Add 2nd r9 280 or one gtx 970?

Toggle sidebar Toggle sidebar
M

moralesaw

Distinguished
Mar 1, 2011
16
0
18,510
Eight months ago I bought the Sapphire Dual X r9 280 OC, the GPU works great but I am thinking about upgrading so I can play games (Witcher 3 right now) on ultra settings at 1080p at 60Hz.

Should I consider buying another r9 280 and Crossfire (I haven't done this before) or should I buy a gtx 970 which I'm assuming would put me in a good position for the next couple of years. In a year or two I plan to upgrade my cpu/mobo/ram but what I have still runs great after four plus years.

My specs:
CPU: I7 960
MB: Gigabyte x58 ud3r
PSU: Antec 750w bronze certified
Ram: 8Gb G-Skill DDR 3 1600
SSD: 120Gb Kingston
Monitor: Samsung B2330 23" 5m/s 1920 x 1080

Will I run into any bottlenecks with the current mobo/cpu I have? I'm pretty sure my power supply and ram is sufficient.

Also should I consider a better 1080p monitor? I don't plan on 2K/4K gaming for some time and will upgrade to a better monitor as prices come down in the future.

Any suggestions are welcome.
 
Solution
jimmysmitty


Actually currently SLI/CFX with two cards gives about a 80-100% boost in games coded properly for it. It is after he second card that returns become diminishing to the point of not being worth it.

That said:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2015-vga-charts/compare,3664.html?prod%5B7345%5D=on&prod%5B7276%5D=on

116FPS average over 20 games at...
Sort by date Sort by votes
UnforgivenGamer

UnforgivenGamer

Reputable
Dec 15, 2014
133
0
4,710
I have the exact same model gpu and my friend has a 970. We compared our performances and the two cards are fairly close. If you put two 280's up against one 970 it is no contest. The two 280's will offer far better performance. Also the card comes with a crossfire bridge so you can just look up a video. As long as your parts support crossfiring (which it looks like they do to me) it should be fairly simple :)
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
kawininjazx

kawininjazx

Distinguished
May 22, 2008
1,372
0
19,460
If you crossfire the card, you will get a nice boost in performance, but you are limited to the 3gb of memory. With the way PC games are going now, a 4GB Nvidia card may be worth the investment, plus you can easily sell your old AMD card.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
polyformist

polyformist

Distinguished
Jun 11, 2006
52
0
18,630
I am personally 100% an NVidia fan Boy, so I would recommend the Nvidia Card hands down.

However I would certainly take cost vrs performance increase into account.
Most SLI / Cross fire combo's will not produce more than a 30% increase in current performance.
Look for benchmarks of the 970 on this site to determine if Cross-firing or just Single Nvidia would give you the best boost!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
M

moralesaw

Distinguished
Mar 1, 2011
16
0
18,510


Will I run into any bottlenecks with the gtx 970 in my existing rig?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
jimmysmitty

jimmysmitty

Champion
Oct 5, 2007
21,605
599
59,140


Actually currently SLI/CFX with two cards gives about a 80-100% boost in games coded properly for it. It is after he second card that returns become diminishing to the point of not being worth it.

That said:

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2015-vga-charts/compare,3664.html?prod%5B7345%5D=on&prod%5B7276%5D=on

116FPS average over 20 games at 1080P for the GTX 970 vs 72FPS for the R9 280 (single) giving it a 61% (44FPS) advantage.

Hard to say. There are some revies that have CFX but you probably would get the same performance boost from a second R9 280 as going to a single GTX 970. Benefit of the 970 is that you wont have to worry about your PSU handling the extra load.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Solution
You must log in or register to reply here.

TRENDING THREADS

Latest posts

Moderators online

Share this page

COMPANY
RESOURCES
FOLLOW
Top Bottom