AMD R9 290 2way CF or nVidia GTX 970 2way SLI?

[Kevo05s]

Hi, I'm building a new system and I simply can't decide between these GPUs....
Advantages (for me):

EVGA(nVidia) Geforce GTX 970 SC ACX2.0                                                           MSI(AMD) Radeon R9 290 Twin Frozr (factory OC at 1010MHz)

 -better looking textures                                                                                           -Actual 4GB on a 512bit bus (running triple 1080P setup)

-more anti aliasing options                                                                                       -A bit more powerful as a single card(from benchmarks I did compared to my friend's 970)

-better drivers (and more updates)                                                                          -Will support DirectX 12.3

-more games supporting SLI with less stuttering

 

 

These are the PCpartPicker of my build with both gpus config, and I already have everything else.

 

the MSI/AMD build: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/9HsQvK

the EVGA/nVidia build: http://ca.pcpartpicker.com/p/6JGgyc

[Trolling]

what resolution are you planning to play in?

[ADZ_123_!"£]

The 290 is generally better at higher resolutions so I think you will be best of with a 290 for what you want to do.

[ADZ_123_!"£]

what resolution are you planning to play in?

Triple 1080p.

[Trolling]

I vote for 290

[itachipirate]

Red or green it's up to you. They perform about the same in this case. Obviously 290s take more power but they might also be a bit cheaper. DX12 is bringing a lot of changes to SLI and CF. All VRAM from all cards will be available, and AMD has something called split-frame rendering which looks promising. Not sure if Nvidia will have something similar

[ThE_MarD]

Heyyo,

Eh this is a tough call... NVIDIA SLI has in general had better support. I think NVIDIA actively seeks out game developers where-as AMD might not for Crossfire. The Elder Scrolls Skyrim springs to mind. Released in November 11, 2011 yet a proper crossfire driver didn't come out until MUCH later in January 5, 2012... so almost two months later.

Proof:

http://www.overclock.net/t/1164844/skyrim-crossfire-issues-complete-list-of-known-fixs-here-12-1a-and-11-12-cap2-links-inside

Then again, I think this was the only time where AMD really struggled to push out an updated driver... can't blame NVIDIA on this one as it doesn't use NVIDIA GameWorks at all. No PhysX, no HairWorks no TXAA or anything.

NVIDIA SLI had a profile update on release day. Albeit SLI scaling wasn't perfect due to the game being CPU bottlenecked... only really used two threads optimally. Intel i3's and i5's performed about the same if you matched their clock speeds and generation models.

So... I dunno what to tell ya lol. Either way? Both should work just fine in most cases, especially if DirectX 12 and Vulkan deliver their VRAM sharing promises and great Split-Frame Rendering rebirth.

That... or you can wait for the AMD R9 290X rebrand, the AMD R9 380X which might be announced alongside the AMD R9 390X on June 16th... actually yeah, I highly recommend you wait. The AMD R9 380X rebrand might have better TDP thus lower temperature potential.

 

Red or green it's up to you. They perform about the same in this case. Obviously 290s take more power but they might also be a bit cheaper. DX12 is bringing a lot of changes to SLI and CF. All VRAM from all cards will be available, and AMD has something called split-frame rendering which looks promising. Not sure if Nvidia will have something similar

NVIDIA had Split-Frame Rendering LONG LONG ago... same with ATi. It's not new by any means... but it lost popularity due to horrible multi-GPU performance scaling compared to Alternate-Frame Rendering which was also A LOT easier to implement in game engines. DirectX 12 and Vulkan promise to bring back SFR and fix the performance scaling.

If you look far enough back actually? Quad SLI even hand crazy-ass modes like "SFR of AFR" Where two GPUs did alternate-frame rendering on the top half of the resolution and the two bottom GPUs did alternate-frame rendering on the bottom half. True story.

http://www.hardwarezone.com/feature-quad-sli-geforce-7950-gx2-squared/quad-sli-rendering-modes-action

Also, Split-Frame Rendering was the original method of Multi-GPU with the legendary 3DFX Voodoo 2.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scan-Line_Interleave

[Kevo05s]

NVIDIA SLI had a profile update on release day. Albeit SLI scaling wasn't perfect due to the game being CPU bottlenecked... only really used two threads optimally. Intel i3's and i5's performed about the same if you matched their clock speeds and generation models.

