Good deal on a Hd 7990, is it still worth it?

Hardware GPU
1

Im in a bit of a dilemma here, i have a gtx 960 4gb card and a ryzen 7 2700x in a asus prime b350 plus mobo

heres the situation, the hd 7990 is going to be a better gaming card in crossfire and when crossfire doesnt work, the perfomace is going to be pretty close to my 960 (im aware of crossfire issues) but, aside from that, im working on a project in my college that involves virtualization, and the 7990 is two gpus (no shit sherlock haha), could i possibily assing each gpu to a single vm (they might share the same iommu group)? if possible, this could actualy be a good deal for me

2

Actually with no crossfire the performance will be roughly 20% faster…
As for the VMs, doesn’t that depends on the slot and not really how many GPUs there are?

3

Thats is exactly my question, i dont know how this interaction might work because from what i saw they are treated as completely separeted divices, they even have a plx chip there on the pcb

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4

I think you should be able pass both of them to the same VM, but I am not a VM expert. Not sure if you could pass them to 2 separate VMs.
Anyhow, the 7990 is a glorious card, an awesome relic. If you want performance though, you should probably get an RX 580.

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5

The 7990 is still a perfectly useable card.
Without CF, it is still an upgrade oder the 960 (a small one, but an upgrade).

That is handled in driver. You can just flip a switch and turn CF on and off.

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6

He wants to pass the GPUs into VMs. That might be more involved than just disabling CF.

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7

I don´t think the GPUs can be passed to seperate VMs.

^this, depending on price of the HD7990

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8

You will NOT be able to pass the GPUs to separate VMs.

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9

gpus are quite a bit exepensive where i live, the hd 7990 is $224,22 + free shipping and an brand new rx 580 8GB is $362,00 also free shipping, i was counting more on me being able to pass each gpu to a separated vm, but if what SesameStreetThug said is true, than an rx 580 sounds like a better option or even a 570 8GB

Edit: That is true, that card would be a very cool relic indeed

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10

Yep, even later on as a colector item would look cool

11

The 580 is a better option. Newer arch, more support going into the future. And if you want to crossfire down the line, you can buy another one.

I used to have Crossfire’s 7970s (basically the same as a 7990) and it was terrible. I ended up getting a 290x when it released and the performance was better in many circumstances, but most importantly it was more consistent. The same will go for a RX 580

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12

yep, crossfire (sli for that matter as well) have a lot of problems, the vm part was the “killer value” for me but since it is not possible, its not really worth it.

my hopes were kind of up because of that plx chip on the board, my mind was all over the place thiking: “oh with an acs overide that might work and i can have possibily 4 vms on a single tower” but no, some dreams just die hard haha

13

The dual GPU cards are pretty lame for virt, unfortunately. Crossfire doesn’t work in VMs too, so even if you passed the whole card to one VM; you would have one GPU doing nothing.

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14

Well, thats pretty bad then, maybe the server cards have better virt suport, but those are prety hard to come by, especially in a “good” price

15

Its not an issue with the card, the stuff required to make crossfire work in VM is missing from the hypervisor.

16

yeah, virtualizantion has come a long way, still a giant road ahead, but my idea wasnt going to be to use cf in the vm, it was to assing each gpu to diferent vms, thats why o though that because there was that plx chip on the card, it would see the second card in a separated iommu group and i could efectively have two vms on one card

17

7990’s were baller back then and still now. I’d buy one if I found one for a decent price.