Upgrading Radeon HD 6850 Need Advice

[austinchilds10]

I am looking to upgrade from my Radeon HD 6850 to something, well a bit more powerful. I really want to run three screens, and from my research that means dual graphics cards. The most ill spend per card is $250. The computer will be primarily used for gaming, although I will be attending college next year so who knows what that will bring. My current rig-
Motherboard- Gigabyte GA-990FX-UD3
GPU- Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 1GB
Ram- 8GB(2x4GB)
Power Supply-500W(although I am upgrading soon)
CPU- AMD FX-6100 Zambezi(although I bought the AMD FX-8350 Vishera 4.0 GHz yesterday so I will be installing that as soon as it comes in.)
If anyone can provide any advice or help it would be much appreciated. Thanks, Austin.

 

[swords24]

you could do dual 7850 or 7870's or dual 660's

the 660's have a bit or a bandwidth issue tho so 7870 is the best choice, you are also going to have to upgrade to a 850w PSU

2 of these are the best i could find for the price range
http://us.ncix.com/products/?sku=69828&vpn=FX787ACNFC&manufacture=XFX&promoid=1304

if you could stretch your budget you could go with 2 of these
http://us.ncix.com/products/?sku=79989&vpn=AX7950%203GBD5-2DHV4&manufacture=PowerColor&promoid=1304

 

[caydn12]

I am looking to upgrade from my Radeon HD 6850 to something, well a bit more powerful. I really want to run three screens, and from my research that means dual graphics cards. The most ill spend per card is $250. The computer will be primarily used for gaming, although I will be attending college next year so who knows what that will bring. My current rig-
Motherboard- Gigabyte GA-990FX-UD3
GPU- Sapphire Radeon HD 6850 1GB
Ram- 8GB(2x4GB)
Power Supply-500W(although I am upgrading soon)
CPU- AMD FX-6100 Zambezi(although I bought the AMD FX-8350 Vishera 4.0 GHz yesterday so I will be installing that as soon as it comes in.)
If anyone can provide any advice or help it would be much appreciated. Thanks, Austin.

If you want to run 3 monitors you probably wont be getting max settings without 2 cards. However, getting crossfire or SLI causes stuttering issues because of the drivers. I see 2 options for you:
Option1:
I recommend this one. Getting a 7970ghz edition. Its a beast woth lots of bandwidth. Perfect for triple monitor. You will probably achieve high or very high on planetside 2, bioshock infinite, battlefield 3 and other less graphically demanding games.
You will get medium to high settings on games like crysis 3 amd metro 2033 that are super demanding.

Option2:
Crossfire 7870 MYST (XT)
This gives you the crossfire issues that I talked about. They are good cards. Fairly good bandwidth. Will be able to handle it. You will probably get higher framerates but with the stutter issues i think it will be less smooth.



Both of these willstay under your $500 total budget

 

[david cassar]

you could do dual 7850 or 7870's or dual 660's

the 660's have a bit or a bandwidth issue tho so 7870 is the best choice, you are also going to have to upgrade to a 850w PSU

2 of these are the best i could find for the price range
http://us.ncix.com/products/?sku=69828&vpn=FX787ACNFC&manufacture=XFX&promoid=1304

if you could stretch your budget you could go with 2 of these
http://us.ncix.com/products/?sku=79989&vpn=AX7950%203GBD5-2DHV4&manufacture=PowerColor&promoid=1304

I wouldn't go with crossfire because of the frame time variances and lag. He could get two gtx 650 ti boosts though : http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814127728

 

[Quaddro]

Why people so worried about stutering or frame time or lag or etc..?
radeonpro (www.radeonpro.info) is a freeware tools that will fix that issue..

Crossfire still a good option for the sake of framerate..

 

[jessterman21]

CrossfireX is currently broken. Dual GTX 660s would be great for 3 screens - should be right between a single GTX 680 and TITAN in performance.

 

[austinchilds10]

My motherboard only supports pci express 2.0/: what does that leave me?

 

[caydn12]

Im not sure if cards can even really take advantage of 3.0 yet.
However, putting a 3.0 card into 2.0 slot works fine and dandy. You just be working with 2.0 instead of 3.0