after owning crossfire for a few days and looking at SLI solutions i can confirm that I will not recommend it to anyone for gaming, to many games dont support it, and you get micro stuttering effects, out of the 3 games i play, crossfire has to be disabled on 2 for it to work nice (those 2 games being modern warfare3 and guildwars2 but ive also read newer games like ghosts doesnt even support it properly due to it being a console port).

any dx9 games totally dont support it

crossfire atm is only good for mining bitcoins or benchmarking and maybe some real heavy CAD work?

dont buy 2 cards, just get one good one

lets see how it does later on in its life

webley out

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WPC Codex
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Quote:

Very true.

@webley: That sucks m8, are you using a multi monitor setup at all?

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Yeah and go figure how screwed the people are with giant cases and 3 -4 cards in SLI lol
Waste o money as you sadly had to find out first hand.
Like you said get one good one instead of 2 lesser ones, safest bet.
Now you have 3 choices: keep it as a backup, build a seccond set or sell it.

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Infinite creativity!!!

dont get me wrong, it runs amazing on bf4,

but i just cant recommend it haha

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WPC Codex
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Are you going single GPU again to run things on the easy and safe side PSU-wise or leave it like this?
Did you try the x version with bf4 alone as well to see if you actually need SLI?
At least other people now can lern from this.
Tbh i'd rather spend my SLI money on a CPU AIO watercooler and better fans n stuff :)

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Infinite creativity!!!

That's a shame Webley, hopefully newer games in the future provide proper profiles for it. Though I'm certainly not holding my breath. SLI and Crossfire aren't exactly new technologies, and much like DX11, are underutilised to keep the games within reach for the less than enthusiastic PC gamers (most of whom would still have DX11 cards). Heck DX11 is even more efficient and can run the same effects on lower hardware, so that argument doesn't even fit.

Only dual GPU solution I'd recommend would be Nvidia's SLI. One good GPU, say 770 or 780, and one compatible low end card. Only use the low end for PhysX, allowing the good GPU to run all the other effects and rendering. However, that will be a dying breed with the AMD consoles.

edit: @Webley: Did you look at anyway of upgrading the 270 to the X version? I know it's possible with the 290, taking it from a slightly better card than mine to a Titan competitor. I nearly did it, but for the fact that I didn't have an extra $100 to spend on my GPU.

In that case, it was just flashing the software onto the card, maybe it's a similar software restriction on the 270.

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the newer r9 290x apparent does crossfire via the PCI-E slots, as it was proven in a couple of topics and blogs that GPU,s aret able to utilise anything beyond x8 on 2.0

so getting a board with two 16x 3.0 is a waste of money as there is no tech that utilizes it. ATM GPU's just seem to be a way of selling new untested technology, the hardwre is sound but theres no boards or software to utilize it in gaming properly.

the whole thing feels like a unfinished beta. I was late on the bandwagon for a reason, to wait for it to mature. The only good uses people have had is mining bitcoins lol - and thats not me

even BF4 (a really new game) had issues with dual cards, just type "texture flickering after 16th december patch bf4" and look at the massive complaints for dual card users both ATI and Nvidia

the r9 290x is the best price to performance ratio if you want the absolute best (at the moment) - but its still a 600$ card. The nvidia equivalent is 1000 lol

im thinking about trading my 270 for a 270x so i can have two, i prolly will to soon, however, even people with 2x r9 290x had flickering issues in BF4 when the patch broke it, your at the whim of the coders, and driver makers, no the hardware or boards.

with all the console ports going around, and software development getting cheaper and hardware getting more expensive, its starting to get to the point where paying more really is less.

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WPC Codex
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Did some overclocking on the CPU:




Disclaimer: please don't attempt doing this yourself if you don't know what your doing

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Infinite creativity!!!

Quote:

details to follow soon on this and the whys....

new score - 2041

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WPC Codex
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Decided to upgrade the PSU and the 2nd card (270) to a 270x

Can clock the i5 further but after running some tests found no need to do this as of yet

Clocked both 270x to 1150mhz Core

Everything (CPUs and GPUs under 100% load) runs under 70deg

I know ive bashed xfire a bit latley, and i still think it could be much better considering the cash, however i took a gamble based on the new 14.1 driver rumours that are circulating around that is said to kill micro stuttering by the first quarter 2014 and decided to go through with these minor upgrades/changes

It also looks better cosmetically. I didnt like the odd bits and bobs

i5 4670k @ 4.2Ghz (Coolermaster Hyper212x with push pull fan setup)
2x4GB G.skill DDR3 1600Mhz CL9
Corsair 750w PSU
Samsung Evo SSD 120GB (2xStandard Sata 500GB Drives, 1 for storage and 1 for system backups)
2x Powercolor ATI R9 270x 2GB GDDR5 OC (256bit) CrossfireX (Gone back to v13.10 drivers)
Windows 8.1

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WPC Codex
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