Upgrade from crossfire r9 290s?

MrMDAN47 · Oct 16, 2016

Hello all! I'm just wanting some input on purchasing new graphics cards.

I am currently running 2 MSI gaming r9 290s in crossfire and they are still working pretty well. I am planing on water cooling them soon, and the problem is that I'm not sure if I should spend the ~$1,000, water cool, and overclock them. Or if I should spend some extra money first, on buying some new cards.

If I where to get new ones, I would probably go with nvidia this time. With that, I was thinking 2x GTX 1080s because, I know that they are going to be better. But that Is over $1200 and at that price its almost maybe worth getting a titan x (pascal).

I'm having a hard time comparing cards in crossfire/SLI configurations agents others and single cards. Wondering if there is such a site like gpuboss.com for comparing crossfire/SLI configs as well.

So any input would be awesome. Should I stick to what I have now and overclock/water cool them? Or do any of you think that the 290s are a bit outdated (or going to be in the near future) and I should get a couple of new ones? Or a titan x (pascal)?

Anonymouselite5 · Oct 16, 2016

I also own crossfire r9 290's, and options I was looking at was ditching SLI and Crossfire all together. Your mileage may vary but in some games they dont even support crossfire properly resulting in bad performance. So I wanted to upgrade and still get a performance bump even if crossfire was perfect (like in benchmarks such as 3dmark where scaling is perfect).

Right away I would say that watercooling these cards isnt worth it anymore, due to the price, and the performance boost isnt really that much. With a high voltage bump you'll likely be able to overclock to around 1200-1250mhz+ on these cards. Which does allow more performance but at say 4k or ultrawide resolutions you'll actually hit the 4gb Vram buffer at times.

So right now, Im waiting for the 1080ti

there is only rumours but if it's consistent with other generations it should be a cut down Titan XP for less money. So you may as well wait for the 1080ti as a single card, or if multi card is your thing two 1080's will perform better than a single Titan X in titles that support it. Titan X is not worth the price.

As with comparing SLI and crossfire, you can usually find reviews on cards where reviewers get two of the cards and take some benchmarks. You'll likely have to manually look at those scores and compare them to other scores across websites.
A good place to look at is 3dmark scores

however note that scaling is almost perfect.

-good luck

elbert · Oct 16, 2016

You should wait but by leaks there is no 1080ti. Nvidia has plans to rebadge them all but with higher speed ram. Possible as much as 15% bump in performance with higher clocks. The 2080ti should be launched at CES in January. The 2080's new price should be $499.

MrMDAN47 · Oct 16, 2016

Anonymouselite5 :

I also own crossfire r9 290's, and options I was looking at was ditching SLI and Crossfire all together. Your mileage may vary but in some games they dont even support crossfire properly resulting in bad performance. So I wanted to upgrade and still get a performance bump even if crossfire was perfect (like in benchmarks such as 3dmark where scaling is perfect).

Right away I would say that watercooling these cards isnt worth it anymore, due to the price, and the performance boost isnt really that much. With a high voltage bump you'll likely be able to overclock to around 1200-1250mhz+ on these cards. Which does allow more performance but at say 4k or ultrawide resolutions you'll actually hit the 4gb Vram buffer at times.

So right now, Im waiting for the 1080ti

there is only rumours but if it's consistent with other generations it should be a cut down Titan XP for less money. So you may as well wait for the 1080ti as a single card, or if multi card is your thing two 1080's will perform better than a single Titan X in titles that support it. Titan X is not worth the price.

As with comparing SLI and crossfire, you can usually find reviews on cards where reviewers get two of the cards and take some benchmarks. You'll likely have to manually look at those scores and compare them to other scores across websites.
A good place to look at is 3dmark scores

however note that scaling is almost perfect.

-good luck

Thanks, in that case it might be a good idea to wait and see. Again I'm not in any real need of a new GPU right now and these destroy most the games I own anyway.

Anonymouselite5 · Oct 17, 2016

MrMDAN47 :

Anonymouselite5 :

Thanks, in that case it might be a good idea to wait and see. Again I'm not in any real need of a new GPU right now and these destroy most the games I own anyway.

Agreed, 290's still kick up the fps when Crossfire works. Just if you want more performance we'll have to go multi higher end cards or wait

Anonymouselite5 · Oct 17, 2016

elbert :

By the way there is leaks on the 1080ti, before there was rumours that there was going to be none seeing as AMD at the moment is not competing at all at that performance range. However right now there is even leaks on the Cuda core count.

Although I agree we can't go off any leaks until it is announced.

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Upgrade from crossfire r9 290s?

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