480cf?

Alright, so I know that benchmarks show the 480 CF is marginally faster than a 1080 (in 3dmark) but when I had CF 7950s I had an awful experience because so many games never really scaled well with the two cards. I'm not sure if I should go with the CF setup or just get a 1080?
Obviously it's not out yet but any thoughts on modern AMD CF setups? I plan on playing games at 1440p.

A single 480 is going to be good enough for 60hz 1440p gaming, it should end up being a 390/X, just at less wattage of course and higher clock speeds, probably with more overclocking potential

wait to see some crossfire stuff, but if AMD is smart they'll probably try to support it more so they can compete with the 1080, DX12 would help a lot with that

but otherwise any dual GPU set up still has issues, not too much has changed

You are basically asking, should you buy two 200$ cards or one 700$ card...
My best advice is, wait and see the numbers...
We have some speculation about the stock reference performance, but we also have speculations about overclocking etc... So just hold on. You may end up buying 450$ card instead of 700$, or depending on the numbers 300$ card. But despite my love of speculations, wait just 10 more days...

AMD claims they intend to increase their support for Crossfire in the future. So it MAY get better, I'm interested in what they intend to do under Linux with CF setups.

NVIDIA has had SLI for a while, but from what I hear under Linux you can enable SLI but many games will get negative results from it. So I dunno.

Scaling ever since the move to XDMA crossfire has been superior to SLI.

When it works. Using Crossfire isn't plug and play, often you need to fiddle with settings or install a third party app like radeonpro to help configure each of your games.

ATM CF is Windows only, I'll be surprised if it works better under Linux if it ever gets there (maybe in the DAL driver?)

I've had Crossfire before I know guy.. Crossfire works fine if you don't play old games, or have gameworks on Nvidia titles. games past 2009 work fine for the most part.

As for Crossfire on Linux.. dude it's Linux it's not a gaming platform and the support is small. as much as people like to think it's not.. it is. AMD's Drivers are finicky on Linux and the library on Linux is small as well. it doesn't offer any real benefit from a gaming standpoint.

Thanks for the chuckle.

Things have changed, but I won't go into a 50 page discussion about it. You are right that it still has problems but they are nothing like the issues that existed in the past which were HUGE show stoppers.

Obviously.. but we know for a fact Linux won't move the gaming community that is on Windows.. and SteamOS is the perfect example.. Linux for the masses.. and no one cared. the controller sucked, and drivers were bad. people like to say DON'T WORRY VULKAN WILL CHANGE THAT!! no it won't.. Vulkan is going to take years to be adopted and developers would need to see if bringing a game to linux is a real investment.

So you expect a new proposed gaming platform/OS to instantly have 100% of Windows gamers overnight? and to instantly be amaze balls with support on day-1?

It will be a slow and long progression, and we won't see Linux just TAKE OVER, but we will see it become a gaming platform that developers consider worth while. Takes time and effort for anything good to happen.

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No.. but if you're going to release a product to the masses to compete with the "Consoles" make sure the library is there. and the controller isn't a turd. (Which I actually own.. I bought the Steam Controller.. I like it for what it is.. but it doesn't beat an Xbox controller in terms of functionality)

If the 480 is everything they say it is, they'd be pretty stupid not to.

It has, all new consoles/platforms have a crap/limited selection of games at start. Today there is allot more then you think.

It isn't, Valve has been making it better each patch. But I don't have one, just read comments and it has got allot better with support and functionality.

yeah, thousand or so Valve games, and a bunch of indie titles... no Battlefield, no Halo, No GTA V, no Far Cry 4, no Dark Souls.. and let me remind you that SteamOS has been out for 3 years and no noteworthy progress has been made.

Dude it sucks.. you can't properly play fighting games with it, some games you have to configure the controller to work with the game, and you have to map out the buttons MANUALLY.. and getting used to the touchpad is such a obscene autistic headache.

Yep 'all' Indie/Valve games. /sarcasm
This is just my collection but you can see there are AAA titles among that list. I'm waiting for steamsale before getting stuff like XCOM2/Dying Light, which btw are not indie games really. Not sure on the status of COD games or battlefield but I would like thos to come to Linux in future.

Main ones are Fallout 4 / GTA5 / Witcher3, if those could make it to Linux (unlikely) then things would change rather fast for the ecosystem.

As for controller, I don't have one but will get one eventually so I don't comment about the issues so much. I just know if you install the BETA client you get MUCH better support for it as its under ongoing development. And yes they should have a steam controller profile for EVERY game, but I guess we can only hope.

Yup. Console gamers are going to love waiting for their triple A titles to come to Linux..

So what app do you supposedly need to install...? Because I have never installed extra crap on windows... If you're talking about linux then thats total BS and should be fixed but for windows I've never had any issues with crossfire.

I think back to my experiences with my CF 290x setup, with Warthunder & Dragon Age 3, I had to do all sorts of adjustments with frame render ahead and stuff to have a chance at it working. THEN half the time mid game it would disable or start screwing up for unknown reasons (glitches).

I'm willing to give it another go with maybe 2x 480x cards if AMD introduce Crossfire to Linux and it works decently. I just have no confidence in the technology at the moment, requires too much support, they need to redesign multiGPU so it just works automatically without messing with drivers or game settings/support.

And NO Vulkan and DX12 do not do it by default, that is a great misunderstanding from the community. Those new API's just make it so the developer can handle multiGPU threading themselves without relying on special code in the drivers.

Also given that almost all games are still DX9-11 and OGL41-45, the tech is not helpful. People are not going to sit around for 10years for their games to function with multiGPU due to a SLOW and PAINFUL API adoption/change, they want to play the games we have now at higher fps!

I could go on about this for days explaining it in 100 different ways, the same thing, 'it just aren't supported or good enough to be worthwhile atm, nobody puts effort into getting it working as a standard'!

Okay I admit now that you mention it I do remember WarThunder shitting itself in CF but I'm pretty sure that's shitty coding on their part not AMD or CF's fault. If you play poorly coded games then you shouldn't be surprised that it screws up. War thunder is fixed now. As for Dragon Age 3, no idea. Never played it. Crysis 3 though scaled perfectly and went from 30FPS on one of my R9 290Xs to 60FPS on two.

Which brings me to my point. If you can only play games that have extremely dedicated multiGPU developers, then your options are going to be VERY VERY limited with having a good experience with crossfire.

The whole CF/SLI backend and idea needs to be stripped and rebuilt from the bottom to just natively work without developer special sauce.