Should I get a 2-way crossfire with the R9 207X or a single 280X?

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DaltonAdams

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I'm building a new PC, and I have been looking online, and I wanted to know if it was better to get 2 Gigabyte Radeon R9 270X's; or a single 280X. It's for heavy gaming such as BF4, GTA5, LoL, Dota, Diablo, Starcraft, and WoW. The 270X has 50 more Megahertz than the 280X, but the 280X has more an additional Gigabyte of memory. I will except any insight. If you need more information i have a build set up: (http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2rv3p)
 
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jb6684
Always start with the most powerful single card you can on a new build.......

I'll leave the choice of AMD vs NVidia outta this one........ In that price range GTX770/780 or AMD 280X/290...
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quilciri

quilciri

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Comparing two different model video cards using clock-speed is like comparing two different cars using tires; not a good way to determine overall performance. The number of shader cores a card has (in a given generation of cards) is the primary indicator of performance. the 280x has many more shaders than the 270x. (2048 vs 1280).

As you might logically surmise from that, a pair of 270x's will outperform a 280x in terms of raw fps, but the 280x will deliver a smoother experience in many games. That is because AMD's frame-pacing drivers aren't fully mature yet. With a pair of AMD cards, you will have significant microstutter in several games. Right now, the drivers support (most) DirectX11 games decently, but only on a single monitor, and not all DX11 games work well.

I highly recommend AMD cards for single GPU systems, but if you want to use a pair of GPU's, I suggest Nvidia.
 
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quilciri

quilciri

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Those people are what I like to call "wrong". Even if the tahiti cores in the 270x were as fast as the hawaii cores in the 290x (they aren't), the 290x still has more shaders than the 270x's put together (2816 shaders on the 290x).

You *will* be able to get 80-90% of the 290x performance from a pair of 270x's, but again, you are stuck with AMD's immature frame-pacing.

On top of that, you can overclock a single card father than you can a pair in xfire/SLI.

however, xfire/SLI lesser cards is very good value for the money, though once again if you're going to use multiple GPU's I recommend Nvidia.

edit: Actually, if you're talking about the 290x with the horrible reference cooler, then yes, a pair of 270x's are better. On that PoS cooler, the 290x throttles down to ~70% of it's performance from heat issues. In short, don't buy a reference cooler 290x (or 290 for that matter) :)
 
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quilciri

quilciri

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generally, you'll get an 70-80% increase in performance from a second card.

It's a bit difficult to find benchmarks on crossfire 270x for a direct comparison, they're not very well covered because the 270x is just a reissue of the 7870 (with a 50 mhz clock bump). Reviews of 7870x crossfire either use older games than 290x review, or are on older drivers (usually both).
 
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magneezo

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It was in reference to the new 4GB model 270x in crossfire compared to a single 290x that they had an article on the Tom's Home Page:

Quote:
Before anyone complains about the 4gb being unnecessary, it does have a practical use. Think about people wanting to do crossfire and end up with more performance then an R9 290x, wouldn't be much use to crossfire without all the Vram otherwise you would end up with 2gb of vram.
If you compare a pair of 4GB 270Xs in crossfire to one 290, they are exactly the same at every spec but clockspeed (should be easy enough to OC a 3rd party cooled 290 to 270X clocks). On top of that, a 290 would not have losses from crossfire, giving it greater performance than the 270Xs. An OC'd and properly cooled 290X would probably sit even higher. The only way this card makes sense is if you want to crossfire three of them, one wouldn't be able to use all that VRAM, and two or four of them would be better replaced with one or two Hawaii cards.
 
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DaltonAdams

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I was just concerned if a 2-Way crossfire with the 270X's would be as good or better than the 280X. If you can suggest a better pair of GPU's, or a single GPU for relatively the same price I can make some adjustments to my build, I am also worried about my Mother Board being compatible with my GPU's and CPU, which also concerns me about my CPU being fast enough to keep up with the GPU's. I have currently an AMD FX-8320, which is 3.5Ghz on 8-cores that overclocks to 4Ghz when an application demands it. I would also like to know how the frequency of a CPU works in conjunction with the number of cores it has. The FX-6350 has 3.9Ghz on 6 cores, and the FX-8320 has 3.5Ghz, but on 8 cores, how exactly does the overall performance of the CPU correlate with its frequency and cores? Here is a link to my current build i have chosen: http://pcpartpicker.com/p/2rv3p
 
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jb6684

jb6684

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A pair of 270X's will KILL a single 280X in any game you throw at it, assuming the game supports Crossfire.....

AMD CPU & Motherboard combo's are generally cheaper than Intel. Intel's like the 4770K & other quad core parts are faster. Might gain you 5--10% over the AMD's but will cost you. I think you'll get a SYSTEM with more FPS from AMD if you spend the money save by not buying Intel on more powerful GPUs

Frame pacing issue is essentially gone now, I've got 1 system w/GTX690 and another with CrossFire 7970Ghz editions. Both are very smooth....
 
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quilciri

quilciri

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Not true. I just ditched my pair of 7850's cause I'm tired of waiting for AMD to catch up. In *any* Dx9 game, microstuttering is still a serious issue. The 13.11 Betas don't even cover all DX 11 games, there is horrible stuttering in Metro Last Light, and noticeable stuttering in Bioshock inf, Far Cry 3, Tomb Raider, Dishonored, and a few other games I have played on them.

FCAT was showing a minimum of 6ms frame time variance at the 95th percentile for me in those games. Some, like Metro and most DX9 games, went up to 10 -14ms. 5ms variance bothers me. 10ms is unacceptable.

I don't think there's going ot be much more development on a pure driver fix for this, either. Since AMD went to a new hardware implementation of xfire for the 290/290x, which seems to help frame pacing as well (though it's still not as good as Nvidia's. it's a big middle finger to everyone who bought the 6k/7k series or the pitcairn/tahiti R series.
 
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jb6684

jb6684

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Guess I'm just not as sensitive to frame pacing. Running 13.12 drivers. I've played BF3, BF4, Metro 2033, Metro Last Light, BioShock Infinite, Far Cry 3 and Tomb Raider no detectable issues with frame pacing on 7970's...
 
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quilciri

quilciri

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If the game supports crossfire, you'll get a 30% fps increase with xfire 270x over the 280x. In DX9 games and DX11 games where the 13.11 beta drivers fail, the extra fps are worse than useless.

270x=7870, 280x=7970 ghz ed

http://www.tweaktown.com/articles/4597/amd_radeon_hd_7870_2gb_reference_video_cards_in_crossfire/index10.html

http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/4783/amd_radeon_hd_7970_ghz_edition_3gb_video_card_review/index10.html
 
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quilciri

quilciri

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Heh, AMD has publicly apologized over the latency issues in metro (around 13.8 beta 2). That wasn't even entirely frame pacing, either.

In any case, I'm not disputing that a pair of cards tends to be the better value. I'm saying Nvidia is the better choice for multi-GPU, because AMD support isn't 100% there yet.

I still think AMD is screwing everyone who doesn't have a 290/290x, but while it's likely AMD frame pacing will catch up in the next year, right now Nvidia has the best overall frame-pacing.

Maybe DaltonAddams isn't as sensitive to microstutter as I am, but why take that chance? The Nvidia cards are cheaper than AMD now anyway because of the litecoin rush.
 
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DaltonAdams

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I did some research and talked with other people and found Nvidia cards are more preferred to for gaming than AMD. That said, my budget for my GPU alone is about $450, should I get 2 smaller Nvidia cards, or 1 large one. This will be the solution to my questions.
 
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