for new cards to be released very soon.