Dual Radeon 7870 2GB or GTX 970 4GB??

[DylanCamps]

Hello!

Basically I'm looking for a new graphics card for my gaming setup. Currently I have the AMD HD Radeon 7870 GHz Edition 2GB card, but it's getting a little outdated now.

I've narrowed my mind down to a decision on what I should do, but I just don't know what's best.

I'm debating whether to get another AMD HD Radeon 7870 GHz Edition 2GB card, and then buy a new motherboard that has compatibility for a crossfire setup, or whether to get the Nvidia GeForce GTX 970 4GB graphics card (http://amzn.to/1T3rWf6). However I have read the reviews of this card and it was recently discovered that it only has 3.5GB DDR5 RAM, this doesn't bother me that much though, as my current card only has 2GB, so it's still a big upgrade.

These are my current specs:

Graphics: Sapphire AMD HD Radeon 7870 GHz Edition 2GB

CPU: AMD FX-8320 8 Core Processor, Overclocked to 4GHz

CPU Cooler: Hyper 212 Evo

RAM: 16GB DDR3 (2xCorsair Vengeance 4GB, 1xGeneric 8GB)

Motherboard: ASUS M5A78L-USB3

PSU: Corsair CX750M 750W

Case: Corsair Carbide Series Air 540

OS: Windows 10 Pro 64 Bit Edition

I've read that the GTX 970 4GB can handle many modern games on Ultra, if not on very high with 60+fps, and that's all I'm looking for to be honest.

Many thanks

 

[maddogfargo]

That board won't support crossfire well. You'll lose a lot of PCIe lanes on the 2nd GPU. So a single GTX 970 would be a better option. It will perform as well as a 7870 crossfire setup but use less power and generate less geat. Should also have fewer compatibility issues compared to a crossfire setup.

I say this as someone who has come from an HD 7950 crossfire setup on a 990FX board to a Gigabyte G1 Gaming GTX 970. Custom BIOS modded mine and it's been great so far. The HD 7950 setup was a bit faster, but with the 970 overclocked I'm getting around 90% of the performance I had before. The big deal for me was the vast improvement in heat and noise, along with lower power use.