I recently won 6850 in a sweepstakes competition and i'm wondering whether i should sell it and get a GTX 580 or buy a 6870 and crossfire the two. I know the nVidia option would be more expensive overall but that's not really an issue...
Radeon HD 6850 and 6870 in CrossFireX or GTX 580?
- Thread starter mastadazza
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dividebyzero
Posts: 4,840 +1,271
My personal preference where possible is to run one more powerful card than two or more less capable cards in Crossfire or SLI.
If you are the kind of person that tinkers and tweaks a system and are constantly upgrading then the drawbacks of multi-GPU gaming (driver releated bugs mainly) will be more insignificant than the advantages (lower performance/$ costs).
If you plan on Crossfiring with the HD 6850 then I would suggest you pair it with another HD 6850. Crossfiring with a 6870 would tend to bring that cards level down to 6850. Crossfire and SLI rely on on alternate frame rendering (AFR) where each card produces a frame more or less alternately- thus the slowest card tends to dictate the level of performance as well as game IQ you can use.
An alternative is to trade the 6850 against a HD6950 (not such a large price discrepency as the GTX580) with the possibility of adding a second card at a later stage if you feel the need for higher game IQ or framerates.
If you are the kind of person that tinkers and tweaks a system and are constantly upgrading then the drawbacks of multi-GPU gaming (driver releated bugs mainly) will be more insignificant than the advantages (lower performance/$ costs).
If you plan on Crossfiring with the HD 6850 then I would suggest you pair it with another HD 6850. Crossfiring with a 6870 would tend to bring that cards level down to 6850. Crossfire and SLI rely on on alternate frame rendering (AFR) where each card produces a frame more or less alternately- thus the slowest card tends to dictate the level of performance as well as game IQ you can use.
An alternative is to trade the 6850 against a HD6950 (not such a large price discrepency as the GTX580) with the possibility of adding a second card at a later stage if you feel the need for higher game IQ or framerates.
that's very helpful to know...so which would you recommend out of the 6950 and the GTX580?
dividebyzero
Posts: 4,840 +1,271
If you're gaming at or below 1920x1080 (or 1920x1200) then I would think that the 6950 would be enough (and more than enough in some older games) performance.
A GTX580 will offer more outright performance- whether it is noticeable or not is another matter (aside from benchmarking games).So unless you play a lot of RTS games where the compute ability of the GTX usually kicks in, or PhysX is a "must have", the 6950 offers a much better bang-for-buck.- and of course for a little extra cash outlay over the GTX580's price you have the option of Crossfiring a couple of 6950's - although unless you plan on multi-monitor gaming this setup is pretty much overkill.
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