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Radeon R9 295X2 In CrossFire: 25 Billion Transistors Game At 4K

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  • Gaming
  • Graphics Cards
  • AMD
  • Crossfire
Last response: in Reviews comments
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April 21, 2014 5:00:03 AM

We spent our weekend benchmarking the sharp-looking iBuyPower Erebus loaded with a pair of Radeon R9 295X2 graphics cards. Do the new boards fare better than the quad-GPU configurations we've tested before, or should you stick to fewer cards in CrossFire?

Radeon R9 295X2 In CrossFire: 25 Billion Transistors Game At 4K : Read more

More about : radeon 295x2 crossfire billion transistors game

April 21, 2014 5:17:25 AM

I always said it, more than two cards takes too much resources to manage. Drivers are not there either. You are getting better results with simple Crossfire. Still, the way AMD corner Nvidia as the sole maker able to push 4k right now is amazing.
Score
8
April 21, 2014 5:24:10 AM

I personally don't think we'll see a day that 3+ GPU setups become even a tiny bit economical.

For that to happen, IMO, the time from one GPU release to the next would have to be so long that users needed more than 2x high end GPUs to handle games in the mean time.

As it is, there's really no gaming setup that can't be reasonably managed by a pair of high end graphics cards (Crysis back in 2007 is the only example I can think of when that wasn't the case). 3 or 4 cards will always just be for people chasing crazy benchmark scores.
Score
2
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April 21, 2014 5:24:13 AM

I am not a great fan of mantle because of the low number of games that use it and its specificity to GCN hardware, but this would have been one of the best case scenarios for testing it with BF4.

I cant believe the reviewer just shrugged of the fact that the games obviously look cpu limited by just saying "well, we had the fastest cpu you can get" when they could have used mantle in BF4 to lessen cpu usage.
Score
11
April 21, 2014 5:39:03 AM

Great article as always Chris ... sweet and to the point without bias.
Score
2
April 21, 2014 5:42:51 AM

i wasn't expecting 295x2 in crossfire review in any time soon well done toms
Score
2
April 21, 2014 5:45:52 AM

Nothing to do here :D 
Score
-2
April 21, 2014 5:51:25 AM

Nothing to do here :D 
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-3
April 21, 2014 6:07:08 AM

The first non-bold paragraph says "even-thousand." Guessing that should be "eleven-thousand."
Score
4
a b U Graphics card
April 21, 2014 6:35:34 AM

Lol, I notice that too.
Score
0
April 21, 2014 6:37:33 AM

How does a dual dual-GPU setup even operate under Crossfire? As I understand it the two GPUs on each board are essentially operating in Crossfire already, so is there then a second Crossfire layer combining the two cards on top of that, or has AMD tweaked Crossfire to be able to manage them as four separate GPUs? Either way it seems like a nightmare to manage, and not even close to being worth the $3,000 price tag, especially when I'm not really convinced that even a single of those $1,500 cards is really worth it to begin with; drool worthy, but even if I had a ton of disposable income I couldn't picture myself ever buying one.
Score
-3
a b U Graphics card
April 21, 2014 6:38:25 AM

I don't see how AMD cornered Nvidia at all. The 780Ti is still the fastest single GPU you can get, and if you put them both is crossfire/sli, they are about even. Are you talking about the fast that AMD cards have more memory than Nvidia? You can always get Nvidia cards with more memory if you want to.

But to say one company has another one cornered is a bit bias. Not a bit, just straight up bias. I like both companys, they are both doing great IMO.
Score
-7
April 21, 2014 6:55:17 AM

I'm curious as to the type of loads both the CPU and RAM are seeing. I wouldn't be surprised if we're getting to the point where the bottleneck is elsewhere. I'm guessing that the GPUs are just overpowering everything else and are starving, hence the wild numbers. It also looks the driver is a beta driver, there's a lot of tuning to be done there.
Score
3
a b U Graphics card
April 21, 2014 7:26:46 AM

Something was definitely bottle-necking those GPUs. Oh well. Some day I think we will see all crossfire/sli combinations work the way they should...
Score
2
a b U Graphics card
April 21, 2014 7:27:40 AM

Something was definitely bottle-necking those GPUs. Oh well. Some day I think we will see all crossfire/sli combinations work the way they should...
Score
-2
April 21, 2014 7:30:37 AM

