Upgrade or drag it out?

hillmanant

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Mar 28, 2011
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Ive searched all ove the internet for an answer and none was forthcoming,

I have 2 6970s in X-fire with a i5 2500k stable @4.5GHZ/Gamestorm 120x360 watercooler and 16gb 1866ram, Been falling short lately for high end (even medium on some lol)Grafix heavy games. Whats most cost effective to upgrade to...another 6970 in 3x Xfire for less than $150 or just upgrade to the new architecture? I realize 6970 is old as shit but ain't worth selling lol. Should I add another and limp along for another year or should I just bite the bullet and upgrade to the cutting edge again? See that I I don't care to game at ultra as I have limited time but stuttering and blurring at medium isn't an option either. Ive been out of the build game for a while but just bought Rosewills B2 and LOVE the size of this thing!...got me to thinking,"well...I got more room." This is where most guys wives or tube sock gets pissed lol. Thanks in advance for any posts!

Anthony
 
Solution
Your CPU is gravy and doesn't need touching but as a gamer I would certainly bite the bullet as far as a new GPU architecture is concerned. I would go with a RX 480/gtx 1060 6gb card if it were me...or a RX 470/GTX 1060 3gb if your budget won't allow for more. Regardless 3 way crossfire won't give you much improvement on what you have now. Two cards see the biggest bump in performance which you have and a third only adds a fraction more (speaking from experience I only run dual cards now in SLI instead of 3...not to mention you can't anymore with nvidia gtx 1000 series anyways because scaling is so bad for 3 cards nvidia finally had to own up to it).

atomicWAR

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Your CPU is gravy and doesn't need touching but as a gamer I would certainly bite the bullet as far as a new GPU architecture is concerned. I would go with a RX 480/gtx 1060 6gb card if it were me...or a RX 470/GTX 1060 3gb if your budget won't allow for more. Regardless 3 way crossfire won't give you much improvement on what you have now. Two cards see the biggest bump in performance which you have and a third only adds a fraction more (speaking from experience I only run dual cards now in SLI instead of 3...not to mention you can't anymore with nvidia gtx 1000 series anyways because scaling is so bad for 3 cards nvidia finally had to own up to it).
 
Solution

Jake Lloyd

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Feb 27, 2014
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I'm still running a 2500k at 4.3 and it's still pretty awesome. I've gone from a 550 to a 760 and now a 970 all on this CPU. Also did RAM and a new MB and SSD at some point. But like atomic said, pick up a new GPU and you'll be good to go. 1060 or a 1070 if you can. 1080 if you're not on much of a budget lol.
 

hillmanant

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Mar 28, 2011
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Thanks guys. I acutaly bought my kid a 1050ti for Christmas and it out performs the 2 in crossfire so I guess I'll just upgrade to new architecture, probably going to bite the bullet and get the 1080FE try to sell my old ones.
 

atomicWAR

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happy to help and thanks for the solution love. Enjoy your GTX 1080, I know I love both of mine. They make 4k playable at near max settings and heavy filtering/AA and VR is a breeze with them (though so far only Serious Sam VR titles support SLI in VR).