New Card, Crossfire or Something else ?

[eslagrassa]

So i do have a question. I have a 7970 Ghz edition. Should i get a 280x card and a new psu ( I've lost my modular cables ) or GTX 970 ? 
If you guys have another suggestions, please let me know.

I live in Turkey, 1$ = 2.7 Turkish Lira. So computer staff is pretty expensive in Turkey right now. 

I'm using a VG248QE 1080p 144 Hz Panel.

[Trolling]

are you planning to game 1080P?

Also, XFX might get you a modular cable if you lost one. (Corsair sent me one for free)

[DeViLzzz]

eslagrassa did you try overclocking your 7970 further to see if that would make your gaming experience better before you go and buy anything? If not maybe give that a shot if you don't want to really be buying anything right now.

[DryzonDigital]

If you are planning on 1080p gaming then yes, the 280x handles 1080p really well. 

[eslagrassa]

are you planning to game 1080P?

Also, XFX might get you a modular cable if you lost one. (Corsair sent me one for free)

Yeah sorry, I have a VG248QE 1080P 144Hz Panel. I ll try to, but probably they wont be sending those cables to Turkey. 

 

eslagrassa did you try overclocking your 7970 further to see if that would make your gaming experience better before you go and buy anything? If not maybe give that a shot if you don't want to really be buying anything right now.

Its the worst card to O.C. probably.  I ve tried to, but its stutters, weird texture problems etc.

[sgloux3470]

Crossfire 280x/7970 will destroy a 970.

[TJPC]

Id get the the 970, I have a Crossfire 280 (non X) and I have a friend who has a 970 and the Crossfire set up is slightly more powerful but you'll run into the crossfire issues where some games don't run well or just don't know how to take advantage of the crossfire set up and you end up using one.

 

IMO crossfire and SLI are only for high high end cards

[ThE_MarD]

Heyyo,

Oh, what size of power supply do you have? What motherboard? We should make sure your computer can handle a multi-GPU setup.

Ehh... I wouldn't recommend overclocking that AMD 7970.. they don't exactly run the coolest..

Tbh? If you can get an AMD R9 280X for cheap? I'd recommend getting that and doing Crossfire. The upgrade from a 280X/7970 to a 970 isn't massive.

That, and the 7970GHz Edition & R9 280X are 3GB VRAM cards which is fine for now, and once DirectX 12 and Vulkan come out? They'll be able to share VRAM information between the GPUs and act like a 6GB VRAM setup. Future 3D APIs ftw!

IMO crossfire and SLI are only for high high end cards

I use Two-Way GTX 680 2GB SLI and it runs like a dream for me... the only game I have that has SLI scaling issues is Dying Light. Every other game I've thrown at my setup runs great just like GTA V.

[eslagrassa]

Crossfire 280x/7970 will destroy a 970.

Yeah i know, I just want to get some advice from people. Thank you for that too.

 

Id get the the 970, I have a Crossfire 280 (non X) and I have a friend who has a 970 and the Crossfire set up is slightly more powerful but you'll run into the crossfire issues where some games don't run well or just don't know how to take advantage of the crossfire set up and you end up using one.

 

IMO crossfire and SLI are only for high high end cards

I'm aware of crossfire driver issues. Looking for advice.

 

Heyyo,

Oh, what size of power supply do you have? What motherboard? We should make sure your computer can handle a multi-GPU setup.

Ehh... I wouldn't recommend overclocking that AMD 7970.. they don't exactly run the coolest..

Tbh? If you can get an AMD R9 280X for cheap? I'd recommend getting that and doing Crossfire. The upgrade from a 280X/7970 to a 970 isn't massive.

That, and the 7970GHz Edition & R9 280X are 3GB VRAM cards which is fine for now, and once DirectX 12 and Vulkan come out? They'll be able to share VRAM information between the GPUs and act like a 6GB VRAM setup. Future 3D APIs ftw!

I use Two-Way GTX 680 2GB SLI and it runs like a dream for me... the only game I have that has SLI scaling issues is Dying Light. Every other game I've thrown at my setup runs great just like GTA V.

