6950 Crossfire
I am a total newbie and have never posted on these forums. I do not claim any significant level of technical expertise.
I am currently building a gaming machine with crossfire or sli. I want to game with three monitors. I do not expect to upgrade to 3d right now, but in the next 2-3 years, maybe. I chose the 6950s, and let me tell you why.
Everyone agrees a 6950 doesn't come close to the performance of the GTX 570. It performs very well, and even beats the 6970 fairly regularly.
However, the 6950 crossfire performance is simply incredible, and frankly, the GTX 570 sli performance scales just okay. In many cases, two 6950s beat the GTX 570 SLI. When it is behind, it is not by much. I picked up two Saphire cards combined for $130 less, however I feel they will equal, and possibly take down GTX 570s SLI. (
http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/radeon-hd-6970-radeon-hd-6950-cayman,2818-16.html)
Second, of course is that I can unlock both my cards if I choose to to 6970s. Given complaints about artifacts and heat, I'm going to wait on that (and for more data). However, it is possible for me to get slightly better crossfire performance on my cards.
What are your thoughts on this? Why do the 6900 series cards crossfire better than NVidia, who used to be the king of dual card performance?