CF 6950s vs. SLI 560 Ti - Which to choose?

[Kalian]

I'm a bit stuck on whether I should go with 6950s in Crossfire in my new rig or two 560 Ti's in SLI. I already know that should I go with 6950s I probably won't be getting reference cards, so no unlocking, but the OC potential on the 560s seems impressive.

These are the cards I'm considering using:

MSI R6950 Twin Frozr II OC Radeon HD 6950 2GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.1 x16 HDCP Ready CrossFireX Support Video Card with Eyefinity

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127562

MSI N560GTX-TI Twin Frozr II/OC GeForce GTX 560 Ti (Fermi) 1GB 256-bit GDDR5 PCI Express 2.0 x16 HDCP Ready SLI Support Video Card

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127565

Any thoughts on which might be better, or another alternative someone can offer at the same price point? I should note that I'm only using a Corsair 750tx V2, so I don't have super-amazing headroom power-wise, but easily enough to get by.

 

[Flightsimluke]

The 560Ti outperforms the 6950 in single card layout, but the 6950 beats the 560Ti in dual / triple mode. Complicated, eh?

 

[gracefully]

You can get 1 GB 6950s instead, if you want to save a few $.

 

[geekapproved]

Are you sure your motherboard supports crossfire AND Sli?

Nobody can make a knowledgable graphics suggestion to you without knowing what cpu you have.

 

[jjb8675309]

your psu is fine but whay are your full system specs? I prefer NV drivers so personally I vote for 560ti sli

 

[shrkbay]

actually in single card performance 6950 is better than 560, also when compared OC vs OC, you can unlock the 6950 so it'll be like a 6970 with lower clocks *OC and you'll have 6970 or even higher*, in CF 6950s are very VERYY close to 570s not 560s, both have problems, but luckily for nVidia SLI has less, also the 6950 is better @ higher res and multiple screens, it's almost always better to have a single *even a worse performing card* over a CF/SLI

 

[jjb8675309]

yeah I mean sli drivers are far superior to crossfire drivers imo so thats why I said the 560s

 

[jjb8675309]

shrkbay, no offense but you always are telling people how great xfire is and you are running an igp? By no means am I rtying to put your system down I'm just giving you an honest opinion from a first hand experience. I too understand that both have problems and that many of AMDs issues with drivers are fixable, but some of them are not and they will plague almost any xfire system, but that is an ambiguous statement to say the least, I really think it is important that people know that AMD treats crossfire customers as a minority, trust me when I say that it is not worth it, or learn the hard way

 

[geekapproved]

Crossfire customers ARE a minority, as are overclockers.

There are many people here running crossfire without any issues. There are ton's of reviews here on Tom's about crossfire, never once does Tom's mention any driver issues. Amazing.

Not even in the "crossfire/sli: 3 way scaling" article where 3-6950's put 3-GTX570's to shame. Even though the 570's are more expensive.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crossfire-sli-3-way-scaling,2865-12.html

Not one mention of ANY driver issues. I guess you just have to know what your doing.



If I were you, I would go with what give me the best performance for the money, and that is the 6950 by a mile.

 

[shrkbay]

shrkbay, no offense but you always are telling people how great xfire is and you are running an igp? By no means am I rtying to put your system down I'm just giving you an honest opinion from a first hand experience. I too understand that both have problems and that many of AMDs issues with drivers are fixable, but some of them are not and they will plague almost any xfire system, but that is an ambiguous statement to say the least, I really think it is important that people know that AMD treats crossfire customers as a minority, trust me when I say that it is not worth it, or learn the hard way

Right, i know how bad CF is, but you can't deny that SLI isn't perfect, both of them have issues, like low FPS, bad drivers *more AMD* and they aren't supperted that well *more AMD*

...actually not all my posts are about "the mighty CF", i was only trying to say that performance is better.


http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/forum2.php?config=tomshardwareuk.inc&cat=15&post=313913&page=1&p=1&sondage=0&owntopic=1&trash=0&trash_post=0&print=0&numreponse=0&quote_only=0&new=0&nojs=0

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/forum2.php?config=tomshardwareuk.inc&cat=15&post=313894&page=1&p=1&sondage=0&owntopic=1&trash=0&trash_post=0&print=0&numreponse=0&quote_only=0&new=0&nojs=0

just 2 examples.

btw, my IGP is fine and i won't be getting a new GPU before i get internet to my PC

 

[jjb8675309]

Crossfire customers ARE a minority, as are overclockers.

