How much performance can you get?

Hey everyone I just thought I'd start a discussion about the current roster of Graphics cards.

As we know with single GPU cards, currently it doesn't get much better that a GTX 680 for 1920x1080 gaming, but as the resolution gets higher the 7970 starts clawing its way back to wear it's sometimes better than a GTX 680 at 5760x1080 resolution.

Now what I'v been wondering recently is just how much performance you can get from a pair of lower spec cards that come to the same price as a GTX 680 for the various resolutions of 1920x1080, 2560x1600, and 5760x1080.

From what iv managed to find out so far is that you can buy 2 GTX 660's and SLI them, and then end up with more performance than a GTX 680 at all resolutions and end up cheaper than a GTX 680, and also roughly match the price of a single 7970Ghz Edition and still end up with more performance even at 5760x1080 resolutions, I found some benchmarks showing this here ( http://uk.hardware.info/reviews/3129...epler-for-p179 ).

Now I'm also interested to see what AMD's 7000 series cards perform like in crossfire that work out cheaper or equal to a GTX 680 at the different resolutions mentioned before, however I haven't been able to find much info on it, so I was wondering if everyone could put their heads together and see what we can find out, and if we cant find much information maybe Hexus could put together some reviews with up to date drivers showing what kind of performance these cards put out in Crossfire or SLI :mrgreen:.

As for a cost benchmark we could use this 680 for reference http://www.scan.co.uk/products/2gb-e...-2x-dl-dvi-dp-

That review probably does not use the 12.11 drivers for the AMD cards which really did improve performance,especially in BF3.

I would get a decent HD7950 3GB and overclock it TBH. Even at a mild overclock you will be hitting HD7970 level performance.

Moreover,going with a single card means you avoid any potential scaling and/or stuttering issues you might hit, although YMMV.

Your right that the review that I linked to doesn't use the new 12.11 drivers since it was published on 13 Sept 2012 which is partly the reason I'd like to see some new reviews exploring some of the factors I'v mentioned in this with up to date drivers.

As for getting a 7950 and OC'ing it, that would be nice if you know what your doing, but for some people (myself included) they don't know enough about how to safely overclock so out of the box performance is important still.

With my experiences I don't think potential scaling and/or stuttering issues are that common any more, although I could be wrong, but personally I have been running GTX 470's in SLI for ages and not really had any problems with them, iv only ever had stuttering once and that was on Iracing in a single race, then it went back to not ever having a problem again.

I would honestly say that overclocking a gpu isnt at hard as it seems, its best to increase clock rate by about 20mhz, test out a game, look for any bugs/artifacts and monitor temps, make sure they are like below 70 or around 70 if you are testing thermal stability with furmark. You dont have to fiddle with voltages unless you want to, but some additional voltage can get you some extra overclock. But i can see why people wouldnt want to mess around with it.

It does sound easy when you put it like that but I'd still be terrified of bricking my GPU by messing up somewhere

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Originally Posted by ste852

It does sound easy when you put it like that but I'd still be terrified of bricking my GPU by messing up somewhere

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Just be wary of the voltages and the temperatures of the card. Use MSi Afterburner. That is a great overclocking utility as that monitors your temperatures and fan speeds for best overclocking and sets the card to default if the voltages aren't stable.

I see, are these overclocking tools dependent on Motherboards manufactures or GPU manufactures?