Report: Radeon R9-290X Won't Need CFX Bridge, to be $600

[N.Broekhuijsen]

It appears that the Radeon R9-290X won't need CrossFire bridges, and that it doesn't even have the ports.

Report: Radeon R9-290X Won't Need CFX Bridge, to be $600 : Read more

 

[Smawell]

I had always wondered why something wasn't built into cf capable boards and cards anyways. Could have sworn I saw pics of it with them though, maybe it was an early ref model. Cool news though, one less thing to forget in future builds lol!

 

[slomo4sho]

Shouldn't this read "Rumor: Radeon R9-290X Won't Need CFX Bridge, to be $600" since the price is nothing more than a rumor.

Alternatively, you can call it "Radeon R9-290X Won't Need CFX Bridge, price rumored to be $600"

 

[Smawell]

Shouldn't this read "Rumor: Radeon R9-290X Won't Need CFX Bridge, to be $600" since the price is nothing more than a rumor.

Alternatively, you can call it "Radeon R9-290X Won't Need CFX Bridge, price rumored to be $600"

+1 Didn't notice the price wasn't final, trusted the title too much lol

 

[nikoli707]

the price will be $600. i can't understand how anyone would doubt that. makes no sense whatsoever

 

[vmem]

if the performance rumors and price is correct, this card will be a steal for the holiday season

 

[Smawell]

Would you guys recommend a cf 7950, just adding one to my existing. Or getting a new R9 this holiday? I'm leaning at cf but I hate that my PC generates so much heat in my room.

 

[vmem]

On a different note:

Again, I'm an AMD fan (not fanboi) myself, but this literally means you can't CF this card on ANY AMD system until they refresh their chipset and include more x16 PCIe 3.0 lanes that are not shared. In fact, you can pretty much only do this on a few very high-end Intel boards...

 

[Guest]

This certainly won't help the situation CrossfireX is in.

 

[silverblue]

Isn't there an FX board with PCIe 3.0 capability?

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/SABERTOOTH_990FXGEN3_R20/

Apologies if I've misinterpreted you.

 

[vmem]

Isn't there an FX board with PCIe 3.0 capability?

http://www.asus.com/Motherboards/SABERTOOTH_990FXGEN3_R20/

Apologies if I've misinterpreted you.

Nope, that one only has 16X PCIe 3.0 lanes TOTAL. in CF, those will get split and shared between the two slots, or 8X PCIe 3.0 lanes, essentially the same bandwidth as two 16X PCIe 2.0 lanes. we know that a 7970 or gtx 680 can already saturate PCIe 2.0. so yeah, not enough bandwidth to run a pair of R9-290x in crossfire...

 

[slomo4sho]

Isn't there an FX board with PCIe 3.0 capability?

There are FM2+ boards that are available. AM3+ has no native support for PCIe 3.0

 

[shin0bi272]

@Smawall the hawaii is just an OC'ed 7970. So look for benchmarks for the 7970 and bump them up a little bit (say 10-20%) and that's what you'd get with R9. If you can find a bench comparing 7950 CF with 7970 you can get a pretty good idea of what performance you can expect. The only benefit to getting an R9 would be the lack of the bridge TBH.

 

[kvragec]

So, hi! I'm new here, so be gentle to me first few posts
I have to say one thing that i noticed that i think is wrong. The amd mobos with 990fx chipset have 2x pcie 16x. So 32 lanes per card if 2 cards are in crossfire or sli. When more pcie ports are populated then bandwith goes 16x-8x-8x, and 8x-8x-8x-8x if there are 4. Take that with grain of salt but i think i'm correct if i recall specs correctly

 

[Martell1977]

@shin0bi272 - You're thinking of the 280x, which is a 7970 Ghz edition with a few tweaks. The 290x is rumored to have Titan-esque performance with a GCN 2.0 core. If true, the 290x will be an amazing deal for $600...compared to the Titan.

 

[kvragec]

So, i think that sideport technology would work, atleast for 2 cards in crossfire. Forgot to add that in my previous post. Sorry. Sorry for bad english and greetings from Croatia.

 

[yannigr]

We where telling you that the price would be close to $600, but noooooooo, Toms was the only site expecting the price close to $1000. And off course the downvoting was and it is going to be the standard way to respond in a post like this one.

 

[slomo4sho]

so yeah, not enough bandwidth to run a pair of R9-290x in crossfire...

Actually there is enough and the new crossfire feature is backwards compatible with 2.0 but there may be a slight performance penalty over 3.0 especially if you are running at x4. Any card that can run dual x16 shouldn't have any issues with bandwidth.

 

[gsxrme]

Nvidia cores vs AMD Cores, The Nvidia core count is better than AMD, 1.2 to 1... that being the R9-290x will not beat the Titan but be on pair with the GTX780

 

[kvragec]

So, i think that sideport technology would work, atleast for 2 cards in crossfire. Forgot to add that in my previous post. Sorry. Sorry for bad english and greetings from Croatia.

 

[childofthekorn]

I'm dying to see the respective TDP's.

 

[DRosencraft]

Being a little greedy, I'd like them to bump the price down another $100 bucks (Imagine getting a crossfire set for the price of a Titan). But that is a pipe dream I suppose. As for the Sideport tech, I do think the lack of seeing the crossfire bridge may be just because of the fact it was a test card. AMD thus far has been slow to even adopt PCIE 3.0 into its motherboards, so I suppose in some respects it would make sense that they might jump to 4.0 support directly, but again, that whole matter of cutting bandwidth of individual lanes when more and more are used is a roadblock. AMD would need to push for motherboard makers to make some advances there. The last thing AMD wants to have happen is for them to jump to sideport and have a ton of problems with crossfire due to lack of bandwidth, creating a storm of negativity.

 

[Leamon]

Can't wait to see how well this beast does Eyefinity!

 

[iam2thecrowe]

i cant see this working properly for crossfire in higher resolutions like eyefinity and 4k. Their current solution WITH the bridge already doesnt work properly.

 

[billgatez]

I hope there is no sync problems using the PCI-E connector. With a bridge there is a direct connection. But with PCI you have to go through the PCI controller.