Would be interesting to see benchmarks with an 8 or 12 core xeon with workstation grade hardware. Just sayin'.
Score
2
April 21, 2014 7:49:50 AM

You have to wonder sometimes if its the hardware/software or the people doing the testing....
Score
-5
April 21, 2014 8:17:06 AM

Regarding the possibility of software issues; it'd be nice to see a retrospective article that looks to see if that's the case. I'd definitely be interested to know if the stability is improved after a few new driver versions to see if that's the problem, or if the hardware (or concept) is truly at fault.
Score
2
a b 4 Gaming
a b U Graphics card
a b À AMD
April 21, 2014 9:01:54 AM

I think it's still gonna be a while when games will be made to utilize 4 gpus well at one time.
Score
0
April 21, 2014 9:15:54 AM

This has and will always be an issue with 3-way and 4-Way SLI or Crossfire. Nvidia and AMD both have extremely low support for this. Just spend the money on 2 cards and watercool/overclock them vs adding a 3rd or 4th card into the mix.

After my last burn with SLI GTX295s, I will never go back to QuadSLI. I am still having an issue leaving my SLI GTX680s @ 1300MHzcore / 7Ghz Ram setup. Then again i am still at 1080p like 99% of the gamers.

4K isn't ready until refresh rate is bumped up 60Hz- 120Hz and better HDMI standards.
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0
April 21, 2014 9:46:08 AM

295x2 in crossfire?
I think Tom went mad to catch Jerry .... :p 
Score
3
a b 4 Gaming
a c 81 U Graphics card
a b À AMD
April 21, 2014 10:01:12 AM

seems like there was/were bottleneck/s. either in software or in hardware. i wasn't expecting much performance improvement, but didn't expect regressions.

i woulda liked to see mantle benches for bf4 and thief if mantle was lessening any performance-limiting cpu bottleneck. mantle would be perfect for showcasing it's potential in scenarios like high end quad gpu cfx. if amd haven't added such support in mantle... they're going against their propaganda of eliminating cpu/platform bottlenecks and supporting multicore cpus and multiple gpus.

edit: can that ibuypower test rig play crysis 3... in 4k?
Score
2
April 21, 2014 10:07:41 AM

Quote:
I don't see how AMD cornered Nvidia at all. The 780Ti is still the fastest single GPU you can get, and if you put them both is crossfire/sli, they are about even. Are you talking about the fast that AMD cards have more memory than Nvidia? You can always get Nvidia cards with more memory if you want to.

But to say one company has another one cornered is a bit bias. Not a bit, just straight up bias. I like both companys, they are both doing great IMO.


The 780 TI is a good single card, but there is no point of putting them in SLI. Why? Because one is enough for 1440p, but they choke at 4k while AMD is offering a 125$ cheaper card offering better results at UHD. For that reason, the 780 TI is having no use in a SLI configuration. Also, I would even recommend two 770 GTX in SLI over a TI for 1440p.

On the other hand, a pair of 290x with good custom HSF make sense. The benchs are there to prove it.
Score
0
April 21, 2014 10:10:44 AM

Quote:
This has and will always be an issue with 3-way and 4-Way SLI or Crossfire. Nvidia and AMD both have extremely low support for this. Just spend the money on 2 cards and watercool/overclock them vs adding a 3rd or 4th card into the mix.

After my last burn with SLI GTX295s, I will never go back to QuadSLI. I am still having an issue leaving my SLI GTX680s @ 1300MHzcore / 7Ghz Ram setup. Then again i am still at 1080p like 99% of the gamers.

4K isn't ready until refresh rate is bumped up 60Hz- 120Hz and better HDMI standards.


Display Port... it's already on your graphic card and provide 4k @ 60fps.
Score
0
April 21, 2014 10:40:28 AM

Please send me that gaming rig. I need to thoroughly analyze myself.

