Should I/ can I utilise a R9 290x as an upgrade for a gtx 770?

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schaeefer

Honorable
Nov 3, 2014
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Hi everyone

I'm currently thinking of upgrading to a new GPU, I have a Zotac GTX 770 and was thinking is it worth upgrading to a R9 290x 4gb card or even two in crossfire?

You will see my original configuration, however now I have:
840 EVO SSD 250gb

Corsair CMY8GX3M2B2133C9R Vengeance Pro Series 8GB (2x4GB) DDR3 2133Mhz CL9 XMP Performance Desktop Memory Kit Red

ZOTAC GEFORCE GTX 770 2GB GDDR5

and I believe I have an upgraded power supply, probably 750W, maybe 100W but I'm not sure.

I have a feeling my motherboard can't do SLI but I think it has the capability to crossfire.

Would it be worth upgrading to a R9 290x/ two of them.

I am obviously interested in maxing out graphics on anything from RTS/ FPS you name it.

I'm curious about 4k gaming in the future but its not my biggest concern right now, I just noticed recently my 2GB GPU sometimes struggles when maxed out, please help.


Cooler Master Elite 430 All Black ATX Case
Modular 650W Quiet 80+ Dual Rail High Efficiency Power Supply
ASUS P8Z77-V LX, USB 3.0, SATA 6GB/s, Quad-GPU CrossFireX™
Intel® 3rd Gen. Ivy-Bridge Core™ i7-3770K Processor (8M Cache, 3.50 GHz)
Antec KUHLER H2O 620 CPU Liquid Cooler [
8GB DDR3 1600MHz (2x4GB) Dual Channel Memory Kit - CRUCIAL Ballistix
2GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670 - 1344 Cores,2 DVI,HDMI,DP - 3D Vision Ready
2TB SATA III 6Gb/s, 7200rpm, 64MB Cache, 8ms Hard Drive
DVD Drive (read/write CD & DVD) High Speed Dual Layer ±R/±RW/RAM
Integrated 7.1 High Definition 8-channel Audio
 
Solution
bicycle_repair_man
The GTX 770 is still a good card, and while you could upgrade to an R9 290X, remember that AMD are releasing some of their 300 series GPUs later this year. You can bet your bottom dollar that the current R9 series will drop in price when that happens, and the GTX 9xx series may well follow suit.

Crossfire and SLI are the same thing; SLI is for Nvidia and Crossfire is for AMD, that's all. Your motherboard is suitable for either, but bear in mind that not all games scale well with multiple GPUs and issues such as flickering are common.

The next step you take is also dependent on your PSU. It may be 750W, but if it's of poor quality, it won't be suitable for multiple GPUs. If you give us the specific make and model, we can tell you what...
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disturbed force

disturbed force

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Apr 7, 2015
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The 290x is a good upgrade for performance and the 100% more vram. CF 290x's are a great setup for 4k gaming, if not the best when it comes to $ and performance, for cf you will need a min of 850 watts but 1000 watts is better.
 
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schaeefer

Honorable
Nov 3, 2014
6
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10,510


Ok thanks, my old power supply was faulty so I got an upgrade for free but I still can't remember quite how much power it has, I will check later and update this

I've read that the P8Z77-V LX can only support Crossfire and as I've only ever had Nvidia cards I'm not well versed in AMD.

The 290x's wouldn't be cheap, especially not two of them, but I do like my games looking all shiny so they seem like a good option but as I said 4k isn't a priority I'd have to get a new monitor too so I'm content with 1920x1080 I just want to be sure I can max everything out. Just got GTA V and when I cranked it up to the highest textures it wasn't particularly happy, less than 10FPS it seemed. Of course I had a bunch of other stuff on highest but in most cases I understand not every game is optimized to perfection.
 
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bicycle_repair_man

bicycle_repair_man

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Jan 10, 2014
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The GTX 770 is still a good card, and while you could upgrade to an R9 290X, remember that AMD are releasing some of their 300 series GPUs later this year. You can bet your bottom dollar that the current R9 series will drop in price when that happens, and the GTX 9xx series may well follow suit.

Crossfire and SLI are the same thing; SLI is for Nvidia and Crossfire is for AMD, that's all. Your motherboard is suitable for either, but bear in mind that not all games scale well with multiple GPUs and issues such as flickering are common.

The next step you take is also dependent on your PSU. It may be 750W, but if it's of poor quality, it won't be suitable for multiple GPUs. If you give us the specific make and model, we can tell you what it's like.
 
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disturbed force

disturbed force

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Apr 7, 2015
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That board will not support sli, the second slot runs at x4. With crossfire the second gpu will lose about 10% performance with the x4 slot but sli will not run.
 
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bicycle_repair_man

bicycle_repair_man

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Jan 10, 2014
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Yes indeed, my mistake; I was looking at the non-LX version of that motherboard.

I still wouldn't use it for Crossfire with high-end cards though.
 
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schaeefer

Honorable
Nov 3, 2014
6
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10,510


Thanks for the update, as I said not that up to date with AMD cards, I'll check my exact power supply when I get back home this evening and I'll let you guys know. The 770 has been pretty great and I haven't had it that long, I upgraded from a 670 when it it died.

Just like everyone else I would love a card that can run pretty much anything with around 60FPS on higher end graphics settings but alot of people seem to think GTX titans are too pricey and it seems hard to find a 780ti which seems to be one of the best for all round value but I'm not sure on recently released cards so thanks for the advice
 
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coozie7

coozie7

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Jun 2, 2007
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With the second PCI-E slot at x4 I'd stay away from CF, I suspect the performance hit will be significant with dual R9 290X cards.

I'm running a R9 290 it seems fine at 1080 and the reviews show it to do well at 1440 rez as well.

Be aware the R9 290X is a fair bit more expensive for a small performance increase over the R9 290.

The upgrade is not likely to be particularly large: http://www.tomshardware.co.uk/gaming-graphics-card-review,review-32899-7.html although if your GTX770 is a 2Gb card the extra memory of a R9 290 should help even out the stutters and momentary freezes you might be seeing-they're indicative of the cards memory being overloaded and constantly having to swap data over the PCI-E bus.

The cheapest option would be to selectively turn down a few settings.
 
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