Crossfire 2 R9 270X's or upgrade?

SteveGrabowski0 · December 9, 2015

I have everything on its way but here is what I am putting together:

Asus M5A99FX Pro R2.0 Motherboard

AMD FX-8350 CPU

4x2GB Kingston HyperX DDR3 @1600Mhz

Samsung 850 EVO 250GB SSD

Seagate 7200 1.5TB HDD for storage

Coolermaster Hyper 212 CPU cooler (although I may change to water cooling instead)

and the R9 270X

also have a Sata BD-R drive and DVD burner installed just cuz I have em still.

The 270x is a good match for a balanced system build there, I'd stick with it, especially since you're happy with it. Why run two monitors for gaming though? I can understand three since the screen in front is your main view and the side screens are for peripheral viewing, but I don't think I'd enjoy dual monitor gaming with the bezels going right through the center of my view. I can understand one monitor for gaming and the other on a Windows desktop, and dual monitor is awesome for programming since you can have your project open on one, documentation on the other.

SteveGrabowski0 · December 9, 2015

Seems like Sapphire is la creme de la creme of AMD. Maybe my future AMD purchase if there is one will be one, will be from them. Any experience with their support? MSI seems hard to beat given that they gave me back a new 390x for an old broken 290. lol

Damn.

Ben_Upde · December 11, 2015

The 270x is a good match for a balanced system build there, I'd stick with it, especially since you're happy with it. Why run two monitors for gaming though? I can understand three since the screen in front is your main view and the side screens are for peripheral viewing, but I don't think I'd enjoy dual monitor gaming with the bezels going right through the center of my view. I can understand one monitor for gaming and the other on a Windows desktop, and dual monitor is awesome for programming since you can have your project open on one, documentation on the other.

yeah the dual monitor is mostly for when i'm doing stuff other than gaming. I picked up a stupid cheap HP monitor, but its resolution isn't the same as my main 1080p screen so it becomes the internet/simple stuff monitor.

I was actually practically given another R9 270X today. This one is an MSI gaming edition but I think I should be able to get both to have the same clock speeds and hopefully play nice with each other.

I basically only picked up because I want to feel cool having 2 GPU's in my system, not to mention I own a Chrysler Crossfire, so having Crossfire in my computer makes me feel that much more special

Ben_Upde · December 16, 2015

Figured I would throw an additional note for anyone with similar thoughts/questions that would like to know.

I saw a pretty significant performance increase in 3dmark benchmarks, going from 5800ish to over 8600.

My framerates in Fallout 4 went from running around 50FPS at all settings maxed, with the occasional dip in framerate to the mid 30's, to a rock steady 60 FPS (which happens to be the games limit due to physics/etc.). This is with all settings maxed at 1080P.

My framerates in the Dying light demo improved slightly, but I did see a significant decrease in framerate dips, so my average framerate holds pretty tight to 45 FPS. Once again, all settings maxed and running 1080P resolution.

I did not test Metro Last Light with the single card, but I can run it also maxed at 1080P very comfortably with no hiccups.

While I did see a slight increase of temperature of the first card, I was able to mitigate most of that with better placement of case fans.

All in all, I am quite happy with my setup and would recommend it to anyone to give it a try on a few conditions.

First, don't expect double the performance as it won't happen.

Secondly, only go for it if you can find a screaming deal on a second card to match your existing card, and you don't have the funds to get an upgraded better single card.

Do NOT try this unless you are sure your power supply can handle it. My power supply doesn't have a ton of headroom when the system is operating under full utilization. I am working on an upgrade with custom cables2go cabling in the very near future.