Thinking of getting 2 6950's... worth it?

[exodusprime1337]

there is the heaven bench
gonna run a quick unoptomized 3dm11 now

 

[_ALB_R3D X]

Nice score!

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

hey exodus


let the bench run through completely 1 time before starting the bench,

aka let it do a full fly through your minimum FPS will skyrocket, giving a much better score.

 

[20mmrain]

I have owned 2 6870's in Xfire 2 6950's in Xfire and now 2 GTX 580's in SLI this gen alone. I will say that... even the 6870's in Xfre were a step up from the 5870's in crossfire I used to own before them.
The 5870's were and still aren't too bad of cards. But this gen you will defiantly see a increase in performance. Especially in the DX11 arena. For example if you are into playing games like Metro 2033.... the 5870 would get horrible frame rates because of their lack of tessellation power compared to the 6950's your looking at. Not mention just the pure performance increase you will get from them.
And no the HD7000 series is not just right around the corner.... I would say if you got the money go for it. You will love them and the performance increase they give you. The only downside I can think of about the cards is that they run hotter than the 5800 series IMO.

But my answer is still go get the 6950's.

 

[TheDave545]

Just tried source games, they work fine now, but they always do after a fresh install, its always a few days later (no idea why).

Company Of Heroes still has the flickering.

And WIC still has those damn border issues, set my res to 1920 x 1080 and it has borders, i set it to 1680 x 1050, now i can live with this res as it still looks ace.

TBH its the border thing that annoys me the most, as i already have my overscan in CCC set to 0%, highest it can go, and on windows and all games its fine, just WIC it messes up.

 

[exodusprime1337]

Here is my 3dmark 11

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

its not the tessellation performance

its the fact that the VLIW 4 has twice the number of complex shaders as the VLIW 5 of the 5800 series this means

these complex shaders are extremely important in most games

look at nvidia they have all medium sized shaders that just brute force approach,

ati did a modular type with 1 complex and 4 simple

VLIW 4 changes that 2 - 2 system if i remember correctly this is where the performance benefit comes from

 

[TheMailMan78]

What do you play that needs two 6950's?

 

[TheDave545]

The Witcher 2 also runs perfect (one of the best looking games ive ever seen i might add)

 

[exodusprime1337]

i play 3dmark.... i just like having two cards, always have, it fills up the case, and it does give a good performance increase in some games i like to play

 

[TheDave545]

Hey exodus, when running that Heaven benchmark, the shadows on yours did it look like they flickered every now an then, might just be the way the camera and lighting moves through it im not sure, really paranoid about my gfx cards now.

 

[TheDave545]

Unigine Benchmark Results:

FPS: 82.4
Scores: 2077
Min FPS: 12
Max FPS: 182.3

Thats with the same settings as exodus.

 

[exodusprime1337]

here is my 3dmark vantage

 

[exodusprime1337]

ahaha, brok 30k, 960/1400

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

again anyone running Unigen Heaven Bench just sit and patiently wait for the benchmark to go all the way through once before starting the actually bench itself for a score once the bench has completely 1 loop it will average out and when you finally do start the scored run your minimum FPS will be much increased, causing a further jump in score

 

[exodusprime1337]

hahaha at 1000/1400 not bad for 1.28v... by the way.. whats the safe max.. i'm only hitting 70c atm?

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

no idea what the safe max is bro but id try and stay under 1.25v 1.28v is safe for those temps but i wouldnt want to push much further for 24/7

1.3-1.35 might be safe with water but for air at least stay below 1.3 volts or youll probably run into issues later on down the road.

 

[TheDave545]

And back to square one, Source games back in low res texture mode again even with everything set to highest.

Edit 1: Took my 2nd GFX card out and all steam games work perfect, going to try the others now, then try the 2nd gfx card on its own.

Edit 2: Everything ok with 1st GFX, even sorted out the scaling issues. Trying GFX 2 now.

