290's falling price...Crossfire?

[Dannar26]

I usually rock single gpu builds. I know that dual gpu setups tend to be buggy and usually cost inefficient. But...

I snagged one 290 (the MSI gaming one) for about $210. I see prices getting to be like this on the regular. As they go down in price, would you see the wisdom in picking up a second?

I have a 144hz 1080p monitor. It's the Asus VG248QE. I don't plan on going up in resolution anytime soon. But I would like to get more FPS potential, for newer games down the road.

 

[Mondozei]

The short answer is yes.

As I pointed out before in the 4K monitor thread: most new GPUs like the 980 can barely hit 60 fps@1080p on ultra settings in the newest games.

So if you have 144 Hz and want to get anywhere close to that, in fps, you need a second GPU if you want to play at the highest graphical fidelity.

Just make you sure you got a decent PSU, like the EVGA G2 series.

 

[guskline]

Dannar26: As you can see from my sig, I run 2 R9 290s in CF. Excellent card if you have good cooling. Mine are custom water cooled so cooling is Not an issue.

Ask yourself the following:

Do I have a Quality PSU of at least 750 W? 2 R9 290s draw some serious power.
How close will the gpus be to each other? Trust me running these in crossfire throws out some serious heat!

Does the game support Crossfire?
Run a single R9 290 and measure your fps with Fraps.
Do you have a well-ventilated case? Again I have a custom water cooled system so I'm fine but trying to cram 2 R9 290s into a small poorly ventilated case is an accident waiting to happen.
Good luck!

 

[raghu78]

OP you need a quality 750w psu for running two R9 290s at stock. For overclocking 850w is safe. The most important thing is how is your case cooling. two R9 290 cards are going to dump a lot of heat as the person above said. Since he is running watercooled he is able to avoid the problems of heat and noise. So make sure you have a case with excellent airflow.

 

[bryanW1995]

I need to quit reading the Video Card forums here. My 7970 is still just fine...but how much finer would 2 x 290 be??

 

[wand3r3r]

I need to quit reading the Video Card forums here. My 7970 is still just fine...but how much finer would 2 x 290 be??

Well, it's about a quarter away from the 390x according to rumors. It's hard to avoid the value proposition in cheap 290's.

 

[wilds]

I'm contemplating CFX... but I feel like 4GB will be a shortcoming a lot sooner than we think. Bring on the 8gb cards....

 

[Silverforce11]

Nothing matches the performance value of R290s in CF TBH. For $400 you are getting insane performance. Snag a good custom model and you're fine with heat & noise.

They also have potential to undervolt with -25mV on stock clocks saving you around 25W each card, you may have to run CPU/GPU on stock with 750W PSU. Mine is 850W and it runs OC (no +vcore) fine.

 

[n0x1ous]

dont overlook the cpu - you will need a highly overclocked modern intel cpu to hit 144hz consistenly with 290 CF

 

[Dannar26]

Got an i5 4690k. Haven't taken it down the OC trail yet. Will get there soon.

I have a solid 750w psu. It's a rosewill capstone, gold rated, and reviewed favorably by johnny guru.

The case is a nzxt phantom. I feel like I have decent airflow now, but these cards tend to be huge.

Would you think it's ok to have the 2nd card be another brand?

 

[Pseudoics]

I love my 290 CF! It seems like overkill for 1080p, but things like Crysis 3 with 8xAA and 60fps minimums on big Panasonic plasmas are a thing of beauty. Sometimes I play on a 120hz monitor and it's nice to lock that responsiveness in quite easily with many games. And then you get games that are horribly optimised, new games with ridiculous requirements vs their visual advancements, or games that don't support CF at all.. in which cases you'll love the second card being there or appreciate that a single 290 will still perform good at this resolution.

FYI I often saw 750w pulling from the wall in the most demanding games, with only a CPU OC. Much less however with V-sync or a frame cap.
I also have the open air Tri-X variants dumping into a HAF X full tower case with an air cooled CPU. I don't have any issues with heat and CPU temps raised only a few degrees. Being two slot cards the gap between them really helps, so yes assuming decent air flow - power hungry as they are - it's not THAT much of a worry.

Nothing wrong with different brand 290s if you're okay with the look and perhaps different memory used.

 

[Dannar26]

How OC'd are we talking?

I have a sinking feeling I'd need a new case and PSU to truly run CF safely. I had to remove an extra internal drive bay to fit the MSI gaming. I don't think I could fit another one that long.

 

[wand3r3r]

From what I've seen on the watt meter 4770k/290x reference crossfire it's been around 700w stock.

 

[guskline]

From what I've seen on the watt meter 4770k/290x reference crossfire it's been around 700w stock.

Sounds about right.

I draw more per my Kill-O-Watt meter but I'm running a ton of fans, 2 D5 pumps, 3930k @ 4.6 etc.

 

[guskline]

OP you need a quality 750w psu for running two R9 290s at stock. For overclocking 850w is safe. The most important thing is how is your case cooling. two R9 290 cards are going to dump a lot of heat as the person above said. Since he is running watercooled he is able to avoid the problems of heat and noise. So make sure you have a case with excellent airflow.

With my rig the heat and some noise are dumped outside the case. The heat is the same just transferred in a better way to the radiators to dissipate it. The good thing is that with a large amount of rad space you can overclock a little higher while keeping the cpu/gpus cooler.

Nonetheless the heat dumps out into my room

 

[geforce255]

All I can say is that I had 2 7970's in Crossfire and vowed "never again." In at least half the games I played, Crossfire screwed things up and had to be disabled. In half the games it worked in, I found no describable improvements. In a very small handful of games, i saw significant improvements, but it wasn't enough to be worth the hassle.

Just MHO.

 

[Headfoot]

All I can say is that I had 2 7970's in Crossfire and vowed "never again." In at least half the games I played, Crossfire screwed things up and had to be disabled. In half the games it worked in, I found no describable improvements. In a very small handful of games, i saw significant improvements, but it wasn't enough to be worth the hassle.

Just MHO.

Pre-XDMA crossfire and Post-XDMA crossfire are very different beasts. Driver support at release is always going to be sketchier than single card though

 

[Unoid]

it works for me with reference coolers.

only problem is that new games take a while to get crossfire profiles., gets annoying.