There are many people here running crossfire without any issues. There are ton's of reviews here on Tom's about crossfire, never once does Tom's mention any driver issues. Amazing.

Not even in the "crossfire/sli: 3 way scaling" article where 3-6950's put 3-GTX570's to shame. Even though the 570's are more expensive.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crossfire-sli-3-way-scaling,2865-12.html

Not one mention of ANY driver issues. I guess you just have to know what your doing.



If I were you, I would go with what give me the best performance for the money, and that is the 6950 by a mile.

first off, you are exaggerating on many accounts and referencing 3 way scaling is a totally different subject in itself. Tom's always hides the inadequacies of products in several of their reviews, for that matter many people must not be as anal as I am to notice the microstutter caused by low minimum fps of the 6870 crossfire setup that I had, not to mention a whole list of other issues I had. Yes, many of them were an easy fix and many of them persisted through several driver updates. I'm just speaking from personal experience. After spending 400+ in 6870s and being totally dissatisfied after waiting 8 months for drivers....AMD has left a bad taste in my mouth at this point. For me, with 6870s (not 6950s) crossfire did not work as advertised, that's all I'm saying 6950s could be a completely different experience but for now I don't trust it and rather would pay for (for the most part) good driver releases, Look at the article of the gtx 480 the thing saw some really nice gains over a years worth of drivers and I always see many more AMD complaints then Nvidia although yes, they do exist on both sides. So hopefully that clarifies things a bit for you. Hopefully now you understand that I'm not some moron that cannot tweak a driver aside from that I prefer quality of quantity (of this case of FPS). Crossfire does suffer from slightly worse minimum FPS however when compared side by side to their "more expensive" Nvidia counterpart.

how are you so knowledgeable? do you own a crossfire setup?

 

[shrkbay]

well probably i am in the club of these, who get highest performance for the money cards , but i also would think trice about the warranty and what both cards have to offer

 

[jjb8675309]

shrkbay, no offense but you always are telling people how great xfire is and you are running an igp? By no means am I rtying to put your system down I'm just giving you an honest opinion from a first hand experience. I too understand that both have problems and that many of AMDs issues with drivers are fixable, but some of them are not and they will plague almost any xfire system, but that is an ambiguous statement to say the least, I really think it is important that people know that AMD treats crossfire customers as a minority, trust me when I say that it is not worth it, or learn the hard way

Right, i know how bad CF is, but you can't deny that SLI isn't perfect, both of them have issues, like low FPS, bad drivers *more AMD* and they aren't supperted that well *more AMD*

...actually not all my posts are about "the mighty CF", i was only trying to say that performance is better.


http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/forum2.php?config=tomshardwareuk.inc&cat=15&post=313913&page=1&p=1&sondage=0&owntopic=1&trash=0&trash_post=0&print=0&numreponse=0&quote_only=0&new=0&nojs=0

http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/forum/forum2.php?config=tomshardwareuk.inc&cat=15&post=313894&page=1&p=1&sondage=0&owntopic=1&trash=0&trash_post=0&print=0&numreponse=0&quote_only=0&new=0&nojs=0

just 2 examples.

btw, my IGP is fine and i won't be getting a new GPU before i get internet to my PC

yeah your IGP is fine but imo first hand experience speaks volumes louder than what you interpret in the text of reviews which are the collective assessments of other people not yourself, not trying to be a dick, just saying, if an IGP works for you than great.

Also in your statement you say "Right, i know how bad CF is, but you can't deny that SLI isn't perfect"

and I agree with you but in the end if why would you want less than flawless performance, (which in my mind equals "not perfect") from a ~600+ Dual GPU solution of any kind. My point is that for the money I'd rather just get the under performing gtx 580 instead... or for that matter just a single 6970

 

[shrkbay]

One GTX 580 is more stable than most of SLI/CF systems, *for example GTX 470, only a bit stronger, much higher power consumption, high temps* and it's also more future-proof if you'll want to add an additional card

btw, my IGP is fine for every day use, not for gaming etc, because all the games i've bought *except for ROME: TOTAL WAR* are from steam so i'd need to download them, but i don't have internet in my PC atm

 

[shrkbay]

Crossfire does suffer from slightly worse minimum FPS however when compared side by side to their "more expensive" Nvidia counterpart.

