380 4gb on a pci 4x?

[lonewolf5460]

I am just thinking i am  probably getting a new job soon and I finally have my computer set up to my liking it could have more power but it would be overkill for my needs. I am thinking about going to somewhere close to dream speck level bit by bit. So this gig pays well for a guy with a ged at least. So it got me thinking what would you do if you had my set up look at my profile. I just dropped 200 on my new mouse and keyboard so thats out of the way. I am not touching my cpu or motherboard or ram I am getting zen when it drops I just like supporting the underdog. So I got a msi r9 380 4gb for free basically did some work for a customer and he bought it for me when we were at best buy grabbing him some stuff. I dont want to go through the trouble of selling it and waiting for something else so would another 380 be hurt on a 4x slot or do they just both go to 8x? I want anything I buy from this point on to be transferable to my zen build. So I really want a a 34in curved lg monitor like from the day I saw linus review one with this job buying a monitor that costs more than my computer is actually feasible hell if i can spring for the freesync version I will. Do you think a single 380 4gb can handle gaming on that beast even on medium? I would rather wait till the new gpus come out before buying something god spec. What would you do just wait till prices drop because 700 on the cheapest curved monitor i can find or 1200 on the freesync version plus supporting hardware is a shit ton and i would not want to buy anything for a while. Is there anything coming out I should be aware of?

[Aereldor]

PCI-e bandwidth doubles with every generation. Hence, a physical PCI-e 3.0 x16 slot with x4 bandwidth has equivalent bandwidth to a PCI-e 2.0 slot with 8x bandwidth- a configuration that people are using crossfire with. Furthermore, didn't Linus cover this at some point? He even dremeled off the end of a PCI-e x1 slot to see if a graphics card would even post, and it turns out it still performed reasonably.

 

However, there are inherent problems with dual-GPU configurations, such as a lack of support on many titles and imperfect scaling. I'd recommend selling it and purchasing a 390 or a Fury/Fury X rather than another 380, even though your crossfire configuration won't be bottlenecked by a PCI-e 3.0 x4 bandwidth slot.

Lastly- if your motherboard has the capacity to provide PCI-e x8 bandwidth to both slots, that's what it'll do with two cards in crossfire. However, mine has one at x16 and one at x4 and it's stuck that way, so I don't know how yours will handle it. Either way, you should be alright, although I'd still recommend a single, more powerful GPU rather than crossfiring mid-range cards.

[Arc_Jester]

It depends on whether it's PCI-e 2.0 or 3.0, PCI-e 3.0 x4 won't really affect a 380 but 2.0 x4 probably will. Most newer games don't have Xfire/SLI support or support is shoddy so that second card may go unused most of the time, if anything keep the 380 and wait for Polaris/Pascal.

[lonewolf5460]

12 hours ago, AlexTheRose said:

IMO, you should keep your 380 instead of buying another one and just wait for Pascal/Polaris.

 

As for the PCIe config, yeah it should be fine.

 

12 hours ago, Arc_Jester said:

It depends on whether it's PCI-e 2.0 or 3.0, PCI-e 3.0 x4 won't really affect a 380 but 2.0 x4 probably will. Most newer game don't have Xfire/SLI support or support is shoddyso that second card may go unused most of the time, if anything keep the 380 and wait for Polaris/Pascal.

Thats the plan I know the monitor will last years but I just want to put as little as possible into keeping things playable on that screen. And its a 2.0 board its CF certified if that makes a difference does the certification mean it will go 8x 8x? I just cant wait for zen and polaris to drop. I am going god spec top end everything with 64gb of ram ect. Believe me or not it or not the 16gb I have now I max it out  sometimes. So yah if I can scrape by with the r9380 i will tbh my steam library is tiny as I just started my only purchased game is cod waw and BF4 is next so yah. The keyboard and mouse is killing me I know pc master race and all but got damn this is hard.

[MegaDave91]

8 minutes ago, Arc_Jester said:

Most newer games don't have Xfire/SLI support or support is shoddy 

Umm, what...?

[lonewolf5460]

12 hours ago, MegaDave91 said:

Umm, what...?

Yah I figured with dx12 and being able to use amd and nvidia together and the vram being combinable now instead of separate like on dx11 things would get better especially since vr is something that may be a thing and needs the all the power it can get.

[Arc_Jester]

6 minutes ago, lonewolf5460 said:

 

Thats the plan I know the monitor will last years but I just want to put as little as possible into keeping things playable on that screen. And its a 2.0 board its CF certified if that makes a difference does the certification mean it will go 8x 8x? I just cant wait for zen and polaris to drop. I am going god spec top end everything with 64gb of ram ect. Believe me or not it or not the 16gb I have now I max it out  sometimes.

Usually the manual or the manufacturers site will tell you what speed the PCI-e slots run at.

 

How are you maxing out 16GB of ram?

 

4 minutes ago, MegaDave91 said:

Umm, what...?

Most of the AAA games released in the past year are either void of Xfire/SLI support or produce mediocre performance.

[lonewolf5460]

Tabs lots of tabs like sometimes my browser is using 4 gigs alone even linus and luke said that once.Add in some gaming and some editing in the background and itunes and a skype video call and I max out the ram. I also have the page file disabled so everything on windows is in my ram not on the hd. I may be forced to buy a 32gb 2400mhz set of ddr3 which i really do not want to do. Because I know I will get 32-64gb of ddr4 when zen drops so i am kinda holding out. I did switch to opera which I am loving so much and is uses just a little less ram. I am on a fresh restart with just what i have start up automatically plus opera with 12 tabs and i am at 4gbs used right now.

[Arc_Jester]

3 minutes ago, lonewolf5460 said:

-snip-

Damn, you bring whole new meaning to the word multitasking.

[lonewolf5460]

Yah multitask like a MF and I have always had a beastly computer minus a gpu i got rid of my xbox one recently and decided to go pc only. My xbox was just collecting dust because the new cod was so not skill based and they just rehash maps hardcore. The main reason I switched is games like cod waw still have active communities on PC and I am sorry cod died to me after waw ,mw2 was not too bad i just hated the baby monitors and thermals that was the start of the game being less about skill. I am trying so hard to use the keyboard and mouse but I may have to concede and get me a controller i suck ass. I am not bad at fps games I was ranked in the top 500 in hardcore ffa and regular ffa and top 5000 in domination on the 360 when the community was active I had over 60 days logged. So I literally screamed with joy when I got a 11 kill streak on kb on mouse on my 4th game on pc its just so damn hard and the leaning is new to me also i love it though adds a new dimension to the play style.

 

Now that I think about it more a pci ssd could carry over so I may just get one they are like 2-400 depending on the size and would be a better use of my money. I dont play anything new YET so I should be good with a 380 4gb, till the new gen hardware drops. Or two or 3 samsung 500gb evos in raid 0 should be about the same hmm.