7970 PCI 2.0 and PCI 3.0 Eyefinity

[alamakluke]

Hi all,

I currently have 1 Sapphire 7970 GPU with a P8P67 Deluxe with a 2600K and I am running 3x23" LCD screen in eyefinity resolution 5760x1080. I am wondering what should I upgrade with.

Upgrade option#1:

Buy 1 either i7 3770k cpu or the i5 3570k
Buy 1 z77 MB

Upgrade option#2:

Buy a 2nd 7970 gpu

What I want is better graphic performance in games. I am noticing especially in metro 2033 that my 1 7970 is barely producing 30 fps.

thanks in advance

[SamCR3]

First off Metro 2033 has historically been very tough on AMD cards, so I wouldn't gauge the overall performance of your card on that one game. Second, you won't see any noticeable frame rate improvements by upgrading to PCI-e 3.0. In short, buy another 7970 for crossfire and enjoy.

[Skyguy]

Agreed. A second 7970 is absolutely the way to go, no question.

Otherwise, lower the image quality settings in Metro. Drop AAA down a bit for better performance.

[alamakluke]

thanks guys for your responses. Metro 2033 was just 1 example, I also play BF3 and with that game I get on average 40FPS. I was thinking that maybe it was my MB with PCIE 2.0 that could be the problem, but now I think it's just that I need a 2nd 7970 since I am running an eyefinity setup.

[Doctor_Death]

Here's what I use, X79 Extreme9, 3960X, 32GBs Corsair 1600MHz, VisionTek 480GB SSD, three GTX680s in TRI-SLI, Silent Pro 1300W, Cosmos II Ultra, EX360Rad, Apogee HD.

[realneil]

Here's what I use,

Snort! Ha-Ha!

Is that all?

[alamakluke]

Nice gig Doctor_Death I wish I had that as well

Here's what I use, X79 Extreme9, 3960X, 32GBs Corsair 1600MHz, VisionTek 480GB SSD, three GTX680s in TRI-SLI, Silent Pro 1300W, Cosmos II Ultra, EX360Rad, Apogee HD.

Attachment 3356

[MattyMatt]

PCIe 3.0 is useless. More throughput available than we can use. At the rate it is currently going, PCIe SSDs will use that speed before the GPUs do.

[alamakluke]

I read somewhere that PCI-E 3.0 is good when you have 3 or more cards in CF or SLI. But 1 or 2 cards don't have enough bandwidth to overload PCI-E 2.0

PCIe 3.0 is useless. More throughput available than we can use. At the rate it is currently going, PCIe SSDs will use that speed before the GPUs do.