Graphic Cards HD7950 CF or Not ?

rahulyo

Skilled
Hello Friends ,

I want your suggestion on HD 7950 Crossfire setup . Currently i am using Sapphire HD 7950 Vapor X, thinking to buy another one and do CF.

Is CF HD7950 a good idea? Will i face any problem in CF HD 7950 like drivers, micro-stuttering, lag etc ?

My System Specs :-
Intel i5 3570K
Asus P8Z77-V Pro
Gskill Ripjaws X 12 Gb 1600Mhz
Thermalright Archon
Corsair TX 650M
7950 Vepor X
Seagate 500Gb + WD 3TB LG DVD RW
Dell U2515H
CM HAF 912 Adv.
Logitech Z906 + Asus Xonar STX

Please give me your valuable suggestions.
 
Firstly yes u will get issues amd drivers are not that stable and neither game so many game oriented features.

And if ur gpu is off warranty dont even dare do that.no less than a gamble.

I had a 650ti boost sli first card stopped working in 1.5 year 2nd one is still fine(5 months old)
 
^Typical comment from someone who probably has never used an AMD gpu, Crossfire scaling in general is slightly better than SLI.
As for your game oriented features, everyone knows how gameworks is designed to gimp performance on AMD cards.
 
^Typical comment from someone who probably has never used an AMD gpu, Crossfire scaling in general is slightly better than SLI.
As for your game oriented features, everyone knows how gameworks is designed to gimp performance on AMD cards.
Dont take me wrong i myself have a fx 8150 and r9 270 still feel nvidia is better for time being.

As for the gpu it will largly depend on condition of OP's current gpu wheather adding another is worth.
 
^Typical comment when justifying, pretend to own one to validate point.
This is your post from the other thread btw

I waana know hows amd havent used one since 2k12 nd how it stacks against nvidia

How can you comment or give advice when you're just regurgitating what Nvidia shills spam internet forums with ? gpu-z screenie or gtfo
 
what's your budget like?
the next gen's (pascal/arctic islands) mid-range cards will be 1440p capable for sure so you can wait for those.
currently a gtx 970 or r9 290/390 onwards is 1440p capable so if your getting a second hand gpu you can consider those options as well.
 
I have run 6950's in crossfire for quite a while and before that 4850's in crossfire. The overall experience was quite good except for games which performed same or worse with two cards compared to single one. I have also had CF breakages in later driver updates which I typically resolved by reverting back to a stable driver. Personally, I think AMD screwed CF over as time passed.

I also heard that the later iterations of AMD GPU's have way more CF operational and stability issues. Scaling is beside the point if you end up with other issues. I would definitely not recommend it unless you are getting a similar card as the one you have for a dirt cheap price. Then, best case, you get to enjoy working CF in many games and worst case, you will not, but then you didn't have to spend a lot of money for that.

Also take note that maintaining a multi GPU setup is a pain and you should be ready to deal with the issues associated including that of cooling two cards spaced very close. Do not get into it with expectations of 2X performance as soon as you plug the second card in.
 
7950 is not worth crossfiring. Not much CF/SLI QA is done on lower end cards and as a result most bugs surface on them. If you must have an upgrade right now, I'd say sell the 7950 and buy a 390/390x/970.
 
As for your game oriented features, everyone knows how gameworks is designed to gimp performance on AMD cards.

This is utter nonsense often repeated to make it look like it AMD is not at fault for issues. It is not nvidia's fault that AMD does not bother working with game developers as well as nvidia does. AMD is clearly incompetent in that matter. If gameworks was really gimping performance on AMD cards in some unethical manner (cheating), we would already have detailed analysis done to the death both by AMD and third parties and there would be sufficient proof of the fact and lawsuits. I do not see any of that. I only see a bunch of AMD fans cringing and cribbing about it when ever a game fails to perform good and stable on AMD cards these days.

People shouldn't blame other companies for AMD's own incompetence and failures. It just gives them an excuse for not putting in their best efforts and if you read the history of AMD, excusing themselves like this is something they are really competent at. I would rather see good CPU's and GPU's from AMD that work well than silly excuses.
 
^^ There is nothing in those links to disprove my point that AMD is not working with game developers as close as nVidia does. In fact those links highlight the fact that AMD is not able to provide and sell competing similar solutions to the game developers. Show me proof where a game with gameworks features switched off still has nVidia libraries actively detecting that its an AMD GPU and then deliberately compromise the rendering flow in some manner.

