Widescreen Gaming Forum

Long story short, water main burst in my home destroying my old setup.
Was running a Win7pro, AMD 965 Black, 8GB DDR3, GTX 560 ti + 9500GT P-L-P setup with a 42" as primary and two 22" as secondaries (all 1080p). It was nice but without softth and several other software solutions, it just wasn't viable for gaming. Killing Floor and Dragon Nest were the two games that I got the best results on. The last few weeks it was operational I mostly used the 42" for gaming and the secondaries ran VOIP and media while I played Diablo 3 and Civ V.
So, courtesy of the insurance company, it was time to try a new build. This time I went with Win7pro, AMD FX4170, 8GB DDR3, Sapphire Flex 7950, and a P-P-P setup with three 42". Finding wallmounts for portrait style large displays is frustrating at best...well, finding affordable ones at least (<$100). Having finally jumped that hurdle I was thinking I might have some issues from the GPU, more specifically, playing high res games over three large screen displays.
1) Should i go ahead and bite the bullet and order another 7950? From what I've garnered on this forum and some reviews, having them in crossfire should GREATLY increase the FPS I'll recieve. I do want this to look good but I'm trying not to go overspec.
2) I know L-L-L is super popular but I figured a P-P-P might reduce the strain on the GPU allowing for higher in-game settings and allow me to get away with only the one. Is this true?
3) What are some recommended resolutions to shoot for in P-P-P with 3 large screen displays? Using 2 LG M4214CCBA's as side displays and a LG M4225CCBA as the primary.
4) Any helpful hints for someone who's utilizing Eyefinity for the first time? The tutorials make it seem fairly simplistic so I'm not too worried but maybe you have some golden kernel of knowledge that might save me some frustration.
I have 2 weeks until the remodelling is done and my system is back up and running so plenty of time to trade banter. Looking forward to your comments!

Games I play currently or have preordered
Diablo 3
Civ V
Battlefield 3
Torchlight 2
Darksiders 2

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You should reflect upon what you have witnessed here today.

Long story short, water main burst in my home destroying my old setup.

And there are people living a life in Fear their water cooled system could leak xD

so.. first: IMHO the FX4170 sucks! Kepps kinda close to the i7-3770K in most games. But in some others you have significant performace loss! (See Tests here)

so to your Problems.....

1) I have Two 7970 in Crossfire, gotta be around 10-20% more performance than two 7950. And if i set all settings on high in 6048x1080 (bezel corrected 5760*1080) i can't run all games with 60 fps! But if you lower the settings it works. So, if YOU want to go with Two 7950's.... did you ever run a Crossfire system before? Crossfire is a cool way to increase performance, but it also has it bad points, I.E micro Stuttering and Heath problems (not always... depending on cooler).
So why don't you just try running Single 7950 for a while, and if you don't have enough power you can just buy a 2nd 7950 later.

2) Resolution isn't a matter for PPP/LLL if you run 3x 1920x1080 or 3x 1080x1920 is exactly the same( If you have Bezel correction PPP uses a little more Peformance, but thats negligible) IF you run 42" i'd go with PPP your in Landscape the FoV would become to big.

3) The monitor runs FullHD, so 1920x1080! If you set them in Portrait its 1080x1920 ^^ simple. Gives a total resolution of 3240*1920 Bezel corrected resolution can vary, thats gonna be auto caluclated by Catalyst Control Center if you activate "Bezel correction"

4) You already had 3 Monitors right? most complicated is the "how to connect all monitors" there should be said: You have a FLEX edition, you don't have to care at all xD
Setup *should* work without any problems.

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We gonna send it to outa space!

I was using a 965 Black edition in my old config and I really didn't have any issues performance wise. The only reason I went with the FX 4170 versus a 6 or 8 core was due to most gaming applications only using 2 cores, with some of the newer ones actually making use of 4. Very very few use more than 4 though.

I almost went with the 7970 6GB. I wanted to be able to utilize Flex's easy setup however and the 7950 was the highest offered at the moment. I was afraid that running crossfire would increase the heat to an unwanted level as my system is fan based, not liquid cooled. I have played around with SLI boards and configurations in the past and generally the temperature increase from running dual high end GPU's can only be properly managed by a liquid cooled system. I saw several reviews/blogs that spoke highly of the 7950 Flex's ability to manage heat, so I was hoping to put Sapphire's tech to the test. This will be my first foray into crossfire, which while similar to SLI, has me a bit nervous due to it being something I haven't played around with before.

Yeah, running 3 of those 42"s in LLL would span my wall from one end to another. Talk about some neck cramps...

I'll keep posting as my setup nears completion and I get to start testing it out.

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You should reflect upon what you have witnessed here today.

Well yeah, the FX-4170 is the best choice on AMD side! (check benchmarks 4170 vs 8150 ) But the Intel CPU has way more power.

As you only can see in certain situations like Skyrim or Starcraft.





These tests were made with a single 7970! Imagine 7950 Crossfire! It' be a waste to Bottleneck the game with an CPU.


And i agree that you could run most games Fine with a 965+560. i did run Crysis with a Core 2 Duo E8400@4ghz +HD6970.
Always thought "It run's fine so its okay" till i used the Crysis Benchmark to check out GPU OC! OCing from 880 to 990mhz Core clock resulted in 0.5FPS gain! From 53 to 53.5
Then i realised that CPU was load 100% and GPU only 90%!
Same goes for The Witcher 2. Played well mostly, but when i entered that camp with roughly 50npc or more FPS went down from 50 to 25.

So most games won't make any big difference from a i7-3770K to a FX4170. But there are a Few that do, and in 2 years maybe even more will!
If you think thats okay and you want to save the money, thats fine. But it'd be a shame to spare a few dollars and think this system will last for 5 years.




