24 replies to this topic

[Darius Otsdarva]

Hey guys,

I've been thinking of picking up this card as I would like to pursue triple monitor gameplay in the future. I've read some reviews and it is within my budget for a videocard.

I find that since it has 3GB for its videocard it'd work best to my advantage. I also use this computer for drawing and painting.

My budget is around the $350-$400 mark for a card at the moment.

[HasHman]

well i know of one person that has triple 25in monitors and 2 7950 and he still has problems with low frame rates so u should go smaller monitors then 25in and i dont know if one card is gonna be enough

[Darius Otsdarva]

Well the maximum size monitor I was considering was around 24". I would probably use 23" anyway since my desk can't accomodate much more, unless I buy a new desk. A new desk would probably push my budget past it's limit, or I could wait a month but we'll see.

I'm sure the single 7950 would be enough but the question is, is it worth it?

[Ghostrider45]

If your going to be paying 300 to 400 Dollers for Vid card then get a good one the one your talking about Sucks Rocks I payed under 200 hundred for a very nice Nvidia GeForce Gtx550 ti works VERY VERY Nicely it has 1024 MB of DDR5 ram !! for the money your Tal about you could get the new GTX 560 are the 570 ti thats even better!!!

[CommanderOSIS]

I got a gtx 560 for $130. don't listen to that guy. there's a thread here that compares all the cards out right now. its a sticky. very informative. :-)

[CommanderOSIS]

personally I'd get an nvidia 670 and get borderlands 2 for free. food for though :-)

[zinetwin]

I would start at the hardware sites. Anandtech, extremeoverclockers, and OCC all do similar writeups with benchmark and actual usage comparisons.
http://www.tomshardw...eview,3107.html

[Valdr_Skeggjoar]

I bought 2 of the AMD Radeon 7770 HD 1gig 28ns cards with the (then) new AMD FX8036 8core 3.86ghz and 32 gig ram for my
Sabertooth FX990 M.board back in April. I run 6 monitors stacked in twos and still have 4 more slots. I overclocked it by 20%.
I am VERY happy with them!!! I have graphics I still can not believe!!! I still find my mouth hanging open in Mesmerized awe!!
I have seen a couple of reviews for the 7980 and its HOT HOT HOT well worth the money!! Just make sure you have the system
to use it to its uht most! You won't be sorry. They do eat some power tho, check your Power Supply wattage.

[Wookieelover]

Ghostrider45, on 02 September 2012 - 07:29 PM, said:

If your going to be paying 300 to 400 Dollers for Vid card then get a good one the one your talking about Sucks Rocks I payed under 200 hundred for a very nice Nvidia GeForce Gtx550 ti works VERY VERY Nicely it has 1024 MB of DDR5 ram !! for the money your Tal about you could get the new GTX 560 are the 570 ti thats even better!!!

You sir are either a Troll or a Nvidia fanboi.

A single 7950 is MORE than enough for this game or any game.
40-60fps easily with cry3 engine

And a 7950 would be faster than either of those cards even if they are in sli.

Edited by Wookieelover, 02 September 2012 - 08:33 PM.

[Darius Otsdarva]

I thought the 7980 wasn't coming out until Feb 2013? Anyway I'd prefer the 3GB GDDR5 because I plan to do some rendering/editing and photoshop work on it, the extra oomph sounds good.

The closest Nvidia option I found was the 660Ti but the Memory bus only 198 bit. It worries me a little since upcoming games tend to be a little on the heavy side for processing if I want to go Ultra/Extreme on graphics.

I'll probably stick to it until I find something better.

[Vulpesveritas]

you can get a Radeon HD 7950 or Geforce GTX 660 for $300-330 right now. They're comparable in performance, the 7950 overclocking better and being better at computing, with the 660 using less power and being a smaller card, and having PhysX if you play a lot of Nvidia titles. Either would do well at this price.

CommanderOSIS, on 02 September 2012 - 07:50 PM, said:

I got a gtx 560 for $130. don't listen to that guy. there's a thread here that compares all the cards out right now. its a sticky. very informative. :-)

Yeah... and only gets ~30 FPS in Crysis 2 when the 7950 is about twice as fast.

[Bishop Steiner]

Vulpesveritas, on 02 September 2012 - 09:45 PM, said:

you can get a Radeon HD 7950 or Geforce GTX 660 for $300-330 right now. They're comparable in performance, the 7950 overclocking better and being better at computing, with the 660 using less power and being a smaller card, and having PhysX if you play a lot of Nvidia titles. Either would do well at this price.

Yeah... and only gets ~30 FPS in Crysis 2 when the 7950 is about twice as fast.

I will say I have been averaging good fps with the 560, tbh. Not as good as those would, but plenty more than needed.

[HATER 1]

The 7950 on one monitor (which is what it seemed you planned on) is going to put you ahead of the technology curve for a good while, as would the comparable nvidia card. Worth it? Yes, for either one.

[Ignys]

I would get the 7950 and go with a larger/smaller screen. As I have personally purchased 3 monitors and set up eyefinity. I found it to be less than awesome once you get over the initial excitement of running multiple monitors as one image. Numerous games have fisheye (where it zooms in your side monitors) and MWO doesn't really support it at this time. The only games that really support multi monitor are simulation oriented games. I currently run the Gigabyte 7950 on a 23 inch main screen and a 19 inch side screen. I find it much more funtional.

Oh yeah, post edit: Get a 27-32 monitor and you will be blown away moreover than eyefinity.

Edited by Ignys, 03 September 2012 - 06:32 AM.

[Darius Otsdarva]

Interesting. I thought eyefinity required al monitors be around the same size? Or was it the same resolution?

