CrossFire R9 280X or single R9 290?

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gamingwoop

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Im buying parts for a new PC and am trying to work out the costs of it all and the best/quickest to buy the highest quality stuff.

Would it be better to:
- wait a few months and buy an R9 290?
- or buy a 280X now, and much later buy another 280X for CrossFire? (Sidenote: what would be a suitable CPU for this CrossFire setup)

Im looking for 1440p gaming above 40/50 fps on ultra/max settings on most high-end games.
Also any completely new ideas would be appreciated as well
 
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I currently run two R9 280x cards and the performance is quite impressive. I also managed to get them both second hand, very slightly used, for less than $350 CDN.

One thing to consider though is that sometimes, multi-GPU performance can occasionally be a bit buggy; a lot of games don't like multi-GPU setups. So whenever possible, it's ideal to have a higher end single card than 2 in Crossfire / SLI. In the case of two 280x's, you would have 6 GB total VRAM, whereas you would only have 4 GB with an R9 290x. Some games, like The Evil Within and GTA V, need copious amounts of VRAM to achieve maximum performance; in GTA V, with all the settings completely maxed, the game consumes 5.7 GB of my VRAM.

At the end of the day, both...
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BadBoyGreek

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I currently run two R9 280x cards and the performance is quite impressive. I also managed to get them both second hand, very slightly used, for less than $350 CDN.

One thing to consider though is that sometimes, multi-GPU performance can occasionally be a bit buggy; a lot of games don't like multi-GPU setups. So whenever possible, it's ideal to have a higher end single card than 2 in Crossfire / SLI. In the case of two 280x's, you would have 6 GB total VRAM, whereas you would only have 4 GB with an R9 290x. Some games, like The Evil Within and GTA V, need copious amounts of VRAM to achieve maximum performance; in GTA V, with all the settings completely maxed, the game consumes 5.7 GB of my VRAM.

At the end of the day, both scenarios would give you excellent performance. I'd wait a bit longer for the R300 series to come to market though, so that prices drop and you can save a bit more. CPU wise, depending on your budget, An i5-4690, Xeon 1231 or i7-4790/k would all be excellent; it just depends on your budget.
 
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bootcher

bootcher

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Badboygreek is wrong, the usable amount of vram is effective 3 gb vram in his setup, since each gpu uses its own vram, it doesn't add up when in sli/crossfire.
I personally would opt for a single card, since some games don't like multi-gpu setups. If you have a set budget we can give you much better advice, how much are you willing to spend? You can also opt for a cheaper cpu and uprade the cpu later, this might enable you to still have good performance on 1440p since most games depend mostly on the gpu.
 
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BadBoyGreek

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I'm not wrong at all. GTA V clearly sees my available VRAM as 6041 MB and it consumes about 5719 MB. When I get home from work later tonight, I'll link a screenshot to prove it. You should have your facts straight before accusing people of misinformation.
 
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bootcher

bootcher

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You are wrong. It is one of the oldest misconceptions regarding sli/crossfire. Adding in a 2nd card for sli crossfire does not double the amount of your vram. Both cards mirror the rendering information and use their own memory. Anyone with a little knowledge of multi-gpu can tell you.
 
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gamingwoop

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i didnt want to cause an argument :)
I also believed that in crossfire vram is limited to the vram of just one card, but you sound like you have proof so i dont know hahah and I'm a novice so I'm not completely sure about anything...


bootcher my budget is GBP£650 (around USD$1000) and thats not for monitor or peripherals or operating system, just hardware. I have never built or even owned a PC before and I'm aiming hopefully to have a setup that can run 40/50fps on ultra/max at 3440x1440 (LG's 1440p 34in 21:9 monitor is my target). I can tolerate 1080p-capable GPU for the first few months if i have to (my budget isn't solid or guaranteed) in which case i would plan on buying a 280X, then months later buying another 280X. Thoughts?
 
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BadBoyGreek

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Dude, this has 100% nothing to do with "misconception". When I open my graphics settings in GTA V, it shows how much VRAM I have available and how much VRAM is consumed based on the settings I've chosen and the VRAM very clearly shows that the game sees over 6000 MB in VRAM so I'm not wrong about anything. I know how SLI / Crossfire works; I'm merely stating, matter of factly, that the game sees 6 GB VRAM and I will post proof later tonight.
 
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bootcher

bootcher

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Well, simply put GTA V is wrong. Search this site or even Google it, and you will always find the same answer: sli and/or crossfire does not double your amount of vram.

For 650 GBP you can get a very nice pc, if you can build it yourself or find someone that can:
PCPartPicker part list / Price breakdown by merchant

CPU: Intel Core i5-4460 3.2GHz Quad-Core Processor (£143.99 @ Novatech)
Motherboard: ASRock Z97 Anniversary ATX LGA1150 Motherboard (£62.36 @ Scan.co.uk)
Memory: G.Skill Ripjaws X Series 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory (£41.94 @ Aria PC)
Storage: OCZ ARC 100 240GB 2.5" Solid State Drive (£64.98 @ Amazon UK)
Storage: Seagate Barracuda 1TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive (£38.34 @ Aria PC)
Video Card: Asus Radeon R9 290X 4GB Direct CU II Video Card (£227.15 @ Scan.co.uk)
Case: Cooler Master K280 ATX Mid Tower Case (£21.48 @ Amazon UK)
Power Supply: Silverstone Strider Essential 600W 80+ Bronze Certified ATX Power Supply (£48.84 @ Scan.co.uk)
Total: £649.08
Prices include shipping, taxes, and discounts when available
Generated by PCPartPicker 2015-04-29 20:50 BST+0100

The Z97 board is usually for overclocking, but the I5 4460 cannot be overclocked. It is cheaper than any H97 motherboard though, so I would opt for it instead of a H97. If you want you can always buy a 'K' cpu later and overclock it.
 
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BadBoyGreek

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There's a big difference between me being wrong and GTA being wrong. As I said, I was just pointing out how the game sees it, not that I'm being insistent that Crossfire / SLI actually doubles your available VRAM because I'm well aware that it doesn't, only that games requiring high amounts of RAM in a single card would work fine in a Crossfire / SLI setup. A single 4 GB card like the R9 290x is seen as having 4 GB, whereas in a Crossfire setup of two 280x's, a game would address 2 x 3 GB in parallel and distribute the load across them, so even though there's only 3 GB physically available, the load is shared across the 2 cards which effectively results in a doubling of RAM, much like how a multi-core CPU splits threads across cores and can get more processing done across multiple threads wherever optimizations are in place vs. 1 single faster performing core.

Regardless, it doesn't change the fact that the game requires a high end setup to maximize the settings and that either the 2 280x's in Crossfire or the single 290x will both perform really well. The only difference is in games where higher VRAM would be required, the Crossifre / SLI setup would have the advantage because the processing is split across the 2 cards.
 
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sora

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Maybe you should read his post carefully before claiming he is wrong...
 
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gamingwoop

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Bro this is almost identical to the build i had in mind, you have given me a lot of confidence, thank you!!
 
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bootcher

bootcher

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You're very welcome, good luck!
 
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