HD6950+6870 CFX= worth it?

[Plazmodeus]

Comrades

Skyrim has forced me to upgrade my HD6870 to an HD6950 2gb. The performance difference has been shocking. I now have this extra 6879 sitting there. I've never had a Crosssfire setup before. Is it worth my while to set them up in a CFX rig? Would the 6870 just slow down the 6950, or give it a little boost?

[TurtlePerson2]

I don't think that you can crossfire two different graphics cards. Unless something big has happened without me noticing that idea is still sort of pie-in-the-sky being developed by Lucid.

[Forge]

I'm with Turtle, I don't think those two can Xfire. That said, if they do, it'll run like 2 6870s, not like a 6950 and a 6870. Google some benchmarks for Xfire 6870s, that'll tell you what it would run like.

[astrotech66]

This chart should help:

Crossfire Compatibility Chart

It looks like you cannot put a 6870 and a 6950 in XFire together.

[michael_d]

Crossfire is not worth it IMHO, you will be better off with a single 6970. Keep in mind that Crossfire support for the latest titles is always late and has issues and takes them weeks and sometimes months to fix.

[Waco]

Sell the 6870.

[Forge]

Sell the 6870.

Better, give it away to someone less fortunate!

[riviera74]

IF you are donating that 6870, I'll take it . I only have an HD 3450 right now . If not, eBay that card and offset your 6950 purchase.

[CCKMA]

It would work but your motherboard would have to support the lucid hydra chip. Two different GPUs cannot run in pure crossfire or SLI, however the lucid hydra chip allows programs to schedule tasks for two different GPUs, ie an HD 6870 and HD 6950, or even an ATI and Nvidia GPU running together.

[Waco]

It would work but your motherboard would have to support the lucid hydra chip. Two different GPUs cannot run in pure crossfire or SLI, however the lucid hydra chip allows programs to schedule tasks for two different GPUs, ie an HD 6870 and HD 6950, or even an ATI and Nvidia GPU running together.

And it's a mess even when it works...not to mention that he doesn't have a board with a Hydra chip on it.

[MrJP]

Just curious, but do you really see that much performance difference between the 6870 and 6950? Most reviews/tests I've seen show those cards to be within 10% of each other unless you start to run mega Eyenfinity resolutions when the 2GB starts to be useful.

[mikehodges2]

If lucid had done the right thing and sold their multi-gpu chips to everyone, you could, and the performance would be almost 6870 + 6950. But they didn't. So it won't be.

[LoneWolf15]

Just curious, but do you really see that much performance difference between the 6870 and 6950? Most reviews/tests I've seen show those cards to be within 10% of each other unless you start to run mega Eyenfinity resolutions when the 2GB starts to be useful.

It would depend on what resolution the cards are being used at, and what detail levels are turned on in games. At higher resolutions (probably at 1920x1200 and up) you should definitely see a difference At 1680x1050 and lower, even if there is a difference in frame rate, both cards should be able to provide more than playable frame rates, so it shouldn't matter.

It's not just the amount of memory by the way; the GPU on the 69xx series is more powerful. The memory comes into play at higher resolutions or when games have very large textures available, but the GPU affects more than that. Check out this page of TR's review of the 69xx cards and compare it to the 6870 scores. The 6870 doesn't come close to the 6950 in Metro 2033.

http://techreport.com/articles.x/20126/12