660 SLI to R9 290x = Feels like a step back?

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nline24

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Sep 17, 2013
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Ok so here's the deal. I appreciate anyone who takes the time to read this.

I started out with an FX8350 and a single 660. Eventually I added a second 660 in sli and performance became better but still had issues with some games. Then NVIDIA release the 337.50 "wonder drivers" and performance was boosted in quite a few games that are cpu heavy.

So I wanted to upgrade and grabbed a R9 290x. So far i have been dealing with all the issues with games that I had before. A couple examples: Sleeping Dogs on my 660 sli setup was getting steady 60 fps. Now with the 290x daytime driving I dip down to a steady 30-35 fps. That's worse performance then I used to get with just one 660!

I did a clean install of windows 7, clean driver install after that. Made sure cores were unparked, realtek audio drivers updated, high performance in power settings, etc.

i am pretty disappointed in this "upgrade" i feel like my 2x GTX 660 shouldnt be outperforming a 290x by so much.

Are AMD drivers just that bad? That seems to be the only thing causing this.

 
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Onus

Onus

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Jan 27, 2006
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You could have a lot of factors at play here. Each company has had driver issues from time to time. They typically get worked out within a release or two (or three). Over a period of years, neither is consistently better or worse than the other.
Some games prefer one architecture to the other, running better on nVidia or on AMD.
Some games run well in multi-card setups, and some show no or little gain. This too can change with driver updates.
 
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clutchc

clutchc

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Apr 22, 2009
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I went the same route; dual GTX 660 OC cards down to a single R9-290X. There was some loss of FPS, but games played a lot smoother. But your issues show some other problem at play. Start out by cleaning the system. Run CCleaner to be sure registry errors aren't causing the problem. https://www.piriform.com/ccleaner

Did you uninstall the Nvidia drivers before installing the AMD drivers? Did you use Driver Sweeper from safe mode? http://www.techspot.com/downloads/4266-driver-sweeper.html
 
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nline24

Honorable
Sep 17, 2013
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I ran SlimCleaner and didn't make a difference. I had actually uninstalled the NVIDIA drivers with driver cleaner but then went ahead and did a clean windows 7 install when I was still having issues.
 
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N

nline24

Honorable
Sep 17, 2013
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The thing is I would agree but from my last scenario, NVIDIA released drivers that opened up all my games that seemed to be CPU bound. So at this point I have to disagree with it just being simply a CPU bottleneck.
 
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B

bystander

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Dec 9, 2009
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Those drivers were created to reduce the CPU overhead a bit, and since it did improve performance, it clearly was a case of being CPU bottlenecked.
 
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