Hello, I am new to this site although I watch the Tek Syndicate videos a lot and people say that it's always better to get one overkill card than to have to average ones. Well my issue is that when I built my PC I was on a budget and I could only afford a 270X but over time I wanted more power and I jumped on a second one when the prices dropped. My question is should I keep my two cards and deal with CrossFire instability in newer games or replace the two and get a 290X? If it is recommended I get rid of the 270X's for a better card where would I go about selling them? They are both less than a year old, one is maybe 8 months and the other is about 4 months old. I would love any feedback on this issue.
depends on your budget;
But 270x is only a little bit slower than 280x, and in CF you still can take performance of single 290x. In some cases it might be slower or there might be issues with CF but overall you aren't missing much performance. If you are going for performance i'd suggest to hold off for next card unless you are planing to do CF with 290x in future.
Since you already have two R9 270Xs, I would probably just keep them. Together, they're quite powerful, and they're not that old either.
+1 and list them as a "match set" on ebay and see if you sell them ... then you can get a 290X
Thank you for all of your feedback so quickly, I might just stick with the two 270X's since that what seems to be the majority opinion. Who knows I might sell my whole rig and start a new one with a single 290X and the Z97 chipset or if I feel ambitious, X99 with the six core 5820K. Either way thanks for the feedback.
First of all I must point out that with AMD the NonX variants (which are normally one step down) are often much better deals in terms of performance per dollar, and for that reason I think they are much more interesting. So that is something to consider.
Secondly I think these higher end cards have much higher resale value because they are usefull for a much longer time, which depending on how long your gonna keep em may or may not be a big issue. They also don't have the issues with dual configurations.
And finally you allready have them, I don't necessarily think there would be much to be gained by selling them for a R9 290. However stepping upto a 295X2 or waiting for the new nvidia options may be something to consider.
I don't game at 4K or 1440p for that matter, I just want something that will max out Crysis 3 at 1080p and give me playable framerates. As for NVIDIA I like them but I feel that for the price I pay I don't get the best deal. I like Intel for their CPU's and AMD for their graphics cards. However if I would get a workstation card I would get an NVIDIA hands down.
I don't know what sort of Framerate you are getting with those two cards, but a single R9 285 should be more than enough for 1920x1080 and is exce, and honestly it isn't so bad for 2560x1440, especially if you turn some of the settings or effects (AA for instance) down just a tad on the more demanding games
Source: http://www.guru3d.com/articles-pages/amd-radeon-r9-285-review,1.html
Note: In all these benchmarks the R9 290 pretty much only gets 10FPS more at 2560x1440 (which does make a big difference at that point) and the 290x a few more than that but not much more. The 285 is pretty good (edges out the 280x by a tad but at a lower price point).
I've run two 270xs and a 290, and the benefits vary from game to game, to be honest. You'd do much better with the 290 in non-crossfire-optimised games (Skyrim being a good example), but in others you'll not get much benefit from changing over. On the crossfire issues, have you made sure that everything is running correctly on your end re drivers and that sort of thing? I'm sure you know what you're doing, but with a lot of the stutter issues etc a couple of tweaks on the user end can straighten them out. Some are obviously just issues that AMD are still having to sort out themselves though.