So... I dunno what to tell ya lol. Either way? Both should work just fine in most cases, especially if DirectX 12 and Vulkan deliver their VRAM sharing promises and great Split-Frame Rendering rebirth.

That... or you can wait for the AMD R9 290X rebrand, the AMD R9 380X which might be announced alongside the AMD R9 390X on June 16th... actually yeah, I highly recommend you wait. The AMD R9 380X rebrand might have better TDP thus lower temperature potential.

for the SLI scaling, would a 5820k's architecture still bottleneck?

and for the wait, I saw speculations of the series where they were just rebranded card except for furyX..... I dont know if it will actually make a difference, since the rebranded will probably be more expensive than the originals.... Here's the page:  http://tech4gamers.com/amd-officially-shows-off-fiji-gpu-features-4-gb-hbm-and-massive-interposer-die/

[ThE_MarD]

Heyyo,

 

for the SLI scaling, would a 5820k's architecture still bottleneck?

and for the wait, I saw speculations of the series where they were just rebranded card except for furyX..... I dont know if it will actually make a difference, since the rebranded will probably be more expensive than the originals.... Here's the page:  http://tech4gamers.com/amd-officially-shows-off-fiji-gpu-features-4-gb-hbm-and-massive-interposer-die/

Checked the link... Hmm, so the AMD R9 390X will be the rebrand of the AMD R9 290X? Odd but oh well lol.

But seriously? Their new flagship GPU will only sport 4GB of VRAM? That's a letdown... It better be around the price of the GTX 980 as I'm sure it will be and make the GTX 980 obsolete but... but 4GB of VRAM is already feeling the squeeze on 4K resolutions... unless AMD expects the world to either Crossfire and wait for DirectX 12 and Vulkan... that or at a later date will release an actual 6GB or 8GB version like they did with the AMD R9 290X... Sure, HBM is said to be faster than GDDR5... but that won't make much difference if you fill it up and the game wants more VRAM... sigh. Maybe a future 8GB HBM Fury X will cost closer to the GTX 980 ti or something... so the wait on a bigger VRAM AMD flagship on top of the already long wait...

This is definitely an odd but very interesting time for the future of GPUs.

Also, that Intel i7-5820k is an insanely powerful GPU. It could easily handle Quad-SLI and is more than overkill for two-way SLI. 28 PCI-E Lanes is what that i7-5820k supports.

Even an Intel i5 has plenty of PCI-E Lane bandwith for two-way SLI.

[sgloux3470]

Okay full stop.

 

-AMD updates their drivers monthly, usually with every major game release.  The same as nvidia.  You just have to download the beta drivers. (The only difference between those and Nvidia's are the lack of WHQL certification, which doesn't mean anything.)

-Nvidia cards will not improve your texture fidelity.  Both AMD and Nvidia offer full anistropic filtering and image quality options. (Nearly identical, actually.)

-Both AMD and Nvidia have pretty identical frametimes in multiGPU configs these days.  

 

 

The 290 set up is more powerful and cheaper.  The main disadvantages are that crossfire profiles can take longer than SLI profiles to be released and that you will need a beefier power supply to run them than with 2 970's.   I think since your intent is to run a triple 1080p set up, AMD is the way to go here.  Eyefinity is better than Nvidia surround, and the better memory bus is very significant.  Even at 1440p we can see the 290 and 290x catch up to the 970/980 in a lot of titles because of the memory speed, and I think for triple 1080p this is going to be a huge factor for performance.

[small2cats]

There is no such things as better looking textures on Nvidia cards. Textures will the same on every card because they depend on the game and not on the card. If you mean texture filtering then both teams offer identical texture options in their drivers.

 

I vote for the 290. Better card, less money, full 4GB of ram available. And since your resolution is pretty big, the 290 will really show it's potential. If you get a good unit, you may even be able to overclock and get even more out of it, but these cards don't generally overclock much. Try overclocking and see how far it goes until it hits ~90 degrees. If there is more potential OC headroom, you can watercool and get even more performance out of it.

 

One thing to note is sometimes there may be issues with drivers on launch (the GTA V performance was atrocious), but if you are not really passionate about playing games as soon as they are released, you can wait about 5-7 days for a better driver and/or patches from game devs which fix issues. But this kind of thing doesn't happen often and I'd still say 290 is the better choice.

