HD 7850 in crossfire . Worth it ?

[paulstung]

I've currently got a Sapphire HD 7850 2gb , and have always been curious about crossfire . I no that most people always say it's easier to have a single high powered over 2 lesser cards . But my dilema is I can get hold of a Gigabyte 7870 ,for £130 . Not the same to look at but very similar with having a blue pcb , and all black fans. Plus my case window is against a wall so it can't really be seen .
From reading a few articles and watching some vids there seems to be about a 75% increase , so for the money it adds up to be a no brainer . Well in my mind at least .
I use 2 screens 1 32" 1080p lg cinema 3d tv and an Asus 24" led monitor . The Asus is primarily for monitoring whilst gaming , so only the 32" is being used for the actual game .
The only thing putting me off are the driver issues for crossfire , but they do seem to be improving , and becoming a lot more stable .
Specs , i5 3570 @4.2 8gb corsair jet black 1600 , MSI Z77 MPower . If it would be worth it would a 750w psu be enough ?

 

[marco]

Let your curiosity with crossfire end with this thread, i strongly advise just sticking with one strong single gpu unless you want headaches. You wont be able to just "plug and play" as the saying goes, expect constant flaffing about with drivers and CCC etc. But worst of all and most importantly you will not get x2 performance.
Flickering screen and flickering textures is another rife problem with crossfire, trust me you will get sick of it. Its just not worth the money, simples.

Edit: Crossfire drivers improving and becoming more stable is just a big joke, its something that has been happening since crossfire was first released if you know what i mean. (their getting better now, honest)

 

[paulstung]

That's exactly what I have come to realise after the day researching . I'll just put those pennies in the HIS 7970 jar. Thanks mate

 

[Ironsoldier]

Good choice with 7970. I'd defo recommend it if you can afford it.

 

[Ghosthud1]

sell your 7850 and upgrade, i ditched crossfire setups after the 4850's i had D:

 

[DrYuri]

I dont know, i decided to go for 7850 2gb crossfire and i must say i am impressed! With a help of radeonpro you can play games practically microstutter free. Sure some games need some tweaking but that is part of the fun, for me at least. Just thought i would share my experience

 

[alienware]

The 7850 performs well in Crossfire when it works. Sadly AMD have a reputation for bad drivers so quite a bit of the time you will be waiting on drivers to make your games work.

If you want to run benchmarks you will yield excellent results but gaming is hit and miss with Crossfire.

There's also latency issues with Crossfire, SLI is better in pretty much every regard but even SLI comes with its issues sometimes.

I would get a 7950 then consider Crossfiring that. At least when you have to fall back on one GPU it'll hold up.

 

[Master&Puppet]

It is still better to get the most powerful card you can afford (but not necessessarily pay a premium). If you are playing in 1080 then get yourself a 7950 or 7870 XT (tahiti PCB ). They are very inexpensive and will do everything you probably need.

For the record I have been running crossfire for the last few years and things are generally fine. Many games support xfire natively now (this always used to be an after thought) and I find that simply enabling vsync makes the whole experience smooth and eliminates the stutter. There are however always hiccups. It didn't work with FarCry 3 (but neither did SLI).

On balance Xfire is good and you do get near perfect performance scaling when it works, which is most of the time.

You should still get a single card first though for those moments when you can only rely on one.

 

[DrYuri]

I had pc for almost a year now, so adding second 7850 was probably optimal price/performance decision. If you dont like tweaking and playing with settings then single card is better choice for you for sure!

 

[paulstung]

I settled with the HIS 7950, for the price it was hard not to. I was considering the 7970 but for the nearly £100 price difference I just couldn't justify it. I have still got plans to go Xfire though, but with 7950's probably later in the year, when performance starts to lag a little.