RX 480 2-way CF vs GTX 1080

[Tytan64]

Hello everyone,

 

I plan to upgrade one of my rigs and it should be a lttle in your face and not really cost efficient.

At first my rig contains an i7 3930K overclocked to 4GHz, ASUS Rampage IV Extreme and 32GB DDR3 memory and currently a GTX 690.

A Titan XP is not really an option because I hate how they named this product. 

I think a 2-way CrossFire configuration with Sapphire RX 480 Nitro+ OC 8GB would be pretty bad ass and even 180$ cheaper than a GTX 1080 FE where I live.

One of my favourite games is DOOM. I also like the philosophy of the new Vulkan API. Apart from that I mainly play League Of Legends, DOTA 2 (Vulkan again), Overwatch, Diablo 3, Crysis 3, all Dark Souls games and a bunch of indi games.

I plan to play the TES V Skyrim HD remake as well. I know DOOM doesn't support multi GPU configurations (yet).

I'm also aware that two GPUs produce twice as much heat and twice as much noise as one

But that doesn't really matter for this build.

I would really like to hear about your thoughts on this because a GTX 1080 would be a better solution because it is a single GPU. It's just that I find two GPUs in a rig pretty nice.

When I have an AMD GPU setup I'd also upgrade my monitor to a 144Hz Freesync 1080p panel.

So tell my your thoughts on this. Just remember that money is not the key factor for my decision

[Sir Asvald]

8 minutes ago, Tytan64 said:

Hello everyone,

 

I plan to upgrade one of my rigs and it should be a lttle in your face and not really cost efficient.

At first my rig contains an i7 3930K overclocked to 4GHz, ASUS Rampage IV Extreme and 32GB DDR3 memory and currently a GTX 690.

A Titan XP is not really an option because I hate how they named this product. 

I think a 2-way CrossFire configuration with Sapphire RX 480 Nitro+ OC 8GB would be pretty bad ass and even 180$ cheaper than a GTX 1080 FE where I live.

One of my favourite games is DOOM. I also like the philosophy of the new Vulkan API. Apart from that I mainly play League Of Legends, DOTA 2 (Vulkan again), Overwatch, Diablo 3, Crysis 3, all Dark Souls games and a bunch of indi games.

I plan to play the TES V Skyrim HD remake as well. I know DOOM doesn't support multi GPU configurations (yet).

I'm also aware that two GPUs produce twice as much heat and twice as much noise as one

But that doesn't really matter for this build.

I would really like to hear about your thoughts on this because a GTX 1080 would be a better solution because it is a single GPU. It's just that I find two GPUs in a rig pretty nice.

When I have an AMD GPU setup I'd also upgrade my monitor to a 144Hz Freesync 1080p panel.

So tell my your thoughts on this. Just remember that money is not the key factor for my decision

One card always. Crossfire/SLI can have problems. 

[Pdates]

Go for the 1080.

[_JohnB330ci]

If cards have similar performance, or a single card is slightly more, always go for the single card, a lot of games don't support XFire/SLI and you will encounter a huge amount of problems with it

[Jumper118]

7 minutes ago, Tytan64 said:

Hello everyone,

 

I plan to upgrade one of my rigs and it should be a lttle in your face and not really cost efficient.

At first my rig contains an i7 3930K overclocked to 4GHz, ASUS Rampage IV Extreme and 32GB DDR3 memory and currently a GTX 690.

A Titan XP is not really an option because I hate how they named this product. 

I think a 2-way CrossFire configuration with Sapphire RX 480 Nitro+ OC 8GB would be pretty bad ass and even 180$ cheaper than a GTX 1080 FE where I live.

One of my favourite games is DOOM. I also like the philosophy of the new Vulkan API. Apart from that I mainly play League Of Legends, DOTA 2 (Vulkan again), Overwatch, Diablo 3, Crysis 3, all Dark Souls games and a bunch of indi games.

I plan to play the TES V Skyrim HD remake as well. I know DOOM doesn't support multi GPU configurations (yet).

I'm also aware that two GPUs produce twice as much heat and twice as much noise as one

But that doesn't really matter for this build.

I would really like to hear about your thoughts on this because a GTX 1080 would be a better solution because it is a single GPU. It's just that I find two GPUs in a rig pretty nice.

