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Should I CF HD 7850 or buy faster single GPU card?

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The reason why I don't mention any nvidia card is because it's way more expensive than AMD offering. For the price of cheapest GTX 770 I could buy HD 7970 plus another 8GB of memory. When I looked at benchmark result it looks like Crysis 3 favors nvidia cards despite it being AMD title, GTX 580 is faster than HD 7850 from the benches
 
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You guys basically are recommending lower performance for more money. Like one of CF owners said: CF best Bang for buck. For the price of one 7850 he can get to 7970 Ghz edition levels. He already owns one card, i think best way to spend the money buy another 7850.
http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/47...2gb_in_crossfire_video_card_review/index.html
one of the reviews for CF 7850.

Because how much he will get for his 7850? half the price? ~75$?
If budget is unlimited, well that's another story.
And would be interesting to know how much of a price difference is in your country for another 7850 and buying new 7950 or in this case Gtx760 could be an option as well.
http://www.guru3d.com/articles_pages/geforce_gtx_760_asus_directcu_mini_review,17.html

Value for money is a wonderful thing to harp on about while blatantly disregarding the fact that:
A: Frame pacing in crossfire is still not fixed (and is the sole reason I switched from xfire 7950's to a single 780)
B: AMD's new cards come out in approx 1-2 weeks, and that is going to change EVERYTHING, in terms of price and performance.

The 7850's sole purpose is to be an excellent card in terms of value for money. I can assure you, there are not many people in the world with 7850 xfire unless their money situation absolutely demands it. Not to mention it only has 2GB of VRAM, which might be enough now, but in future somebody's going to regret limiting themselves.

I'll go with the aussie and barbaric, wait and see what AMD releases, but right now, the 7950's and 7970's are coming down in price, and are looking better and better by the minute.
 

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I'll go with the aussie and barbaric, wait and see what AMD releases, but right now, the 7950's and 7970's are coming down in price, and are looking better and better by the minute.

LOL cheers matey, well said! :)
 
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I personal, some weeks a go, when the price start going down for amd, I changed my 7850 with 7950 OC Gigabyte, I am happy with that(I play Skyrim and work in Photoshop CC); you can wait for new cards, but those are a little refresh of old cards(with higher price), and I find that after 1 year from appeareance I can say the driver are mature enough...
 

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B: AMD's new cards come out in approx 1-2 weeks, and that is going to change EVERYTHING, in terms of price and performance.

let's hope it will. I would be very happy to see massive price drops on 7970/7950 and
GTX 770/760. In this situation its really worth to wait for a few weeks and decide after that.
 
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:confused: i never mentioned any models at all, OP could get a $300 7970 or a $1000 titan, that's why i was asking about budget

i also would be comparing a 770 with a 7970 if we're talking about competing products

Oh, so you would recommend the OP buys a GTX 770 over a 7970. The GTX 770 is about $50 more than a 7970 GHZ edition and only gives 1 FPS over the 7970 GHZ edition. We also have the non GHZ edition 7970 cards also, which can be had for under $300. I have yet to hear of a non GHZ edition 7970 that is unable to OC to GHZ edition speeds. Face it, right now, price/performance wise, Nvidia has nothing for AMD at the top end. You simply can not beat the price/performance value of the 7970 or 7950 at the moment.

Personally, I fully expect the buy/sell/trade forums to be full of $200 7970 and $150 7950 cards once AMD's new cards become fully available. That is what I suggest the OP wait for.
 
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7950 goes for 170$ used or less
7850 goes for 120$ used or less
It will cost you more CF
 
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The question is whether you have some patience, or whether you want the upgrade now.


AMD is releasing their newer line of cards in the very near future (less than 14 days). These cards will be expensive, but they're going to be more of a price and performance shake-up at the top. You're unlikely to see any of the new cards fall into a decent price range soon. What this does is push everything into a cheaper price bracket.

When the push occurs you'll probably see pricing on a 7970 drop below the $250 threshold (right now Newegg offers sales that put the cards at $270 with rebates). A 7970 is no slouch in performance, and costs significantly less than its competition from Nvidea.


If you've got no patience, then shoot for Crossfire. The 7850 in Crossfire won't be rocking anything insane, but assuming that it has 2 GB of RAM then you'll be more than capable of 1080p with decent settings for all but the highest end games. The only caveat is that not all games support Crossfire properly, so you might wind-up with a vestigial video card. Check that the games you play have proper support before spending any money.


SO both sides of the debate going on here are right. You can move up and stay with AMD, but not knowing a budget means we can't really tell you how much you can improve. You can move up with Nvidea, but again budgetary concerns crop up. You can also expand what you've already got. There's no real clear-cut answer.
 

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lilhasselhoffer, i would say your post really sums it up :) basically there are 3 choices like you said:
1. crossfire 7850. (my personal choice would be this)

2. sell it and go AMD high end 7950 7970 (better wait prices go down)
or like others mentioned you can get used 7970, that's a valid option for budget minded person

3. sell it and go Nvidia 760/770 even so i don't like the price of 770, but i do like and planning to get 760 myself. better in crysis3 than 7950 at least.

one other suggestion, if OP can get another 7850 just for few days and test it, you will know if this option is good enough for you. Maybe some friends can borrow it?
 
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My single non-GHZ edition 7970 running stock (925/1375) gets around 15-20 fps at very high settings @ 1920*1080 with AA disabled. Haven't tried playing with a OC on the 7970.

An update:

I tried playing Crysis3 with a 1100/1400 OC on my 7970 card and it did wonders for my computers performance in Crysis3. I literally went from 15-20 FPS to 25-30 fps. This was at 1920*1080, very high, AA disabled.
 
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I would not go CF with 7850.

Get best single card you can afford.
 
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from the review you posted, the 7970 is 5-8% faster than a 7950 at the same clock speeds. The problem is getting a 7950 that can match what a 7970 can do. I admit I'm not very knowledgeable about how far an average 7950 can OC to. I know my 7970 is a terrible OC'er compared to other 7970s owned by members of TPU, but it can do 1175/1450. A 7950 would have to OC to around 1250/1550 or so to match my terrible OC'ing 7970.

Thats way better than mine, I can't do beyond 1150/1200. Ram won't overclock. Probably some stupid stock massive low ram VID and I can't unlock any of my voltages. Went back to running stock, it wasn't worth the 5-10 fps or whatever.

Crossfired 7850's would be nice, it should just barely outperform a 7970 ghz edition. 7850's also overclock the best of any of the AMD stuff right now I think, just my observation. It seems like almost every brand X 7850 can do 1200 easily.
 
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Thats way better than mine, I can't do beyond 1150/1200. Ram won't overclock. Probably some stupid stock massive low ram VID and I can't unlock any of my voltages.

stock RAM frequency for a 7970 is 1375 MHz :wtf:

Personally, I have one of the first reference 7970 (HD7970 core edition) released by XFX, so I can adjust the voltage without a problem.
 
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