New GPU

[Wolfrider]

Hi, I have nothing but driver issues with my HD6970s in Crossfire, I can only play Skyrim in windowed mode, BF3 crashes every hour or so (witch is quite annoying), it won't allow using 3 monitors anymore (yes I have an active dvi to Display Port adapter on the 3th one), some games won't even start (crysis 2 took 6 hours of troubleshooting before I could play it). Of course when i managed to get it working, I could play every game on its highest settings. I've grown tired of the issues, and finaly put both of them on Ebay. i'll need another GPU, can you guys gibe me some advise?

It should be able to use 3 monitors at once, but I game on only one, resolution ist 1920x1080. The games I play are Skyrim bf3, dragon age Mirrors Edge and the AC series,  i'm planning on buying Dragon age Inqusition, TES online, and eventualy the new mass effect trilogy when they Launch. I don't plan to get an upgrade after this on, so It should be able to have high settings enabled for min. 2 years, and will be used for about 5 years. My system ahs an asrock gen3 mobo, so I can use GPU's with the new PCIe3 slots. My cpu probably won't bottleneck the system,

its an 2500k with overclocking potential to 3.2 ghz. 8gb ram is available, and the 850 corsair pro serie should supply enough juice for the new card. My main concern are drivers, I just want the game to work, i don't realy car if its on High or Medium settings. price range is around 300 euros (~400USD). I live In germany, my prefered shop ist alternate.de

Any suggestions? 

 

thanks

[kennethk]

You should be happy with the 7970

 

http://www.alternate.de/Club_3D/Club_3D+Radeon_HD_7970_royalAce_OC_GHz,_Grafikkarte/html/product/1032363/?

 

You may be able to find a 7950 a bit cheaper both should be able to do crossfire at 1080 60 fps.

Edited November 14, 2013 by kennethk

[cchalogamer]

Well, my first ballpark guess would be something like the GTX 770, while AMD's drivers have come a long way and they have a lot of tempting offers the fact that I can rarely finish a round of BF4 with my old 6950 2GB without some form of crash and a good buddy of mine with a 6870 is having the same issue (actually why I bothered to swap the 6950 and the GTX 770 to test anyway) on a game that's AMD "Gaming Evolved" just blows my mind to the point I can't make myself recommend their stuff at the moment. I personally have bounced back and forth and usually use cards from both sides at the same time in my alternate main rigs. In the past I've had a few variations: X800, X1900XT, 4870, and the 6950 stand out to me on the AMD/ATI side with out going back too far, and a 6800, 7800GT, 7900GT, 8800GT (SLI with this one at one point too), GTX 260 (Both the 192 and 216 shader versions then SLI with 2 x 216s), GTX 670 and now the GTX 770. 

 

Back to the GTX 770, @ 1080p the 2GB version can max out BF4 without issues and it's one of the most demanding games on the market now (and oh so pretty).  I also run three displays (24" 1920x1200 over HDMI with a DVI>HDMI adapter, 23" @ 1080p over DVI, and a 42" TV at you guessed it 1080p over the native HDMI port) Here in the US an EVGA card like mine is ~$340 but I would personally spring for the 4GB version as a bit of "future proofing" (haha yeah right future proof tech) as by the end of your several year plans for this card that might be a bonus and right now I know in the US at least you get a very nice bundle of games with it.

 

The rest of your system should mesh well with something in that range so happy hunting for the right deal (and I would stay away from reference coolers unless you like loud fans under prolonged heavy load)

 

 

EDIT:

 

Actually thanks to getting a German site to play with http://www.alternate.de/EVGA/EVGA+Geforce_GTX_770_ACX_SuperClocked_Dual_Bios,_Grafikkarte/html/product/1097458/? is actually rated the same as my card for 309 and they do have the game promos

Edited November 14, 2013 by cchalogamer

[Wolfrider]

The gtx 770 looks nice, The 7970 ist basicly the succescor of the 6970, and I am very displeased with AMD, nvidia doesn't have as much driver issues (altough they did screp up at skyrims launch) . BF4 ist definitly on my list, I will buy it together with the new Graphic card, I only game on one of the monitors, the 3 others are only for work, I doupt i'll need 4gb of vram, yet I heard BF4 would max out 2gb at its highest settings. A 760 with 4gb cost just as much as a gtx770, what is the main differnece?  About future proof tech, 2x 6970 should've been enough for quite some time, I neglected the driver issues AMD was having, I don't think I'll going red team anytime soon

 

EDIT: Witch 770 should I take? Gainward, MSI, Asus, Palit,... 