[Kevo05s]

Hi guys, thank you for all your answers, I really appreciate it, but sadly, I have to inform you that I did not listen to you...
I actually went for the Gigabyte Geforce GTX 970 G1 Gaming for multiple reasons that wasn't mention up top.
First, game optimisation: Most, if not all the games I play are sponsored by nVidia, which means (yes it's true I personnaly tested it) they are running better on that card.
Second: nVidia technologies: I said games looked better with nVidia: it wasnt the actual textures (even tho the 3 290's I have tried had render fails on texture while nVidia didnt) it was technologies, like the multiple anti aliasing modes, the ambient occlusion, and hair works and gameworks....
Third, but actually more important: Watercooling; I will probably watercool my cards, but not this month (budget reasons) SO by the time I'll have the budget, there will be no more blocks for 290s, while the 970s will
4th I only had problems whenever I ran my previous 290s on the beta drivers.... and so did everyone I know....
5th I only play certain games on the surround mode (racing + GTA5 and FC3 and 4)
6th, I want to install SteamOS in my machine (as a second OS) and believe me, nVidia drivers are better
Finally, the reason on why Gigabyte over EVGA: the cooler looks better in my build than any other (I know maybe watercooling but, as opposed to AMD, I wont NEED to watercool them to feel comfortable with the temps)

But again, thank you all for your advice, and I have to admit, I did not think about Nvidia surround (if it was good or bad) but I did think about DSR being alot better than VSR

[ThE_MarD]

Heyyo,

Eh, tbh? DSR is cool... but it's bugged in SLI. I've tried it on my GTX 680 2GB SLI setup? And performance scaling screws up a knotch or two above QHD resolution.. it's odd and really annoying.

There's this old chart from NVIDIA... I'm sure it's changed from 2014 but it does say DSR in Surround was "under development" so... might wanna do the NVIDIA ask a question to confirm it in your case.

http://nvidia.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/3597/~/dynamic-super-resolution-(dsr)-support-reference-chart

this post from the kind ManuelG from NVIDIA PR talks a little more in detail:

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/784180/geforce-drivers/system-configurations-currently-supporting-dsr-as-of-driver-344-65/

So yeah... DSR isn't perfect unless this almost a year old information is incorrect. From my own testing though? It still needs some love but it does work good on a single monitor with SLI up to 2560x1440.

In Valkyria Chronicles? I've done Single-GPU up to 4K and have it working flawlessly though. Then again, Valkyria Chronicles is not a super graphically intensive game and there's no official SLI profile for it. It's pretty much the only time I use DSR is older or less intensive games anywho.

[EDIT1]

Hmm, she might still hold true on DSR in Surround not working... definitely do the NVIDIA "Ask a Question"

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/814191/nvidia-surround/dsr-surround-/

[ThE_MarD]

Heyyo,

 

6th, I want to install SteamOS in my machine (as a second OS) and believe me, nVidia drivers are better

Shit I totally didn't notice that part... sorry for mini-necro but this is important... SLI and CrossFire doesn't work in Linux.

Well, minus NVIDIA SLI working good in ID Tech Engine 4... which is so ancient that any modern single GPU could pump out 200 FPS.

It's something I've discussed a lot tbh and why I hate OpenGL so freaking much these days. I hope they fix it with Vulkan when it eventually gets ported to Linux... maybe then CrossFire and SLI will be feasible in Linux / SteamOS.

https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/767116/sli/linux-sli-issues/

and...

https://github.com/ValveSoftware/SteamOS/issues/224

and......

https://www.playonlinux.com/en/topic-12428.html

Then again... modern OpenGL on Windows doesn't even support Multi-GPU... look at ID Tech Engine 5... Wolfenstein New Order? No Multi-GPU from both AMD and NVIDIA... RAGE? No multi-GPU...

The Evil Within? Multi-GPU yay!!! oh wait... It's the first time ID Soft (Bethesda, same shit these days) have ever put out an ID Tech Engine with DirectX-only support. It's a DirectX 11 only title with community made hacks to make it run on DirectX 10 GPUs as needed... no OpenGL. RIP OpenGL.

That's why Windows is the only solution for Multi-GPU gaming. Linux is broken and Mac's last officially supported PCI-E GPU was the NVIDIA GTX 680 hahaha...