I do have a 750W 80+ GOLD XFX PSU. Crosshair V Formula-Z with 8350.

Its loud right now, its not overclockable so yeah np.

I can search for cheap 280x/7970, but of course, i cant be sure that i can find it.

[ThE_MarD]

Heyyo,

 

I'm aware of crossfire driver issues. Looking for advice.

Sadly AMD's Crossfire seems to be slightly less compatible in games than NVIDIA's SLI... a prime example is World of Tanks which supports SLI but not Crossfire.. but then again, that game still runs on the old and tired Direct3D 9 API... so... it's more about older software in that case.. and the game is single-threaded. It barely makes use of any other cores minus the sound and physics portions of the BigWorld Engine use separate work threads if possible lol... so an Intel i3 and i5 make zero difference in this game.

As for other Multi-GPU games? Check their forums to see what others sometimes say:

http://forums.amd.com/game/categories.cfm?catid=475&entercat=y

GTA V doesn't like Crossfire in Windowed mode (same deal then with borderless windowed) is one thing that it shows me.

Another is to not expect any good Multi-GPU scaling in a Call of Duty game wether you use AMD or NVIDIA. Same goes for Titantall and Dead Rising 3. As good as DirectX 11 is? It's also still up to the game developers to create proper Multi-GPU compatibility to their games... DirectX 11 seems to help that situation compared to DirectX 9, but some games seem to just give high end setups the middle finger and that's why I never bought Titanfall and have stopped purchasing Call of Duty games since Black Ops 1. Now, it's Ubisoft who's also on my watch list as they've put out some terribly unoptimized games in 2014... quite the pity since they had such a good year in 2013.

 

I do have a 750W 80+ GOLD XFX PSU. Crosshair V Formula-Z with 8350.

Its loud right now, its not overclockable so yeah np.

I can search for cheap 280x/7970, but of course, i cant be sure that i can find it.

750W 80+ Gold? Yeah, you're fine dude and that motherboard will churn out some multi-GPU goodness with those lovely PCI-E 3.0 x16 slots.

If you can manage to find a long enough Crossfire bridge? I'd recommend to even use the top and bottom x16 slots. That's what I do to optimize the airflow for each card so you don't risk any thermal throttling. Currently? There isn't a bandwith issue on PCI-E 3.0 x8 slots since they're so ridiculously fast too.

See what I'm saying?

[sgloux3470]

Heyyo,

 

Sadly AMD's Crossfire seems to be slightly less compatible in games than NVIDIA's SLI... a prime example is World of Tanks which supports SLI but not Crossfire.. but then again, that game still runs on the old and tired Direct3D 9 API... so... it's more about older software in that case.. and the game is single-threaded. It barely makes use of any other cores minus the sound and physics portions of the BigWorld Engine use separate work threads if possible lol... so an Intel i3 and i5 make zero difference in this game.

As for other Multi-GPU games? Check their forums to see what others sometimes say:

http://forums.amd.com/game/categories.cfm?catid=475&entercat=y

GTA V doesn't like Crossfire in Windowed mode (same deal then with borderless windowed) is one thing that it shows me.

Another is to not expect any good Multi-GPU scaling in a Call of Duty game wether you use AMD or NVIDIA. Same goes for Titantall and Dead Rising 3. As good as DirectX 11 is? It's also still up to the game developers to create proper Multi-GPU compatibility to their games... DirectX 11 seems to help that situation compared to DirectX 9, but some games seem to just give high end setups the middle finger and that's why I never bought Titanfall and have stopped purchasing Call of Duty games since Black Ops 1. Now, it's Ubisoft who's also on my watch list as they've put out some terribly unoptimized games in 2014... quite the pity since they had such a good year in 2013.

 

 

Crossfire has never worked in windowed mode or borderless fullscreen, although SLI does with lower performance.

 

There are a handful of recent games that only support SLI and not CF, but most games that support one will support the other.

 

There are times where you can also force crossfire in games using AFR or other games profiles. For example Shadow of Mordor before they officially added support the Crysis.exe profile worked very well.