After I'm done, I'm not giving back.
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-2
April 21, 2014 11:46:14 AM

ATI/AMD is the BEST with API MANTLE RULEZ :)  is FERRARI of PC .
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-5
April 21, 2014 11:50:16 AM

At the end of the day, "only" 4GB of VRAM is usable by games, right?
Score
1
a b 4 Gaming
a b U Graphics card
a b À AMD
April 21, 2014 12:07:33 PM

A pair of 295s would have done way better in a case like the HAF XB, where you can configure it for maximum airflow. Tower design cases are a relic of the past when it comes to high performance.
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-2
April 21, 2014 2:09:44 PM

When you do these benchmarks in the future with 4k resolution, could you please include vram usage?
Score
4
April 21, 2014 3:09:06 PM

I don't think the CPU can keep up with that unless its using DirectX 11.2 or Mantle.
Score
1
April 21, 2014 5:20:21 PM

Made a couple of spelling/grammar fixes and swapped out a couple of charts in Grid 2 that were incorrectly reporting Frame Time Variance. Thanks for the sharp eyes, folks.
Score
1
April 21, 2014 6:09:56 PM

4 way anything=BOOM! :p 
Score
0
April 21, 2014 6:35:20 PM

Don't use GUIminer. Simply switching from GUIminer to SGminer my 7950 went from ~350khs to ~550 khs with same settings. It now cruises at ~700khs 24/7 with higher clocks.
Score
1
April 21, 2014 10:24:33 PM

I would have liked to see how 3 way r9 290x in crossfire and gtx 780 3 way sli perform against 2 r9 295x in crossfire.
As usual dual gpu scales best and then it's downhill scaling with every gpu extra afterwards.
Score
1
April 21, 2014 11:26:58 PM

Why don't you use a dual Xeon set up? You could pair two Xeon E5-2690 v2 and an Asus Z9PE-D8 WS to eliminate CPU bottlenecks.
Score
0
a b 4 Gaming
a b U Graphics card
April 22, 2014 1:04:22 AM

550 kh/s ?!?! Oh toms as much as you are pros with benchmarking you are bad at mining. Took me 1 week to get my 280x at 750 without overclocking but its doable. The settings are different from card to card, bios to bios, hell, even revision to revision. Its an art to squeeze more kh/s out of a card and it takes time and effort.
Score
0
a b U Graphics card
April 22, 2014 1:59:20 AM

stuttering mother F. lol
Score
-1
April 22, 2014 6:15:35 AM

3d on chip memory will up the ante next year! pretty soon the entire computer will be made with 3d arcitecture to eliminate existing bus limitations and bottlenecks.

Stackable chips for scalability, motherboards will be shrinking considerably.
Score
0
April 22, 2014 7:08:38 AM

Serious Driver work needed here. The problem clearly isn't in the hardware but in the software's ability to utilize the hardware. The same problem was seen with multi-core CPUs
Score
0
a b 4 Gaming
a b U Graphics card
April 22, 2014 8:47:01 AM

Sixteen Gigabytes of GDDR5 memory, yeah right. In quad CrossFire it's only 4 GB usable.
Score
0
April 22, 2014 9:43:14 AM

Wondering Why it only show Radeon R9 295x2 in crossfire and not nVidia GTX 690 SLI?
Score
0
a b 4 Gaming
a c 190 U Graphics card
a b À AMD
April 22, 2014 11:10:23 PM

CrossfireX still has poorest optimization, in some games two R9 295X2 decrease FPS instead of increase that FPS....
Score
0
April 23, 2014 5:53:58 AM

cst1992 said:
Sixteen Gigabytes of GDDR5 memory, yeah right. In quad CrossFire it's only 4 GB usable.


That's a truth universally acknowledged in dual-gpu cards and multi-card configurations and is mentioned in the article when they were talking about the GTX 690.
Score
0
a b 4 Gaming
a b U Graphics card
April 23, 2014 5:58:13 AM

They'll probably show the 16GB as a gimmick for noobs.
Score
0
April 23, 2014 1:32:40 PM

The performance sux ... but MAN ... does it look cool! We have been waiting for gpu and game makers to fix cfx/sli support for years. Dont hold your breath on them working this out. However ... crazier things have happened. tom ... just do they multi-monitor review anyway. We will read it.
Score
0
a b 4 Gaming
a b U Graphics card
April 24, 2014 9:07:58 AM

Sick article.... Shows where technology is... And where it isn't.

I think I'll be waiting a few years (maybe 10) before I attempt any of this high res and/or multi monitor setups. 27" and 1200p is in my future possibly, where single cards can still manage ultra.

Spending 2000-3000$ for more monitors and GPUs and only getting 40-50 FPS is not super appealing, just my 2cents.
Score
0
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