Gameworks is a library that is optimized to run on nVidia cards. There is absolutely no reason for nVidia to spend time optimizing it for GPU's other than nVidia. It is perfectly logical to assume that the alternative path when nVidia GPU is not detected will be to assume that none of high end features are available and work for the least hardware denomination. i.e. it will run it as its its on integrated GPU with bare features. AMD was always free to provide similar solutions of their own hardware and work with game developers for giving cutting edge features. There are games that took advantage of various AMD only technology in the past like AMD 3DNow! and nobody cried foul over it being compared to Intel CPU's. More recently, its Mantle and no reviewer was expected to not compare games optimized for Mantle against nvdia GPUs. If AMD can work with game developers to support Mantle, they can definitely work with developers for the other game works like features too.

If nVidia had been absuing their deals with game developers, there would be games that are built completely around proprietary nVidia technology or technology that they own currently like Physx for example. Why is physix still treated as an optional extra. Show me one major game where gameplay is centered around Physics implemented through Physx in such a critical manner that it breaks the game without it.

So stop with the overarching pity just because they happen to be an underdog. As I said in another thread, AMD's situation is not a result of some big bad wolves trying to bully them. They had the people, the funds a reputation in the industry to succeed. Its its own bad business decisions, incompetency and wastage of resources that thought them here.
 
@Lord Nemesis Lol you had to post a wall of text didn't you. This is why I don't engage on forums anymore, my head literally explodes because of the difference in perception. I'll make an exception this one time and post a tl;dr post in your style, gimme some time to explain my perspective.

@sid_donnydarko Power consumption is generally overplayed by manufacturers to sell pricey PSU's. Even at peak load OP will still have at least 150w headroom.

1JETg89c.jpeg
 
^^ There is nothing in those links to disprove my point that AMD is not working with game developers as close as nVidia does. In fact those links highlight the fact that AMD is not able to provide and sell competing similar solutions to the game developers. Show me proof where a game with gameworks features switched off still has nVidia libraries actively detecting that its an AMD GPU and then deliberately compromise the rendering flow in some manner.

There's no direct proof, you'll have to look at the evidence objectively and arrive at your own conclusion. Most of the gimping is evident from the benchmarks where even with Gameworks features disabled the gap in performance is always lesser than what it'd be for a title of a similar nature/based on the same engine.
The most glaring examples of which is Watch dogs where a 290x which usually thrashed a 770 by at least 25% in any other title was neck to neck that too with the Gameworks features off.
Or in the case of ProjectCARS where the 200 series is completely overshadowed by gpu's from both 700 as well as 900 series. One funny thing about the PC fiasco was that the GTX960 strangely outperformed both the 780Ti and the first Titan.
Then there was the curious case of wasteful tesselation in Crysis2 which again was done to lower performance on AMD cards when they weren't so great at it.
It was only after the backlash and outcry from certain developers last year that Nvidia even changed their policy of not allowing access to the Gameworks code even to the developers who were integrating it into their game!
It's not like such practices are unheard of either and definitely not the first time AMD could be on the receiving end, remember the "Cripple AMD" compiler fiasco from the early 00's that completely tilted the landscape in Intel's favour ? The truth eventually comes out, just give it some time.

AMD is not working with game developers as close as nVidia does.

sell competing similar solutions to the game developers.

If by working closely you mean paying millions to integrate proprietary code that adversely affects PC gamers that have competing hardware, you're spot on.
No developer in his right mind would knowingly integrate something like this into his product unless he's well compensated for the loss in business doing so will entail.

Gameworks is a library that is optimized to run on nVidia cards. There is absolutely no reason for nVidia to spend time optimizing it for GPU's other than nVidia.

And no one is asking them to spend their time/money either, all they've been asked is to make their libraries open so that manufacturers can do the optimization themselves.
Do you remember how some gaming evolved titles ran better on AMD gpu's at launch or how the framerate tanked when TressFx was enabled in Tomb Raider on Nvidia gpu's ?
Both those problems were rectified because the code was open for optimization which helped Nvidia address those issues in a short span of time and therein lies the fundamental difference. No matter how much time and money AMD spends, it cannot optimize code it has no access to.

It is perfectly logical to assume that the alternative path when nVidia GPU is not detected will be to assume that none of high end features are available and work for the least hardware denomination. i.e. it will run it as its its on integrated GPU with bare features.

It is mind-boggling to think how someone can find this acceptable and this is the main reason why I think Gameworks is indeed like cancer for PC gaming.
People fail to understand the benefits and application of universal standards in things such as device interfaces, plugs and code. Imagine if your router, bluetooth, devices, etc only worked with specific devices of a single given brand. Every device manufacturer and potentially between every device model there would be a separate set of plugs and adapters that would need to get used to make stuff work. Screw this analogy let's take the PS4-XB1 into the equation there's surely a difference in capability but can you imagine the outcry if they pull this nonsense with locked features.
When a person spends 30k+ on a GPU why should he be subject to an inferior experience and have to turn off any feature at all when his gpu is more than capable of handling whatever he throws at it especially when he has paid the same price for the game as anyone else.

