Crossfire 7950 or wait 2 years for an upgrade?

[jdelrio22]

There are some very nice deals on the 7950 cards right now.

My card is a Sapphire Vapor X 7950 which is working great for me but I wanted to ask if investing in crossfire is worthwhile.

Do my cards need to be the exact same model?

 

[OCGuy]

youll want to keep them with similar stock clock speeds so you are at least guaranteed they work together without having to down clock or use higher voltage on one of them. That and the same amount of VRAM. Other than that mix and match all you want.

Prices are likely to drop in the next 2-3 weeks, I would find the best deal on another one and drop it in if you need it.

If you are playing minecraft @ 1080p then I probably not bother.

 

[lehtv]

What cpu, mobo, psu and case do u have? What games do u play and at what resolution?

 

[Rikard]

That is funny, I have the same card and asking myself the same question...

I was expecting 7950 to sell for cheap after the ASICs hit the bitcoin mining, but I did not see that much movement tbh. Where I live, the NVidia 700 series launch did not even make a dent in the 7950 pricing, and now with the R-series coming out the prices finally dropped 20%, but are already showing signs of bouncing up to what they were prior to AMD's announcement. The "smart" thing would be to buy right now while there is still stock and cross fire. But I already have ~80 fps @ 1080p in my most played game (MechWarrior), so I do not think going cross fire is so smart after all...

What I heard rumoured is that one can save the game codes for later, and BF4 is supposed to be added to the Never Settle Bundle in Dec. If that holds true, it might be a game changer for me.

 

[jdelrio22]

1920x1200

I have a Core i5 3570
8GB ram
240gb SSD
MSI Z77 Gamer mobo
Rosewill Thor case

I play everything at that resolution and I mainly play SC2, CS:GO, Borderlands 2, (will play Dark Souls 2), Bioshock Infinite once in a while, natural Selection 2, and I really want to play Metro Last light - just waiting on a deal for it.

 

[Face2Face]

I think one card will be perfectly fine for those games you listed, unless you want to run Metro LL with SSAA.

 

[tential]

TBH, I really don't think nextgen games are going to change the PC landscape that much. It's just going to catch consoles up to where we've been for awhile....

 

[Jacky60]

OP bag another 7950 you'll see a huge improvement and really cheap too. The alternatives are way expensive and you'll almost double your frames. Forget one card and open your eyes to the beauty and super high FPS you'll get. Best deal you could do! You won't be much slower or on a par with my rig and games do get better the more fps and eye candy you have. Don't listen to people who say what you have is fine, buy a 7950, try it and return it if not convinced (you will be). Metro LL will be a classic base where you'll be way happier.

 

[ZGR]

If you have the funds, I would do it. It has the most performance per dollar you can get out of a video card, and has 3GB of RAM which should be good for awhile.

 

[Fastx]

I went crossfire for the following reasons

1.The cost of buying another 7950 nice power for the money.
2.BF4
3. Mantle games including BF4 and future M games poss. performance increase but yes need to see performance increase in Mantle brings but hopefully will be least 10-20%.
4. I also wanted to play/test/BM/tinker with CFX and its been fun and no regrets going CFX imo so far.
If I wasn't happy I would have just sent back the second 7950 I just bought from Newegg about 2-3 weeks ago.


I like the 7950 Boost CFX vs. 7950 Boost vs. Titan benchmark in BF3 below.

 

[R0H1T]

Personally I'd wait for the 290/290x to show up & grab one or two of'em on black friday cause they seem to bring substantial amount of gains to the already awesome GCN architecture, call it GCN 1.2 or 2.0 but if the leaks are anything to go by you're better off buying the newer gen of cards just for additional efficiency & performance though I assume you'll have to pay a slight premium even on black friday deals cause the demand for these cards is gonna be sky high.

edit -
You could also choose to sell your current gfx card before it goes down any further than this, in terms of price, provided you're going for a newer set of cards.

 

[Bateluer]

1920x1200

I have a Core i5 3570
8GB ram
240gb SSD
MSI Z77 Gamer mobo
Rosewill Thor case

I play everything at that resolution and I mainly play SC2, CS:GO, Borderlands 2, (will play Dark Souls 2), Bioshock Infinite once in a while, natural Selection 2, and I really want to play Metro Last light - just waiting on a deal for it.

I doubt you'll see any real benefit with Crossfire 7950s with those games at that resolution. 1200p is fast becoming a low resolution for PC gaming, and the 7950 cards are still extremely powerful cards.