Is My Build Ready for Bridge-Less CrossFireX?

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Brandonriess8

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Jan 14, 2014
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Hey, me again!

In a recent post, I asked how I would go about adding a second Radeon R9 290X to my machine. It seemed easy enough, until I got down to the technicalities. I need to know if my motherboard and power supply are ready to support the "new" CrossFireX from AMD. As you all know, the newest video cards from AMD no longer use physical card-to-card bridges in order for two or more video cards to communicate. Instead, they communicate over the PCI-e bus.

Here's what I know. Maybe you guys can take some information from this and help me out. I know that each R9 290X requires one 6-pin PCI-e connector, and one 8-pin. I also know that each card will draw around 350 watts under load. I have an AZZA Titan 1000W. PSU, and a GIGABYTE x79-UP4 motherboard that is currently running a TurboBoosted i7 4930k and 32GB of 1866 MHz DDR3 RAM.

Here's what I need to know. Will my PSU br capable of supporting the 2 beasts without a problem? Will my motherboard support the new type of CrossFire? If so, which PCI-e port should I place the second card into?

Thanks a whole lot for your help!
 
Solution
RedHyena
Q1. PSU Requirements: I ran a basic PSU calculator check (you can find them through Google) and the PSU will be capable of powering your set up. However when you say "TurboBoosted" do you mean Intel's TurboBoost technology or is it an overclocked i7?

Q2. Motherboard & Cross-Fire: I checked the specs for GA x79-UP4 and it is up to 4-way CrossfireX. They are PCI-e 3.0 which means they can use the new CrossFireX features so no worries there.

Q3. Which Slot: As for this I honestly don't know sorry, Gigabyte recommends one card in 16x slot and one in the 8x slot. Hopefully someone else could clarify this more for you, although I will do some more research tomorrow if no one else has answered. I hope this helps, sounds like one hell of a...
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RedHyena

RedHyena

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Aug 22, 2014
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Q1. PSU Requirements: I ran a basic PSU calculator check (you can find them through Google) and the PSU will be capable of powering your set up. However when you say "TurboBoosted" do you mean Intel's TurboBoost technology or is it an overclocked i7?

Q2. Motherboard & Cross-Fire: I checked the specs for GA x79-UP4 and it is up to 4-way CrossfireX. They are PCI-e 3.0 which means they can use the new CrossFireX features so no worries there.

Q3. Which Slot: As for this I honestly don't know sorry, Gigabyte recommends one card in 16x slot and one in the 8x slot. Hopefully someone else could clarify this more for you, although I will do some more research tomorrow if no one else has answered. I hope this helps, sounds like one hell of a build :).
 
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Brandonriess8

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Thanks for the quick reply! Just to clarify, I am using Intel's TurboBoost technology, which means that I hit 3.9 or 4.0 GHz when under extreme load (High-end games or video rendering). Will this compromise power draw? I've never done a dual-GPU setup before, so any and all support is greatly appreciated! I look forward to any more assistance you can provide. Thanks again! (I'll probably end up picking this as a Best Answer. Very well written, and easy to understand! Keep it up!)
 
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RedHyena

RedHyena

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Thank you for the feedback on my answer, I really appreciate it. The turbo boost won't draw that much more power to require a new PSU, if you were using water cooling you might want to run another PSU calculator check based on your set up to double check, but other than that the 1000W PSU is good enough for that build. (I used eXtreme Power Supply Calculator to check this if you want to check the website out or if you want to give me a full break down of your build including number of fans, water cooling setup ect. then I will check for you.)

As for the place for the graphics cards, after more research Gigabyte recommends in it's manual to place them in the two 16x slots. So starting from the slot closest the CPU it goes 16x_1, 8x_1, 16x_2, 8x_2. So you want the first and third slot. This is good because it gives the two cards more room to breath.
 
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Brandonriess8

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Thanks again for the help! I think the PSU will support this, however I have decided to use one reference card, and one Sapphire Vapor-X OC card. Will the factory overclock on the Sapphire card revert once I CrossFire it with my stock-clocked reference card. or will it remain overclocked?
 
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Mousemonkey

Mousemonkey

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Good question, run GPUz and post a screenshot here please.
 
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Brandonriess8

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GPUZ_TOMSH.gif
 
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Mousemonkey

Mousemonkey

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So what about the other one?
 
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Brandonriess8

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I haven't purchased the second card as of yet. I don't want another hot, noisy reference one, and the Sapphire card looked really nice. I wanted to know if I buy it and put it in my machine to accompany my current stock-clocked card, if both cards will revert to the default 1000 MHz. The sapphire comes overclocked out of the box to 1080 MHz core, and I was wondering if it would revert to 1000 MHz to parallel the other card.
 
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