 

The Palit jetstream seems to have the highest gpu clock, with boost active its about 1202mhz, I don't really plan to overclock it, maybe down the road. Wich one has the best cooling solution?

Edited November 14, 2013 by Wolfrider

[IVIYTH0S]

I've never had serious driver issues with either company. Even when I ran a 4870x2 and a 5970, no problems at all.

 

I'd get a 7970 ghz edition (280x) over a GTX 770 any day of the week due to price, they are both great cards though. You'll win either way but why not save some money too

 

Where are you thinking about buying from??

Edited November 14, 2013 by IVIYTH0S

[cchalogamer]

I'd get a 7970 ghz edition (280x) over a GTX 770 any day of the week due to price, they are both great cards though. You'll win either way but why not save some money too

 

Where are you thinking about buying from??

Yeah here in the US it's a $100 difference, but if the German site linked above follows the same trends as the rest of the German market it's only 10 euros vs considerably more here in the US.

[Wolfrider]

I can buy it from german and or Belgium shops (I have family ties there) but I think ist all more or less the same here in Europe. There is an 10 euro difference between a 280x with 3gigs and a gtx770 with 2gigs of vram, but  with the 770 I get 2 games I don't own, one of them I plan on buying, so they cost basicly the same. About the drivers, I've got curently only one card running and I can almost never end a match of bf3 without the game crashing, 

same goes with skyrim, far cry 3 (I get only 10 minutes of gameplay before the screen freezes and i get an error message saying the driver crashed) and other newer games like Crysis. Black ops runs fine, as well as dragon age and

mass effect. The point is I don't want issues like that, i don't mind paying extra to enjoy gaming again, instead of constant fear that the drivers will crash. My PC works fine even when the game crahsed, so it's just the gpu that's causing trouble.

 

Witch one of those will giv me the best performance on an Full hd 24 monitor? 

 

http://www.alternate.de/EVGA/EVGA+Geforce_GTX_770_SuperClocked_ACX,_Grafikkarte/html/product/1083526/?

 

http://www.alternate.de/EVGA/EVGA+GTX760_ACX_Cooler,_Grafikkarte/html/product/1098012/?

Edited November 14, 2013 by Wolfrider

[IVIYTH0S]

I can buy it from german and or Belgium shops (I have family ties there) but I think ist all more or less the same here in Europe. There is an 10 euro difference between a 280x with 3gigs and a gtx770 with 2gigs of vram, but  with the 770 I get 2 games I don't own, one of them I plan on buying, so they cost basicly the same. About the drivers, I've got curently only one card running and I can almost never end a match of bf3 without the game crashing, 

same goes with skyrim, far cry 3 (I get only 10 minutes of gameplay before the screen freezes and i get an error message saying the driver crashed) and other newer games like Crysis. Black ops runs fine, as well as dragon age and

mass effect. The point is I don't want issues like that, i don't mind paying extra to enjoy gaming again, instead of constant fear that the drivers will crash. My PC works fine even when the game crahsed, so it's just the gpu that's causing trouble.

 

Witch one of those will giv me the best performance on an Full hd 24 monitor? 

 

http://www.alternate.de/EVGA/EVGA+Geforce_GTX_770_SuperClocked_ACX,_Grafikkarte/html/product/1083526/?

 

http://www.alternate.de/EVGA/EVGA+GTX760_ACX_Cooler,_Grafikkarte/html/product/1098012/?