Edit 3: 2nd GFX card works just as well as the 1st, so im at a loss really, wonder if it could be the Crossfire Bridge Connector, will try a different one see what that does.

Edit 4: After trying each card alone i have found no probs with them, im going to try again with them crossfire, if i get the same as i did before then im at a loss.

 

[_ALB_R3D X]

there is the heaven bench
gonna run a quick unoptomized 3dm11 now


http://img.techpowerup.org/110816/Capture192.png

Pretty Close thinking that CPU is on stock!!!
Cards running @900 core/1250mem no volts needed
http://www.techpowerup.com/forums/attachment.php?attachmentid=43198&stc=1&d=1313597599

ahhh I hate my cpu cooler now....hit 55'C during unigine run...so much for WC..

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

And back to square one, Source games back in low res texture mode again even with everything set to highest.

Edit 1: Took my 2nd GFX card out and all steam games work perfect, going to try the others now, then try the 2nd gfx card on its own.

Edit 2: Everything ok with 1st GFX, even sorted out the scaling issues. Trying GFX 2 now.

Edit 3: 2nd GFX card works just as well as the 1st, so im at a loss really, wonder if it could be the Crossfire Bridge Connector, will try a different one see what that does.

Edit 4: After trying each card alone i have found no probs with them, im going to try again with them crossfire, if i get the same as i did before then im at a loss.

wait are you using only 1 crossfire bridge?

you need to use both bridges on both tabs otherwise you get the issues your describing. im hoping thats not the case as if you forgot to use both Crossfire bridges all i can say is WTF because this is AMD multi gpu knowledge 101, if the cards have 2 crossfire fingers apply bridges to both.

 

[Ahhzz]

You will get a big increase with the 6950's, but don't think you're going to find unlockable ones in the stores. There's a chance you will, but most of them will not. Best chance is getting a couple used or resold reference cards. That or just go full 6970's.

To mildly re-route this post, and hopefully not to derail too much, is there any reason I need to look for a specific XFX 6950, or will pretty much any of the XFX's unlock?

 

[TheMailMan78]

wait are you using only 1 crossfire bridge?

you need to use both bridges on both tabs otherwise you get the issues your describing. im hoping thats not the case as if you forgot to use both Crossfire bridges all i can say is WTF because this is AMD multi gpu knowledge 101, if the cards have 2 crossfire fingers apply bridges to both.

I always did. They say you don't but screw it. I always used two.

 

[crazyeyesreaper]

AMD themselves recommend using BOTH crossfire connectors on if i remember right the 4870s and 4890s considering a 5850 6850 6870 6950 and 6970 are all far superior in terms of performance and bandwidth i would think it would be common knowledge at this point.

 

[cadaveca]

I always did. They say you don't but screw it. I always used two.

Depends on the card.

AMD themselves recommend using BOTH crossfire connectors on if i remember right the 4870s and 4890s considering a 5850 6850 6870 6950 and 6970 are all far superior in terms of performance and bandwidth i would think it would be common knowledge at this point.

AMD says for 6950:

6.AMD CrossFireX™ technology requires an AMD CrossFireX Ready motherboard, an AMD CrossFireX™ Bridge Interconnect (for each additional graphics card) and may require a specialized power supply.

http://www.amd.com/us/products/desk...6950/Pages/amd-radeon-hd-6950-overview.aspx#5

Under "Footnotes". One bridge per additional card. 2 cards = 1 bridge, 3 cards = 2 bridges, 4 cards = 3 bridges. Maybe placebo effect, but I do think things ran better using just one.


Nice CPU, BTW, Exodus. Wish mine would clock like that.

 

[_ALB_R3D X]

I have two different 6950...
one is Sapphire's rev2 and the other is Sapphire's Dirt 3 Edition
Problem is Dirt 3 Edition has only one Crossfire finger....!
I had a lot of troubles gettin them to work together which I affiliated to the above mentioned but nahhh everything is OK now...