The Most Dangerous Ways To Open a Bottle Of Wine

#4634369 Posted on: 08/09/2013 05:59 AM

---

As long as you have 60fps in games you play with all the eyecandy you use, "upgrading" is unnecessery.

#4635294 Posted on: 08/11/2013 10:19 AM

---

I'm of 2 minds. Typically, I'd advise waiting when a new release is supposed to be so close (~2 months?). Some of the deals right now though are pretty amazing and, unless AMD has a big stack of unsold Tahiti chips, I could see them selling out in pretty short order. I would be tempted to jump on a couple of 7950's at <$500. That's typical performance greater than Titan for ~1/2 the price. Especially once you O/C them.

#4635512 Posted on: 08/11/2013 11:39 PM

---

Sadly I'm currently in the process of moving, and haven't been able to test the new 13.8 drivers, but I'm really excited to get back to playing BF3 and see how much less microstuttering there is with my two 5870's. ...Because that ms was painfully obvious, and a constant eyesore; I just had to train my brain to consider it as normal. Luckily for me I'm rather new to crossfire, so I've only had to deal with microstutter for just about a year.

I can't imagine having tolerated it for the past 5+ yrs (or however long)

#4636475 Posted on: 08/13/2013 06:01 PM

---

I upgraded from HD5870/5970 crossfire to 2xTitan half a year ago. The main reason was that I upgraded my monitor from 1080p to 1440p about a year ago and struggled to run games decently with HD5870/5970 at 1440p. Frankly if you run games at 1080p, 2xHD5870 is good enough especially after AMD released a 13.8 driver (which fixed crossfire issues). I think that you should try out this driver to see how your system will run. If you don't feel smooth, you could upgrade your gpu to one good one. AMD will release a new flagship gpu (HD9970/50) in October. This gpu should compete with the current Nvidia flagship gtx780. Either HD9970/50 or gtx780 should be good enough at 1080p for two or three years. If you want to go on budget, you could get HD7970/50. This is slower than HD9970/50 or gtx780, but definitely cheaper and good enough for 1080p gaming at this moment. But if you don't want upgrade your gpu often, I feel that HD9970/50 or gtx780 might be a good choice. I think that HD7990 is not necessary at 1080p. I wouldn't go with multi-gpu setup when there is a way to do with one gpu setup.

#4636670 Posted on: 08/14/2013 02:13 AM

---

I'm in the same boat as you know my friend. I've been using crossfire 5850s for a while now (got the original launch day). The 13.8 driver has really helped my experience all around. That said, I'm also now using a 1440p 27" iMac as my main display in target display mode. For modern games, I pretty well have to disable any MSAA due to a gpu memory deficit. And that's the issue we're going to have moving forward. Even without AA and at 1080p, some games are going to require more than 1GB. Inevitably they will stutter as a result..

I'm going to hold out as long as I can, but I think early next year will be my breaking point.

#4637080 Posted on: 08/14/2013 08:20 PM

---

I was in a similar position as you a little over a year ago. I upgraded from my HD5970 to my curreent GTX680...and never looked back.

Less heat, less noise, less potential issuess, no juggling of drivers/caps, guaranteed performance, and the ability to run in windowed mode without losing the maximum potential of the video card.