6970 crossfire upgrade worth the $200 price?

Hi, I've been looking through the forum for a while and haven't seen this question yet. With the great deal that Malibal has on the Veda upgrades I'm tempted to get the crossfire upgrade for $200 over the single card, but I'm wondering if anyone has had bad experience with this setup, ie trying to avoid any pitfalls with the new laptop purchase.

I figure the upgrade should buy me an extra year of gaming at the highest definition, with a few exceptions. So any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Josh

 

are you ok with the catalyst drivers? if yes, go for it.

 

Honestly, I guess I should have mentioned I'm more of a gamer than a tech guru like most of you guys, so I don't know what the gist of your post is. I've updated drivers before, but that is the limit of my knowledge in that area...

 

Some games don't immediately support crossfire so you need to wait for new drivers to get the full benefits... Also since it's AMD there's no GPU based physx, which basically means no physx period lol If that doesn't bother you then go for it

 

Thanks for the layman's explanation. Is this driver refresh something the nvidia dual cards also suffers from?

About the physics thing, I'm not worried about that, I've seen it before and wasn't very impressed, plus it seems to give a pretty big hit to the fps if I remember. Do you also think the upgrade is worth the price and should give me an extra year or so of good gaming? Any extra problems with heat or noise over one card? Is the thermal paste upgrade needed?

Lastly does anyone know how to get the members discount to malibal and does it apply with their current offers?

Thanks for all of the help.

 

physx on, yes fps will take a hit, add 1080p ultra settings to the eqn

malibal has a really good deal, $200 is not bad for 2 6970m's . AMD drivers cannot match nvidia's superior driver updates. Then again be willing to pay $500 premium for sli

please get the ic diamond my friend

you dont need the members discount! but make sure you order my monday!!!!!! or you lose the sale! I got mine yesterday I always had nvida cards till now, I just got my 1st amd card now !

 

FYI

http://forum.notebookreview.com/com...ards-alienware-m18x-pulls-tons-new-stuff.html

You can sell one OEM 6970M in NBR marketplace for at least $250.

 

Thanks to everyone for the helpful replies, i'll go ahead and get the crossfire, go big or go home right? Lol. I'm sure i'll be happy with the great setup. Anyone with a similar setup had a chance to play BF3? Hopefully this system should give me close to max with decent frame rates.

 

It should do close to max, though you may still need to turn down AA. Even desktop cards still struggle to max out some of the newer games at full AA and with other advanced graphics settings enabled.

 

Just checked with a sales Malibal rep who informed me that the only NBR special right now is the price protection...I'm still waiting to hear from the Xotic folks to see what their NBR special entails to figure out if it would tip the scales their way vs. Malibal. Given the holiday weekend, I just hope I hear from them soon! When I do, I'll let you know what I hear if you'd like.

 

you cannot match Malibal this weekend if you decide to go with AMD, Blu ray and color calib.

 

Not to derail the thread, as this was geared towards the Crossfire upgrade, but I'm not really planning to go with any of those...if I do get a Malibal, I'll get the color calib coz it's free, but in the machine I'm looking at I'll be replacing the disc drive with a HD caddy anyway so the Blu ray doesn't really matter much...

 

Ok, so I had the Malibal Veda with the Crossfire all customized and ready to go, just double checking the specs when I came across the requirement that AMD crossfire required a new AC adapter (only AMD not nvidia sli), for $100... well that was the point I took a step back and said is this $350 better than just a 6990? I went to the notebook check website and looked at the numbers and decided to go with the regular 6990 from... Xotic PC (it was a little bit cheaper and came with a cooler which is probably pointless but I like it anyway).

Honestly the talk of the crossfire not always working for new games until new drivers came out sort of gave me pause anyway, but thanks to all of you for the technical advice, I really appreciate it.