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Thread: Crossfire dual 7850 or single 7970

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    Question Crossfire dual 7850 or single 7970

    Should I crossfire another 7850 with my current ASUS 7850 Direct CU ii or buy another single 7970 and sell my 7850?
    All thoughts appreciated

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    Re: Crossfire dual 7850 or single 7970

    I am contemplating the same, a single card system is less problematic.

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    Re: Crossfire dual 7850 or single 7970

    Quote Originally Posted by Macadee View Post
    I am contemplating the same, a single card system is less problematic.
    I'm leaning more towards crossfire as it will be undoubtably more powerful.

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    Re: Crossfire dual 7850 or single 7970

    If it were me I'd get the 7970 and then add another 7970 at a later date if I felt it was not giving me enough power.

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    Re: Crossfire dual 7850 or single 7970

    I'd personally go for a single 7970 as it's less likely to have compatibility issues and won't suffer from annoying micro-stutter... It also has more VRAM . If you're gaming at 1080p then a single 7970 (or even a 7950) is plenty .

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    Re: Crossfire dual 7850 or single 7970

    Yeah, I'd recommend a 7970 over dual 7850s. You could use a 7970 at 1920x1080, even 2560x1440 in most games.

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    Re: Crossfire dual 7850 or single 7970

    Quote Originally Posted by KeyboardDemon View Post
    If it were me I'd get the 7970 and then add another 7970 at a later date if I felt it was not giving me enough power.
    I've heard people say that many times. There wouldn't actually be any point buying another 7970 later as better cards will be available with more power and better efficiency (most likely for around the same price too!). I personally think it's best to get both GPU's at the same time if you're going to bother with SLI/Crossfire.

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    Re: Crossfire dual 7850 or single 7970

    i have never wanted to do sli or crossfire. - i have known others who have gone down that route, only to go back to a single card regime

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    Re: Crossfire dual 7850 or single 7970

    I'd go for a single 7970. It should be plenty for what you need for quite a while. I know someone who has got 2 x 7970's and is selling one as he says it's not needed. If you go crossfire you will also get problems with micro-stutter. Seen lots of people complaining about it.

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    Re: Crossfire dual 7850 or single 7970

    2 7850s will work well with crossfire. This video made by Deimiantech shows that 2 HD7850s will work together fine without a problem -
    Last edited by Dottorrent; 04-11-2012 at 03:40 PM.
    "Nothing is safer than a giant snowball whipping through space...at a million miles an hour"

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    Re: Crossfire dual 7850 or single 7970

    If you have a 7850, get the other 7850 instead of letting that one go to waste. The 8xxx series might come soon (fingers crossed), and you would regret it if you spent your money on the 7970 AND let your 7850 go to waste instead of the 8xxx

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    Re: Crossfire dual 7850 or single 7970

    Quote Originally Posted by Dottorrent View Post
    2 7850s will work well with crossfire. This video made by Deimiantech shows that 2 HD7850s will work together fine without a problem -
    All it does it show benchmark results... It doesn't show the inevitable micro-stutter, occasional artifacting, compatibility issues, occasional multi-GPU driver issues, higher temps or higher power consumption that usually come with SLI/Crossfire configs.

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    Re: Crossfire dual 7850 or single 7970

    PowerPie5000 - Well said! I don't know why people bother with SLI/Crossfire and all the above!

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    Re: Crossfire dual 7850 or single 7970

    Quote Originally Posted by KeyboardDemon View Post
    If it were me I'd get the 7970 and then add another 7970 at a later date if I felt it was not giving me enough power.
    I'd do the same. You get a good games bundle with a 7970 too at the moment: http://blogs.amd.com/play/this-holiday-never-settle/

    A single 7970 should be plenty for any game out at the moment at 1920 x 1080 short of a few examples such as Metro 2033 & GTA IV which are said to be extremely demanding on systems due to poor optimisation of the games themselves more than a lack of power of the hardware.

    You'll definitely have less issues with a single card setup.

    Saying that I run dual 680's in one system and dual 7970's in the other and haven't had very many issues at all so I wouldn't expect you to have any with 2 7850's.

    However problems seem to be more common for some when dealing with dual card setups. I guess it's just twice as many things to go wrong plus adding another layer of complexity to how the image is dispalyed on the screen. I had a nightmare with a pair of 4870X2's and 2 980GTX+'s for instance. Never really figured out what the issues were. However, as I say, my current dual GPU setups run absolutely fine!

    Rage & Starcraft 2 were 2 games that hated dual card setups at launch from what I remember. I'm pretty sure Rage wasn't designed to work with SLI so you had to use just one card. Not too sure about crossfire as I didn't have an AMD setup when I played it.

    TLDR; I'd go with a 7970

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    Re: Crossfire dual 7850 or single 7970

    I'd go with a 7970

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    Is the 7970 a dual gpu card like a Nvidia 690gtx?

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