Ever consider one or both of the cards are just bad? It doesn't sound like software, it sounds like the card(s) is(are) bad.

 

I didn't have any issues with Skyrim, Crysis, or Mass Effect on my old 5970 (crossfire, and older ) and my current 7950, none at all.

 

Can't comment on the others though I could install BF3 and see how it does on my 7950 just further my point.

 

I know it's probably an obvious question, but were/are the 6970(s) overclocked??

Edited November 14, 2013 by IVIYTH0S

[Wolfrider]

I've considered that, but I found no evidence taht the cards where bad, because when I get a game to work, it works as it should, without crashes. Mostly I have to Install spezific drivers vor different games, maybe the 6970s are not compatible with my system, I sure hope the cards are alright because I've put them an Ebay as used but funktioning (witch they do)

[IVIYTH0S]

Do you have any friends who could lend you their GPU (AMD or Nvidia) and see if that have the same issues??

[cchalogamer]

Ever consider one or both of the cards are just bad? It doesn't sound like software, it sounds like the card(s) is(are) bad.

 

Defiantly a possibility with the current cards and worth checking into if you would be happy with the performance of just one of them (or possibly both with manually set lower clock speeds assuming it was a bit of instability)

 

It would be nice to see if you have issues with a friend's parts just to see before spending the max budget on cards just to find out something silly like a bad stick of memory was causing the issues and would be entirely possible. It wouldn't hurt to run some stability tests on the system to be sure. Things like the Prime95 Blend test, LinX, looping tests of newer versions of 3DMark would all be a good start. 

 

[rant] (Can't say I didn't warn you)

 

Even so, I still see it as likely a software issue, far too many people are having problems with games like BF4 right now with constant crashing and issues and EVERY SINGLE ONE of them that I've been able to help out locally has been running an AMD card from 5000/6000 series.  I don't have any local friends that I know of with any newer AMD cards but online I've seen less complaints from those users (much closer to nvidia user number of complaints) but for me PERSONALLY (in other words my opinion and feelings based on MY experience which has been VERY negative with AMD video recently) I couldn't make the jump to AMD again right now with the support I've gotten out of my own 6950 even if it was one of the best price/performance ratio cards I've ever bought and when it works it works great, which it did for most all games early in it's life with very few issues but as the 7000 series has evolved it seems that support for the older parts has not.  I kept my GTX 260s in SLI for longer than any other video card(s) I've ever had as a gaming rig I actually use and even with the SLI issues here and there when I took them out to be replaced with the 6950 (that was getting replaced in that other rig with a GTX 670) they still WORKED. Hell I'll pull them out and put them in the i5 rig and try BF4 on it if I need to (would with the i7 but the ASUS Z87-K says no SLI support only Crossfire) I'm guessing it will run it...well kinda...lol

 

[/rant] (Wasn't I nice to at least warn you that time)

 

If you decide to go for a 770 I personally only have preferences with the coolers unless warranty support in Germany is better with one over the others, I really like the cooler EVGA used on my card and would recommend one similar. I have no warranty anyway due to the way I did some work/parts swapping with someone to get the parts (basically I have $400 in the motherboard/CPU/GPU/RAM/SSD in that system) and chances are a company good with warranty support here might not be as good over in Europe. You can always overclock the card yourself as most all of the cards shipped with have headroom similar to the OCed versions vendors ship out for a price premium.

[Wolfrider]

I've got 2 years of waranty regardless of the cooler on it, the waranty comes from the shop. I also have an very old nvidia card, an 9800gt which I used a long time ago in my former gaming rig, it would be interessting to see what happens, I am sure that it's a driver issue, because the pc only freezes with newer games, and even then I can just end the process with task manager without restarting the pc, and just start the game again, I don't really know how a bad ram module could cause such crashes, I also have Youtube running simultaneously, and it gives a white screen after the crash, and chrome giving an error message, so when i get the crash all graphical processes stop working for about 5 seconds. 

Edited November 16, 2013 by Wolfrider