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HD7870 CF or upgrade?

N3trox

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Hi fellas. I'm currently on a rig whichs' specs are:

-ASUS M5A97
-AMD Phenom II x4 970 BE
-Kingston HyperX 8 GB 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM
-SAPPHIRE HD 7870 GHz Edition OC
-Aerocool VS-9 550W (which is an engineering failure i suggest you to stay away from this case at all costs)

I was wondering about doing CF with another HD 7870. Would you reccomend it? Would my sistem bottleneck? And what kind of PSU should i get fot this, how much power should it give?(600-700W etc.) Or would you suggest me to get an upgrade like GTX 660 Ti. I may switch go Zotac GTX 660 Ti AMP!.
 
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sell it and get 7970/670, that will give u good jump.

Don't think the second PCI-E slot on your board works at 16x, so u might cripple the second 7870.
 
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Today I just tried out an HD7970 on my rig which I was going to buy.

Honestly.....
It's not that much better than my HD7870 that it would warrant an upgrade.

Real World gaming, my eyes picked up on a little frame increase but nothing to warrant buying the card.

If you are wanting to upgrade something in your case , the CPU and an SSD would be what I would go for.
 
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Today I just tried out an HD7970 on my rig which I was going to buy.

Honestly.....
It's not that much better than my HD7870 that it would warrant an upgrade.

Real World gaming, my eyes picked up on a little frame increase but nothing to warrant buying the card.

If you are wanting to upgrade something in your case , the CPU and an SSD would be what I would go for.
The hd 7970 is a lot faster then hd 7870 unless you run them in crossfire. There is no comparison. Some games however it wont make a big difference but most will.
http://gpuboss.com/gpus/Radeon-HD-7970-vs-Radeon-HD-7870
 
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In a benchtest with bar graphs, it will appear to be no comparison between the two.

When I sat down and tested games with out the bias of a frame counter nagging at me in the top right hand corner to say 7970 is better, the different between the two was not massive.

I ran 3 games which have DX11 capabilities at max setting on 1080p.
I tested the 7970 on Sleeping dogs, Fr Cry 3, Batman Arkham City and Saints Row 3.
Same settings and everything stock.

Ran all games with out a frame counter so my opinion would not be biased.
Far Cry 3 was the most noticable in terms of frame smoothness.
Sleeping Dogs very little noticed in performance gain.
Batman Arkham City very little notice in performance gain.
Saints Row 3 no gain at all.

Personally a 7970 'may' be warranted if using a 120Hz monitor.

A 60Hz monitor, a 7870 does a little less in some areas compared to a 7970 according to my eyes with out the use of a frame counter.

Only reason I would have needed to buy the 7970 would be to place in my system specs for e-peen reasons from what I experienced.
 

Durvelle27

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I wouldn't recommend you CFX with a Phenom II x4. Upgrade your cpu first
 
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