SOLVED Advice- worth my while to upgrade my 280x's for 295x2?

[oldiron]

Need advice, been getting along, waiting for the new AMD cpu and not really putting anything new in my system with the exception of a cpl h55's and G-10 krakens on my 280x's, which I just finished and love the results but sucks, as I ran into a friend who has an r9 295x2 he'd let me have cheap. (400 ) At that price I cant help but want to grab it and then when I go 4k I'd be set. Right now I'm gaming at 1920x1080 and my monitor is 75hz. I was planning on upgrading but again was going to do one shot once the CPU release is.
Opinions? Think it would be worth my while to swap my 280's for the 295x2 with my current setup now or just wait as planned? At that price I could afford to crossfire it with another 295x2 when I do the build.

Thanks!

 

[EarthDog]

Worth it is up to you...

But until you go Intel or the new AMD GPU, there will be a glass ceiling on its performance (and your 280x/7970's) since the CPU cannot push multi-GPU setups as hard.

That is a TON of power to run two of these things. You will need another PSU for sure if you go that route. There will also be a lot more headaches with a quad GPU setup. Only go that route if you have to is my advice.

 

[oldiron]

Good point, and I'm probably at that limit or ceiling now,or close, although at the res I game at I dont notice any bottlenecking I'd probably see it if I tried 4k with my setup now? I think is what your saying. And would def see it with the 295x2?
Thought about the power issue and thanks for bringing up the crossfire issues I didn't even give a thought about that, from what I have researched I thought it was just like xfiring 2 cards as the 2 gpus on the 295x2 card are already linked. I'll have to delve deeper in that for sure.

Sorry ED there's no way I can go intel

 

[EarthDog]

Its just a glass ceiling. You wouldn't notice until you went Intel, there is performance left on the table with AMD and multi-GPUs. The lower the res, the more the CPU matters. Here is an article that may help visual the potential differences...: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crossfire-sli-scaling-bottleneck,3471-11.html

Not sure what it looks like at 4K. I wouldn't imagine much different honestly.

As far as CFx issue,


Nothing wrong with AMD and gaming, but when you get into multi-GPUs the processor puts a glass ceiling on performance.

 

[oldiron]

Its just a glass ceiling. You wouldn't notice until you went Intel, there is performance left on the table with AMD and multi-GPUs. The lower the res, the more the CPU matters. Here is an article that may help visual the potential differences...: http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/crossfire-sli-scaling-bottleneck,3471-11.html

Not sure what it looks like at 4K. I wouldn't imagine much different honestly.

As far as CFx issue,


Nothing wrong with AMD and gaming, but when you get into multi-GPUs the processor puts a glass ceiling on performance.

Thanks man, extremely informative and surprising too, seeing AMD actually preferred nvidia's platform. Like what?

The other plus for me was that card has a full coverage block available which would then allow me to put the 8350 under a full loop with it and get past the 4.6-4.7 ceiling I'm at now with my cpu cooling as I'm pretty much there.

 

[EarthDog]

I have a 295x2 under an EK block. I have a total of 5x120mm worth of radiator (one is a double thick rad). After a couple hours of gamaing, the GPU peaks at 60-62C (22C ambient with Yate Loon fans at 1K RPM), and the CPU (4.4GHz 5820K Hex core) reached the mid 50s.

Oops, looks like I didn't finish my thoughts... As far as the CFx issue, any quad GPU setup is going to give you more issues than dual. regardless if it is a dual GPU on single PCB. Managing that heat will be nothing short of difficult. You would need around 9x120mm worth of rad and a 1500W PSU.

 

[oldiron]

That's sort of the killer for me as I just got my temps under control on my OC'd 280x's, finished sunday and ran furmark overnight and never went above 61c @23c ambient. Quite a drop from the 90's they were but that was with old tim too....just the tim change knocked me down 6-8c. My CPU, I'm pretty much at the ceiling, I can do 4.7 but after that my H80i cant keep up. So no matter what I'm going full loop and all I'd have to change would be the cpu block and tubing when one becomes available for the new AMD. My thought was grabbing the 295x2 now and doing a full loop till the release, then re-using what I can from that loop in the new.
I just bought a 900D that I was going to use for this build but let my son have it for his, plenty of rad room there I'd think, but was also considering the lian-li PC-D600.

Other than actual game support I have never really had any x-fire issues, well not until win 10 which seems now everytime I remove a card I have to DDU the drivers and reinstall after.