When I have an AMD GPU setup I'd also upgrade my monitor to a 144Hz Freesync 1080p panel.

So tell my your thoughts on this. Just remember that money is not the key factor for my decision

i would go for rx480 cf it you arent bothered about the heat and power, it looks way better and its cheaper  

[Mira Yurizaki]

In practice it's usually better to get a single high end GPU, even if two lower end ones match it. Not every game is going to get the same boost and in some cases it can be worse. ( https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/RX_480_CrossFire/13.html ) Especially if there's a new game out, because then you'll have to hope AMD has drivers ready for it because chances are the new game is either going to ignore the second card or it's not going to help very much.

 

Not to mention the other problems inherent in multi video card setups.

[Guest]

Still go for 1080. Some game has a 20+ fps increase with 1080 and not all are optimized for XF

[Bcat00]

Really come on you yourself knows a 1080 is way better option, why you even ask?

[Guest]

1 minute ago, Bcat00 said:

Really come on you yourself knows a 1080 is way better option, why you even ask?

He doesn't actually know that's why he asked

[Tytan64]

35 minutes ago, Bcat00 said:

Really come on you yourself knows a 1080 is way better option, why you even ask?

I also said that I like to have two GPUs in my rig ...

 

The GTX 690 I have is also a dual GPU using SLI and I didn't really have problems so far.

I also feel like Polaris is a better microarchitecture than Pascal thinking about DX12 and Vulkan.

My GTX 980 Ti doesn't really benefit from newer APIs... So does every Pascal card. Nvidia only has a software solution to this.

It fells just not as good and I don't want to feed them for not being really better 

 

33 minutes ago, dexxterlab97 said:

He doesn't actually know that's why he asked

Nice, the smart kid arrived. So tell me more about Nvidias implementation of Freesync and how Gsync is way cheaper.

 

36 minutes ago, M.Yurizaki said:

In practice it's usually better to get a single high end GPU, even if two lower end ones match it. Not every game is going to get the same boost and in some cases it can be worse. ( https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/AMD/RX_480_CrossFire/13.html ) Especially if there's a new game out, because then you'll have to hope AMD has drivers ready for it because chances are the new game is either going to ignore the second card or it's not going to help very much.

 

Not to mention the other problems inherent in multi video card setups.

Well, that's the burden of having a multi GPU setup. I ran a 2-way SLI in this for the past three years and I didn't have big problems. My worst problem so far is that some games simply don't support SLI. But that's not really a problem since I'm not expecting every game to have support for multi GPU systems.

Up until now I used a solit 60Hz 1080p panel and I want to upgrade to a 144Hz 1080p panel now. 

The Gsync options are more expensive than the Freesync panels out there at the moment. Since AMD doesn't have what I conside a high end GPU suited for gaming in 2016 on the marked I thought about this 2-way CF config.

I'm very curious to find out how games using the Vulkan API or DX12 behave on such a GPU configuration. For all DX11 games I can use my other rig (i7 4790K, GTX 980 Ti).

By thoughts on this I was hoping for thought from a technological perspectiv rather than what makes sense for the average board troll (that probably can't afford what he's talking about) ^^

[Darkseth]

Always 1 Card.

 

 

Multi-GPU with 2 weaker Midclass cards was not a good idea 5 years ago, and it's still not a good idea.

If it were, everyone would do it.

 

Even if 2 RX 480 would get the same Performance as a 50-70€ more expensive GTX 1080 in average, you still have:

- Much more power consumption (easy 170-200 watt MORE) --> bigger/more pricy PSU

- Much more heat output + Noise

- Can have driver problems. Waiting for CF Profiles, etc

- Microstutter in some cases

- Sometimes bad scaling.

 

Not worth.

 

Edit: If you still want 2 GPUs because of whatever reasons (modding, looks, idk), then noone can stop you..

 

But PLEASE do not get that Garbage Nitro crap....

MSI Gaming or Powercolor Red Devil are MUCH better coolers. I don't know what sapphire did, but they fucked up HARD.

In OC Mode it's louder than the Reference, and in Silent Mode it's still like 60-75% louder than a MSI Gaming out of the box.