About the heat with Crossfire. You're fitting them directly next to each other? This is the worst situation. if you have 1 or 2 Slots distance inbetween that should be okay. More case fans to get all the hot Air out and your GPU's shouldn't overheat.

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We gonna send it to outa space!

The strength in AMD's new chips are based on their ability to run many threads at once, but their IPC is lower than that of the intels. Which is why intels run better in games. AMD's catch up on photoshop and some other items, but haven't out-benched their older phenom brothers.

the FX4170 is a two Module 4 Core CPU, while 3770K is a 4 core 8 Thread CPU ;)

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We gonna send it to outa space!

Wow.

I had always heard AMD was the way to go with a gaming rig and that Intel was for data crunching. Perhaps that was the way of it 5-6 years ago...man how technology changes in such a short time. I guess I should keep up with more blogs and tech reviews than I do now.

My AMD CPU has always outlasted my rigs though. While I'm not someone who has delved into overclocking more than minor adjustments to RAM, my greatest enemy has always been keeping my system cool. This time I went with maximum fans on my case and a GPU manufacturer (Sapphire) that has temp readouts way lower than their competitors. I also went with the digital temp display on the case for easy monitoring while gaming. I have a spare Coolermaster V8 I could slap on should the CPU start to redline but in a midsize case that usually means removing a side fan. Crossfire should work with the small space between the two 7950's (if/when I grab another) but I could see heat collecting there. It's just hard for me to judge how much wiggle room will be there until my system is actually here and assembled. I got the GPU yesterday and it's probably the biggest GPU I have ever held in my hands. TALK ABOUT A BEAST lol.

Just got my mounts today and should get my displays by the end of this week. Getting there, bit by bit!

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You should reflect upon what you have witnessed here today.

I had always heard AMD was the way to go with a gaming rig and that Intel was for data crunching. Perhaps that was the way of it 5-6 years ago...man how technology changes in such a short time. I guess I should keep up with more blogs and tech reviews than I do now.

In the world of computer hardware 5-6 years is actualy a very long time!

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Philips BDM4065UC(3840x2160) Acer Z35(2560x1080@200hz); 980 Ti Hybrid @stock ; 6700K 4.6ghz (1.35v)/D15; 16GB 3200mhz; Asus Maximus Ranger VIII; AX860; 1TB 960 EVO; 750GB 840 EVO; Teufel Concept D 500; Sennheiser HD6XX; Windows 10 (latest build)

So 2 of my monitors arrived today while the third should have a new mainboard installed and be back in my hands by Friday. To say I am quivering with excitement is an understatement. Completely giddy even, almost like a school girl getting her first kiss. My wife is both amused and annoyed by this.

I keep watching the usual sites (Newegg, Amazon, Tigerdirect, etc..) for another Sapphire Flex 7950 to drop below $350 USD. Once it does I'll snag it and call it a done deal. On that note however, a few more questions arise for you crossfire enthusiasts.

1) SLI allows for similar GPUs in the same family to pair up. From your experience (not what is claimed by AMD) is this also true for Crossfire? Would a 7950 be able to be paired with a 7970 per se, with minimal hiccups expected during operation and set up?

2) Should I worry about matching manufacturers and models? In my experience RAM is quite fickle about these sort of things in that matching it as closely as possible could determine how well it performs. Again, this is solely while crossfire and eyefinity are enabled.

3) When/if I go to crossfire the two GPUs, should I also split the displays between the two? Have one GPU running the 2 sides while the main is handled by the other.

4) My motherboard does not support 3 or 4 crossfire GPUs, but if it did, would you recommend having each disply running off a single GPU? Would I see a significant increase in FPS/performance by doing this or would it be fairly similar to having all 3 displays on a single GPU with the others just humming along with no displays plugged in?

Every answer seems to bring up more questions and I'm not finding answers that aren't 1+ years old it seems. As I've seen from earlier responses, that's a huge amount of time in hardware years.

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You should reflect upon what you have witnessed here today.

1) SLI allows for similar GPUs in the same family to pair up. From your experience (not what is claimed by AMD) is this also true for Crossfire? Would a 7950 be able to be paired with a 7970 per se, with minimal hiccups expected during operation and set up?

2) Should I worry about matching manufacturers and models? In my experience RAM is quite fickle about these sort of things in that matching it as closely as possible could determine how well it performs. Again, this is solely while crossfire and eyefinity are enabled.

I am running 6970s in Crossfire - one is an HIS Radeon 6950 thats been flashed to 6970, and the other is a true Sapphire 6970 - no problems whatsoever. If you pair up at 7950 with a 7970, it will perform like a pair of 7950s (the other card will be "clocked down" - afaik)

3) When/if I go to crossfire the two GPUs, should I also split the displays between the two? Have one GPU running the 2 sides while the main is handled by the other.

When you choose to Crossfire - all connections have to come out of one card. My setup has 3x24" LED monitors + 1 52" Plasma HDTV. Theyre connected via DVI natively, and 2x DP -> DVI (Active Adapters) - while the HDTV is hooked up to the cards HDMI port.

If you plan on having more displays, then you'd have to either get an MST Hub, or have monitors that are capable of being "daisy chained" http://www.amd.com/us/products/technologies/amd-eyefinity-technology/for-consumers/Pages/what-is-eyefinity.aspx

4) My motherboard does not support 3 or 4 crossfire GPUs, but if it did, would you recommend having each disply running off a single GPU? Would I see a significant increase in FPS/performance by doing this or would it be fairly similar to having all 3 displays on a single GPU with the others just humming along with no displays plugged in?

Yup, again If youre going to CF then all displays are physically connected to one card.

Hope this helps.