I'm planning to get the gigabyte edition as well, maybe the VTX3d version but I'm a little iffy on the brands at this point. I just need the raw crunch power of 7950 right now so I'll have to drift away from the Nvidia series, not that I have anything against them.

[Damocles]

I bought the gigabyte 7950, its currently destroying FPS in Planetside 2. (avg 70~)

[Freeride Forever]

I never understood why anyone would want to have more than one monitor set up as one, where there ends up being 2 monitor frames in the image at any spot where the monitors meet. Seems totally dumb to me. I'd expect it to be nothing more than a fad. Why not just run a bigger monitor/TV instead?

Thanks to Wookieelover for pointing out the two possibilities explaining what is wrong with Ghostrider45's post. AMD's generally provide the best value for the money. Nividia has a ******** campaign to pay for, so they're generally a bit pricier for about the same performance. The size of your monitors will have nothing to do with the cards performance. The resolution you run them at will. I would think for HD, at least on this game, you might want two of those cards but I don't know if MWO is gonna support XFire or SLI.

The comparison at http://www.hardwareh...troduction.html shows some FPS counts for an OC'd version of the card on triple display setups in HD. BF3 uses CryEngine 3 also. The triple display tests were only done on the AMD cards. So I suppose that means Nvidia doesn't support it? I read that they support multiple monitors but only in an SLI setup. I was surprised at how the card performed with 3 monitors in HD at max settings, but I wouldn't accept those frame rates just to run 3 monitors. They're still pretty low. I'd just get a bigger monitor for gaming but with a bigger screen I'd sit farther back. I don't really see the point. Seems like a gimmick to me. I'd rather have 3D Vision on a bigger monitor instead.

PhysX is only used on the Batman games AFAIK. If there are any others, they are few. You're not missing anything there. AMD seems to have the best hold on the multi-mon' market & Nvidia on the 3D one. As much as I love broadcasting that AMD's hardware usually delivers better performance for less money since there is no bloated ad campaign to pay for, if I were gonna go for a gimmick I'd go with Nvidia & get 3D Vision.

Can't imagine you'd ever be disappointed with a 7950 though.

[Darius Otsdarva]

I fully understand the bezel factor and how it breaks up your image. I'm actually considering having a larger screen in the middle and smaller screens on the sides to maintain the best of both worlds.

I suppose the appeal of the triple monitor setup is the immersion factor. Having one large screen is well and good but having multiple all around will disperse the action everywhere. You could say I'm working towards a potential simrig in the future, probably one I'd neglect since I travel a lot for work but at least I have one. The bezel edges of the monitors might just add to the immersion factor of MWO if multi monitor support comes in, just pretend they are part of the structure brackets of my cat.

I'll probably run the 7950 in crossfire once I have the funds however. I'll probably need to upgrade my PSU to be able to handle it.

[CommanderOSIS]

Vulpesveritas, on 02 September 2012 - 09:45 PM, said:

you can get a Radeon HD 7950 or Geforce GTX 660 for $300-330 right now. They're comparable in performance, the 7950 overclocking better and being better at computing, with the 660 using less power and being a smaller card, and having PhysX if you play a lot of Nvidia titles. Either would do well at this price.

Yeah... and only gets ~30 FPS in Crysis 2 when the 7950 is about twice as fast.

I wasnt advocating the 560. I was just saying he shouldnt pay more than 130 for one

[Vulpesveritas]

Freeride Forever, on 03 September 2012 - 10:28 PM, said:

I never understood why anyone would want to have more than one monitor set up as one, where there ends up being 2 monitor frames in the image at any spot where the monitors meet. Seems totally dumb to me. I'd expect it to be nothing more than a fad. Why not just run a bigger monitor/TV instead?

Thanks to Wookieelover for pointing out the two possibilities explaining what is wrong with Ghostrider45's post. AMD's generally provide the best value for the money. Nividia has a ******** campaign to pay for, so they're generally a bit pricier for about the same performance. The size of your monitors will have nothing to do with the cards performance. The resolution you run them at will. I would think for HD, at least on this game, you might want two of those cards but I don't know if MWO is gonna support XFire or SLI.

The comparison at http://www.hardwareh...troduction.html shows some FPS counts for an OC'd version of the card on triple display setups in HD. BF3 uses CryEngine 3 also. The triple display tests were only done on the AMD cards. So I suppose that means Nvidia doesn't support it? I read that they support multiple monitors but only in an SLI setup. I was surprised at how the card performed with 3 monitors in HD at max settings, but I wouldn't accept those frame rates just to run 3 monitors. They're still pretty low. I'd just get a bigger monitor for gaming but with a bigger screen I'd sit farther back. I don't really see the point. Seems like a gimmick to me. I'd rather have 3D Vision on a bigger monitor instead.

PhysX is only used on the Batman games AFAIK. If there are any others, they are few. You're not missing anything there. AMD seems to have the best hold on the multi-mon' market & Nvidia on the 3D one. As much as I love broadcasting that AMD's hardware usually delivers better performance for less money since there is no bloated ad campaign to pay for, if I were gonna go for a gimmick I'd go with Nvidia & get 3D Vision.

Can't imagine you'd ever be disappointed with a 7950 though.

Well, a few things;

Multimonitor is about the same size as a higher resolution (1080p monitors are $150-200, 1440p Monitors are generally $600 starting, 4k are $10.000+. So you can get a higher resolution for the price using multiple 1080p monitors than any of the higher resolution monitors, hence makes sense to people. Plus lateral pixel space is more important in most games versus vertical space.),

Secondly, Battlefield 3 does not run Crytek's CryENGINE 3, it uses DICE's Frostbyte 2 game engine.

As far as PhysX, there are a few others, but the only title that's come out in the last few months with it is Borderlands 2.

Lastly, AMD has 3D support now too. And oddly Samsung monitors with 3D are known to have issues with some Nvidia cards.