AMD was always free to provide similar solutions of their own hardware and work with game developers for giving cutting edge features.

Yea but they were more focused on doing actual work with what little resources they had that could benefit/motivate/nudge the entire industry ahead as a whole i.e., Mantle instead of focusing on gimmicky features clearly aimed at fragmenting and monopolizing the market. Who gives a sh*t how Batman's ghagra looks when there was a possibility of getting performance gains for people with mainstream and low-end cards as well.

There are games that took advantage of various AMD only technology in the past like AMD 3DNow! and nobody cried foul over it being compared to Intel CPU's. More recently, its Mantle and no reviewer was expected to not compare games optimized for Mantle against nvdia GPUs.

But they weren't forced to sign NDA's prohibiting them from working closely on optimization with competitors either, heck AMD made it pretty clear that Mantle will work just as well on Nvidia cards.

If AMD can work with game developers to support Mantle, they can definitely work with developers for the other game works like features too.

It's unfair to compare Gimmickworks with Mantle, one is designed to build a walled garden while the other single-handedly woke Microsoft up from its slumber to fast-forward Dx12 development.

If nVidia had been absuing their deals with game developers, there would be games that are built completely around proprietary nVidia technology or technology that they own currently like Physx for example. Why is physix still treated as an optional extra. Show me one major game where gameplay is centered around Physics implemented through Physx in such a critical manner that it breaks the game without it.

lolwut ? PhysX depends on CUDA cores (works off cpu as well but that is a last resort and inefficient option) that are non-existent on consoles where the bulk of the revenue lies. Those potatoes already have a tough time running 30fps on 1080p and they'd be further reduced to being glorified powerpoint presentation machines if entire games were to be built around proprietary tech.
Not to forget there are better alternatives to run off cpu's/apu's like Havok which also comes with AI and Animation modules that help further in lowering development costs.

So stop with the overarching pity just because they happen to be an underdog. As I said in another thread, AMD's situation is not a result of some big bad wolves trying to bully them. They had the people, the funds a reputation in the industry to succeed. Its its own bad business decisions, incompetency and wastage of resources that thought them here.

There's something wrong if you aren't rooting for an open source, anti-drm kinda stance that in the end favours consumers. It's not like I've never used an Nvidia gpu, heck I was extremely fond of my 6600GT, 8800GT and GTX260 out of the bunch and they served me for years w/o any problems whatsoever, you could even say I was a fan but Nvidia has been slowly turning into the Apple of the components industry with its scummy practices in recent years.
This is a market in which AMD still exists and they are still selling upper-midrangers as high-end cards, milking gullible gamers with deep pockets and no brains with cards like Titan, creating closed ecosystems instead of adapting open standards (g-sync), witholding information until it becomes widely known (970 fiasco, DX12 fiasco).
It's not like they're technologically incompetent either, they have the expertise and the products to back it up and don't really have to resort to such practises to build a reputation or faithful fanbase.
I agree I do have a soft corner for AMD because their moral compass isn't so broken but I'd have still been here with a pitchfork if it was them that was pulling this kinda sh*t off. You can say no one is bound to follow ethics and everything is fair in business but you'd definitely change your tune when they shaft you from behind after becoming a monopoly.
 
i admit, injecting unknown code into your game is risky but it comes from a reputed company and maybe the features/reduction in development time are worth it
but i highly doubt if money/pecuniary benefits were provided as that's highly illegal and getting busted for that is quite real (intel and microsoft paid huge fines)
amd's problems with tesselation were just the chips incapability as it wasn't exclusive to crysis. (we might see that with maxwell and async)
alternatively, dx12 with multi gpu support might provide a mix n' match option to get the best of both worlds.
that being said, i'm not liking the widening gap in performance between nvidia/amd optimized titles because ultimately, as a gamer it's limiting my options.
 
Last edited:
@Lord Nemesis and @psyph3r :- Itni English padh ke mere Dimag ki batti Ud gayi :p

Thanks to all for your valuable suggestions. Currently using Sapphire HD7950 Vapor X 950/1250 with Dell U2515H but facing lots of issues like stuttering,lag, FPS fluctuations Etc.

And one strange issue i am facing after RMA HD7950 that PC feels slow (Formatted 5-6 times, Win 8.1 64 bit fully updated) . Dont know why ? :(
 
A gpu generally won't slow down overall performance of your pc like that, maybe it's another component that is causing problems. First update the drivers to the Crimson suite, if that doesn't fix things check if you're facing the same issues by running off onboard graphics or on another gpu if you can borrow from a friend. If the issue still persists run HD tune and memtest to check other components.
 
Back
Top