It depends on games, there are a lot of games where nVidia suffers from low FPS and a lot where AMD does

 

[geekapproved]

Well considering Nvidia has released 2 drivers this year that cause cards to overheat and burn up, they certainly have had issues too.

Every company has growing pains.

 

[jjb8675309]

to each his own but I'm just letting people know about problems of the past

 

[shobits1]

The war of fanboys (nVidia VS AMD) lol

 

[shobits1]

I'll be neutral here and I said neutral, so please no misunderstanding.

Actually AMD has worst reputation than nVidia in terms of quality/support/drivers etc... also while nVidia had some fallback in the 400 series, she returned for good in here 500 series (especially in 560);

to not forget, nVidia has already a better tessellation implementation than AMD also she supports Physx which is great for games, have CUDA and have better Opencl supports than AMD (in case you want run some heavy processing APP).

so it is nVidia -for me- not AMD (although, I actually have an AMD )


Kalian; could you tell us the full specs of your system (or at least you Mobo, CPU, Memory), so we could help you.

 

[jjb8675309]

yes +1 to tessellation, forgot to mention how most of the amd cards are rendered near useless under heavy tessellation, not that its really implemented that much now I'm just saying its like more vram or more tessellation/dx11 power, its a tough choice that I was faced with myself and I ended up going with a gtx 570 bc I get a good deal on one for $300... having said that I'd still probably want a 6950 over a gtx 560 for its potential to have a 6970 level of performance and its 2 gb or vram... not that the tx 560ti cannot be oc'ed nicely but just showing how there are suttle differences

 

[bobdozer]

SLi is faster lol? Who tells you this crap? Crossfire is way ahead these days and 6950 crossfire obliterates 560 ti sli

 

[jjb8675309]

never said such a thing sli is not faster just more reliable, go ahead and make another exaggerated and ambiguous statement

 

[Kalian]

Righto. Didn't mean to start war of the fanboys in here.

Full system specs:

Antec 902 V3
CPU: Intel i5-2500k OC'd to ~4.1ghz using a CM 212+
MB: Asus P8P67 Pro
Spinpoint F3 1TB HDD
OCZ Vertex 2 60GB SSD
RAM: G.Skill Sniper 8GB 1600mhz
OS: Windows 7
PSU: Corsair 750TX V2

Re: a couple of the posts in here, I'm looking for a 2GB version of the 6950 to give me headroom on textures. And yes, I'm sure the mobo will support either CF or SLI.

If you notice the 6950, it's not a reference, and I'm pretty sure it won't unlock. In any case, I don't intend to unless I know I'd be stable on my PSU running them both, which I don't know I'd be able to do. I'd prefer not to drop the money for a GTX 580 right now, what I'm planning to do is buy one card now and the second in a few months when I'm able to.

Are the CF drivers really as bad as you folks are saying? I've heard tell that the 6xxx series is much improved, and haven't seen anything suggesting massive problems.

 

[shrkbay]

11.3 are alright, probably non-references also unlock in 90% of cases, and probably there's no big difference in tesselation between AMD and nVidia cards... and AMD lately has improved itself really a lot, they have higher quality VRAM *nVidia's 590 blows up due to high temps and bad quality VRAM*, still i don't see any improvement for nVidia from 400 to 500 series, they just made stronger cards that's it, 560Ti was made like a 460,while AMD made different 6950s *non-reference/ reference/ 1GB/2GB*, so the 6950 1GB is like a 6850

 

[jjb8675309]

^^^lol First, you are not even close in saying the 6950 1 gig is a 6850, next, cards blow up when users misuse them usually increasing core voltage beyond where they should be. The 560ti is built much differently from a 460. Next, there is a big difference between tessellation power in amd 5 and 6 series vs nvidia 4 and 5 series! AMD chips choke when heavy tessellation is utilized (if it ever will be in games) where are you getting this crap? Ever make a unigine heaven run with any of these cards!? From Nvidia 4 to 5 series the cooling is far superior, again have you owned any of these cards or are you going off a review on newegg? The nvidia 5 sereis runs cool and silent.

honestly bro, you are losing credibility here, almost every statement you make is incorrect. Again im not dogging you for having an IGP but the way you talk it is clear to me that you have had very little first hand experience with any modern gen cards, thanks for your input but you are quite incorrect...