5850 toxic crossfire or upgrade to newer card

Originally Posted by raghu78 

Sell the HD 5850 Toxic. You should get USD 125 - 150. Add another USD 225 bucks. Get the HD 7950 OC. This card will easily hit 1050 Mhz at stock volts. With sapphire trixx and voltage tweaking 1150 Mhz is achievable. Excellent price perf. It will stomp your HD 5850 CF in the latest DX1 games like BF3, Crysis 2, Max Payne 3, Dirt Showdown. The compute and tesselation performance of the HD 7000 cards is much better than HD 5000 and HD 6000 cards. In the latest games that gives it a huge advantage. Also you seem to have an idea of going for eyefinity. For such setups the HD 7950 with 3GB VRAM is a perfect fit. The HD 5850 with 1 GB will struggle in all the latest games and will run out of VRAM easily.

Here is a voltage OC HD 7950

http://www.guru3d.com/article/radeon-hd-7950-overclock-guide/12

BF 3 1920 X 1200 Ultra 4X MSAA
HD 7950 (1150 Mhz) - 55 fps
HD 6870 - 25 fps

HD 5850 is around HD 6870 perf. So even a pure 100% scaling in CF will not be enough. Also as told BF3 Ultra 4X MSAA at 1920 x 1200 will easily require 1.4 - 1.5 GB of VRAM. The HD 5850 will struggle badly with 1GB VRAM. In eyefinity the situation will get very bad for HD 5850 CF.

There are a couple of options

Gigabyte HD 7950 Windforce (900 Mhz) - USD 370
http://www.amazon.com/Gigabyte-Mini-Displayport-PCI-Express-Graphic-GV-R795WF3-3GD/dp/B007581QHG

Sapphire HD 7950 950 Mhz edition - USD 390
http://www.amazon.com/Sapphire-PCI-Express-version-Graphics-11196-10-40G/dp/B0082D58P4

The Sapphire comes with a ref HD 7970 PCB with 8 pin + 6 pin power. Dual BIOS. the 2nd BIOS allows aggressive overclocking. Both cards come with excellent coolers. Gigabyte has 3 yr warranty. Sapphire has 2 yr warranty. take your pick.

Here is a user who has purchased the Sapphire HD 7950 950 Mhz edition running in eyefinity

http://www.overclock.net/t/1268397/radeon-7950-or-gtx-670-for-5760x1080/20#post_17525733

here is another user running the same sapphire card watercooled

http://www.overclock.net/t/1196856/official-amd-radeon-hd-7950-7970-owners-thread/11260#post_17357026

http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1695577

You could get their opinion if you want.

Originally Posted by y2kcamaross 

Do you work for Sapphire or something? It's literally all you talk about in every post, very annoying and suspicious

Originally Posted by raghu78 


You did not notice I mentioned the Gigabyte card as a good option . its priced lower and has a very good cooler. Having said that the sapphire HD 7950 950 Mhz edition is the fastest factory clocked HD 7950 with the best power delivery (8 pin + 6 pin). for overclocking its a very good choice. Why is it a problem if I recommend a certain card. My opinion is based on user sonda5 who has the sapphire HD 7950 950 Mhz edition card running at 1.3 Ghz watercooled. He has been very positive about this card.