I wanted to wait till June when the 7000 prices comes down but one of my 5870 start to have problems. Now I'm in the processes of RAM with XFX. They might send me two 6950 or two 6970 i don't know yet. Since I have a CF setup they have to send two video cards of the same kind. They don't have or make 5870 any more. One guy I read on newegg said they sent him 6970's since they told him they don't have the 5870 any more. I'm contemplating at the 7970, I don't see any reviews that shows 5870 CF vs one 7970 in newer games like BF3. I mostly play BF3 atm. If one 7970 is just as fast as two 5870 I might have to sell my rma cards and get 7970. The problem is that the 7970 just came out and that price is way too steep.
If thier going to send you two 6950's or 70's I wouldn't look a gift horse in the mouth. Take them and run. Tied you over for a long time and stronger than a 7970. Later
Lol.... I don't think they are going to send me the 7 series But you didn't answer my question or give any concrete statements there
I didn't reply they were sending you the 7 series. You stated 6950 or 6970. Either one of those in CF would be stronger than a 7970. And good to go for a long time. Give you a chance to wait for the next gen cards. Later
You might be right, I will use what ever they send me first. I'll find out tomorrow. I just started the support ticket this afternoon and tomorrow I should hear from someone. But 3 gigs of ram looks very interesting, especially how BF3 uses a lot of VRAM
I'd take what they offer, Hopefully the 6X cards and if still thinking about the 7X cards would wait until Kepler releases along with the rest of the AMD cards. Prices will be coming down on the cards and with just 6x cards your covered for quite awhile. BF3 may push 2gigs but not enough to make any difference right now. And if not running multiple Hi Rez monitors not even a factor. Good Luck. Later
Yes, two 5870s in Crossfire are like one 7970 in terms of performance. Though the 7970 might do a wee bit better with tesselation. The single 7970 will also produce less heat and draw less power. The 3GB frame buffer of the 7970 will also make Eyefinity resolutions more playable as well. From from strictly a performace aspect, they are too close to call.
personally i`d go for the 7970...why...later if you want even more performance you can get a second 7970 without losing out in selling anything,saying that...i cant see anyone swapping a 7xxx series card for a 5xxx series
They'll probably try to jack you around with 6870's. Don't do it. Hold out for 6950's at the very least.
Only a heavily overclocked 7970 beats 5870 crossfire. Although the lack of vram is the 5870's achilles heel.
The 7970 would be the better performer, as sometimes, you would have to disable one of your 5870's, due to all the Xfire probs, so only running on 1x, the 7970, will run at its full potential all the time.
7970 should be the better choice regardless of OC. 2x5870 also suffers from poor CF scaling (compared to HD6900). Tesselletion performance will be way better as well, and if you play beyond 1080p then you'll thank the 3GB buffer as well.
If they sell you some 6970's ... keep them .. As i have stated before in other post similar, yes you can replace 2x 5870 with 1 7970 wihout any problem ... most games will be equal in term of performance ( some few fps lower, in rare case, faster in some games.). ( performance wise its a bit a side upgrade, but there's some advantage to it ) lets not forget, HD5870 are now old.. Even if in Crossfire they still do a really good jobs.. in addition there's plenty of goodies.. ( no more limited with 1024mb in some games, faster tesselation, you can use SSAA without worry, the performance are excellent with it. better AF quality ( and AA too ). The Card OC damn good, and scaling is excellent with core speed. Crossfire scaling is yet again improved.. ( going to 90-99% in the best cases )
Just got the RAM issue today, looks like they will be shipping me a 5870. Well I don't know, I called and spoke with someone at XFX to rush the processes and issue me a RMA number. He notice that I have CF setup, I just told him that you guys need to ship me back a 5870 or replace both if you don't have a 5870. He said just to ship in the bad video card in. It could be that this guy doesn't work in the back, so once the tech people receive the video card and notice on my packaging paper that I have a the CF box checked, then realized that they don't have the 5870 any more. They might ship me a 6000 series and ask me to ship in my 2nd good 5870 in so they can ship me out the 2nd 6000 series card. This is just my speculation btw. This has never occur to me before where a video card has reaches it's EOL from Nvidia or AMD and where I still have warranty and my card goes bad. Shipping my video card tomorrow. Lets see what they give me, I'll post an update when I receive the card.
The card just arrived to day and they gave me a 5870 no reference card. I might either get one GTX 680 later one. When I started this thread the 7970 was the king of the crop.
This non ref card runs really warm, when playing BF3 the fans get really loud bc it runs at 100% and this is on auto fan. It works I'm fine with that. I have my non ref card on the top, I had it on the bottom but it still run hot. It maxes out at 91C
