Crossfired 6950's

[grifter11]

Do crossfired 6950's have more Graphical horsepower than a single 6990 ?

[lowfat]

If they are not unlocked, definitely not. If they are unlocked, then they are pretty comparable.

[Diamondtech]

No they do not locked or unlocked they will not match up. In crossfire the other card will only be uses as a reserve it would not use the the full GPU and ram. Crossfire does not double the cards power. 1 GPU will be used for rendering the other will display the video.

[roh_ultima]

i'm not sure what diamond is talking about....you get almost double the fps in games that support crossfire


AMD Radeon HD 6990 4GB Review

two 6950's if unlocked would be the same as two 6970's


now just be aware that some games do not support crossfire and in rare cases perform worse
(as in lower min fps than a single card) and gain no extra fps

[jurassic1024]

Originally Posted by grifter11

Do crossfired 6950's have more Graphical horsepower than a single 6990 ?

They trade blows.

[lKashl]

Originally Posted by Diamondtech

No they do not locked or unlocked they will not match up. In crossfire the other card will only be uses as a reserve it would not use the the full GPU and ram. Crossfire does not double the cards power. 1 GPU will be used for rendering the other will display the video.

Completely false, both GPU's will render graphics equivalently assuming their the same power. So say you have two 6950's you can expect 99%/99% usage in a game properly optimised with VSNYC disabled. If you have a 6970/6950 combo you can expect 90%/99% usage in a well optimised game (the 6970 will perform at 6950 spec unless u OC the 6970).

That said I would advise against crossfire, frankly it sucks, drivers and fixes are always late and not completely functional. ATM I still find I'm better off playing Witcher 2 and Crysis 2 with just one of my 5850's instead of both :( Only things it performs well in are benchmark games and actual benchmarks.

[JmanEspresso]

Just my 2cents.. I wouldn't necessarily advise against Crossfire, but I would definitely mention to anyone planning on running crossfire with the HD 6xxx, and even the 5xxx series, that when a new game comes out, you usually will not have 100% smooth use of the game until an update is released.

Personally, Im a patient guy. Secondly, idk if people are exagerrating or Im just lucky, but I haven't experienced anywhere near the amount of problems people complain about. Crysis 2 and Shift 2 both had flickering screens, but they got fixed soon after release, and Ive been playing every game I own without issue.


So, while crossfire is FAR from perfect, the scaling that the 6xxx series has is ridiculously good, and once the driver support is updated for the new release, its a great experience. Ive got two 6870's, which I bought in January when the price was 249.99 IIRC. Now, they can found for 200. So for ~$400 you can get a setup which, if you play at 1920X1080, will allow you to literally max out every game out there, minus a couple sticklers(like, for instance, Crysis 1 and Metro.) Im no expert, but that sounds like a great deal to me.

Course, a single 580 will have much better driver support in the first place, and will give the same performance as two 6870s.(Surprisingly, the 2 6870s are sometimes better than a 580. A single 6870 might be on the modest side for a gaming enthusiast, but 2 of them is awhole nother story!


The experience is great, no doubt about it. But there are people out there who get real bent out of shape when the game they just spent money on won't work right away. And Im not saying they should or shouldn't be upset. Just that, if you're the type of person who gets really bothered about a little bug here or there, then a multii-gpu setup isn't the ideal setup for you(Crossfire OR SLI). Because while a single card may not have the same performance as two cards, a single high end card will always be an easier experience.

IMHO, of course.

[trueimage]

2x 6950 shader unlocked = basically the same as 6990 in real world performance for half the price