So it looks like im abandoning the R9 295x2 idea and going with 2 R9 270x 4GB in crossfire. besides im only at 1080p
From personal experience, don't do it. My first build ever was two R9-270x cards in Crossfire. It's an absolute mess to deal with especially since you won't need it for 1080p. The screen-tearing, and a few games that don't utilize both games well are certainly not worth the headache. if you were using 1440p i would probably say yes, but even so, you can get much better than investing in to two graphics cards.
I also just built a 270x crossfire rig as a first time PC, and I also regretted and ended up selling one.
Just get a 280x or 970 or something dude. It will have worse "price to performance" but only when you take into acount the fact that 270x crossfire will be stuttering up and down in fps all the time.
One of the things I've really learned with PC gaming, is that constant FPS is better than high FPS. Playing at something like 60 constantly changing to 50 or lower is insanely annoying, whereas if I just cap it at 35 it feels fine.
Grab a strong single gpu ~ r9 290 instead.
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I would second this. Especially since you will be paying the same or less for a single 290, then you will be for 2 270x's (assuming that you are purchasing these cards brand new).
Yeah but its in my bugdet and i have two R9 270x's in crossfire before but my CPU was the bottleneck. so i think itll be okay.
Yeah, if you are going to invest in a new components, grab something with a new feature set. The R9 290 would probably be the best bet, honestly.
But 2 R9 270x's are about 20% more powerful than a single R9 290x
that's if the games utilize Crossfire Properly. I currently use an R9-290. mind you, I play at 1080p, i'm saving for a FreeSync monitor soon, but i'm able to run all my games on it's highest settings. everything is flawless right now. Skyrim with ENB's doesn't like Crossfire, let me tell you that now. on top of that, i have support for all of AMD's Goodies. Free-Sync, True-Audio, Mantle, DX12, Tress FX 2.0 the whole 9 yards. R9-270x in terms of feature sets doesn't compare. and it's pretty dated card already. with the amount of money you are spending which i'm going to take a wild guess is around $400 ish dollars. you can get an R9-290x 8GB card.
I could not agree more. The mental overhead of factoring such fluctuations into driving, aiming, etc. turns play into work.
I'm not saying our friend won't get lucky / super smart and avoid those fluctuations, but nobody ends up happy with it when it happens.
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Actually about 300 eBay yo lol
Bruh, you want to spend $300 then get an R9-290. you won't be disappointed. lol preferably the Tri-X, the XFX model or the MSI models. don't bother with ASUS, their Direct CU II still make the graphics card reach that 95C threshold. I personally have the Tri-X model, I recommend XFX sometimes cause i don't think they get enough credit when it comes to Graphics cards. they are one of the few vendors that offers Life-Time Warranty.
You and I have very similar thought processes, I also bought my 270x crossfire from ebay.
I can't figure out why I decided to do that though, I think part of me honestly wanted to see firsthand how crossfire would work. shrugs
I'm with Kat on this one man. A single R9-290 is a beast, especially for the money. Crossfire can have poor scaling in some games, and then the hassle is just not worth it in the end.
Yeah but the AAA games I play scale well. And the ones that don't aren't to graphics intensive.
270x's are horrible crossfire cards. Something about the gpu's themselves make these cards in particular horrible. They will stutter and crash often, which is something the pure fps number will not show. You might have fraps read 80fps, but the stutter will make the experience unusable in a lot of games. Also your argument that triple A games have good scaling is wrong. BF4 had bugged scaling for something like 4 months after the game launched, and that is an AMD optimized game. Far Cry 4 and Watch Dogs were broken for months. Plus there is the argument that the 270x 4gb is a stupid card in the first place. The 270 non X is as fast as the 270x, and the 4gb's of V-ram is not useful since the cards aren't strong enough to push textures that require 4gb's of V-ram. The rule is never to crossfire / SLI unless you are getting the top end cards to Crossfire / SLI.
yeah in sand box games 4gb is actually recomended at 1080p because of the world openness.
personally through experince its nice.
I don't think that stands up to reason. It certainly doesn't stand up to my personal experience. When I build my system in 2012 I chose a factory overclocked gtx670 with some headroom due to it's cooler and generally high quality components. My between builds upgrade path was to get a second matching card when they came on the used marked for cheaps. I did exactly that 6 months ago when the 670 started to show signs of age and it has effectively restored my gaming experience to go SLI. I mostly game at 5040x1050 and have had very little problems with maxing out most games or have them at high/ultra settings and output a steady 60fps. The only game I have to SLI on a single monitor are Crysis 3 for all the bells and whistles plus Cvar hacks for more post processing effects and there I'm near 100fps. I had to accept lower settings in wolfestein; the new order because that engine does not support SLI/Crossfire. But I could still play it in surround at mid settings on a single card and get 60fps. Maybe crossfire is different, I don't know, I have never tried it. I am currently playing GTA V in surround with most settings at high/ultra, grass and long shadows on normal because its an FPS killer and only FXAA for AA and I get 60-70fps. On a single screen I can max the game out at 1680x1050 at 100-120+ fps.
In my experience SLI has proven to be far less troublesome than what the internet echo chamber led me to believe. Sometimes I have to use NVinspector to force a game to SLI properly but NVI is easy to use.
270/270X will Crossfire just fine. Ran that for a couple months and had very limited stuttering in games. Didn't outperform the 6970 Crossfire, but it was only a few FPS off.
The problem comes when Crossfire isn't usable. In those games a single 270 is usually JUST enough, but the expansive headroom of a R9 290 is much more playable and smooth.