390 crossfire?

Hi All,

I'm looking at buying a whole new PC but can't afford it right now so have been looking at a graphics upgrade for now, the problem I have is that when I bought my current PC which was pre-built by Overclockers the motherboard only supports crossfire and my graphics card it a GTX780.

I think I have 2 options buy a new Z77 motherboard and another 780 which will mean I lose my overclock because I have no clue how to do that. Unless someone could help me do that?

Or sell my 780 and buy 2 AMD cards which is where the title come from, will 2 390's in crossfire give me enough of an FPS boost to make it worth while? I like to game with ultra graphics with high FPS and my 780 isn't cutting it anymore.

Also I know it's cutting it fine but my PSU is only 630 watts.

Any input appreciated.
 
No, the power supply will not be fine for two 390s. They draw alot of power. To be honest, I'd go for one card over two so maybe look at a flagship card like the FuryX or the 980Ti. They're the same value as two 390s and mean you won't need to change the power supply. Also you won't have to wait for games to have crossfire support in order to use both cards.
 
Waste of money, heat sandwich. Plus LOL at 1080p and Crossfire 390s.

Oh yeah, and PSU go bang bang. You definitely, unequivocally need a new PSU.
 
Waste of money, heat sandwich. Plus LOL at 1080p and Crossfire 390s.

Oh yeah, and PSU go bang bang. You definitely, unequivocally need a new PSU.

I know I said any input appreciated but unhelpful rubbish like this isn't really appreciated, whats funny about crossfire and 1080p? No single graphics card is going to run games at ultra settings with a higher average let alone minimum than 120fps even at 1080p, which if you had actually read my original post is what I am going for.
 
I know I said any input appreciated but unhelpful rubbish like this isn't really appreciated, whats funny about crossfire and 1080p? No single graphics card is going to run games at ultra settings with a higher average let alone minimum than 120fps even at 1080p, which if you had actually read my original post is what I am going for.

If you didn't want any input you should have just gone ahead and did it (and pics or it didn't happen when you PSU explodes).

There is nothing wrong with Crossfire at 1080p. Two cheaper cards paired together can often give great performance with Crossfire. However, you are taking two 1440p cards (because they are overkill as single cards for 1080p) and putting them in a heat sandwich (there are no stock cooled 390s) and thus people are trying to make you see sense.

Sense that you clearly don't have, so as I said, please feel free to go for it.
 
If you didn't want any input you should have just gone ahead and did it (and pics or it didn't happen when you PSU explodes).

There is nothing wrong with Crossfire at 1080p. Two cheaper cards paired together can often give great performance with Crossfire. However, you are taking two 1440p cards (because they are overkill as single cards for 1080p) and putting them in a heat sandwich (there are no stock cooled 390s) and thus people are trying to make you see sense.

Sense that you clearly don't have, so as I said, please feel free to go for it.

I did want input that's why I posted, but your original post was totally unhelpful and not needed. There is no point getting 2 cheaper cards when I can afford better that will last longer, it's called future proofing. Also when I do decide to upgrade to a 1440 144hz monitor I won't have to upgrade my graphics cards at the same time.

And no they are not overkill as I said before NO single card is going to run games at at least 120fps with ultra settings. If I was building a PC so I could play 10 year old games then yes you would be right but I'm not I play new games and want it to run future games also.
 
OP is there any chance you would be OK with selling the 780 and settling for a 980ti or something as Barnsley reconmended? I understand that you would like to be able to get high fps along with quality. However a 630w will not be suitable for running 2 essentially overclocked 290x graphics cards regardless of the quality of the PSU given the fact that you also have an overclocked CPU installed which adds another variable into the equation. From a rough estimate you would have maybe 450 watts (tad conservative) that can be allocated to the gpus.

Have you had a look at getting a pair of GTX 970 cards in SLI yet? They are a pretty good option. There is a possibility of some coil whine and the cards will be limited to about 3.5GB Vram (fine for 1080p). I realize that you would have to change the motherboard, however there are many great guides out there to help you get the OC sorted.

As I realize that you don't want input in regards to your PSU, however dual 390 in CF is honestly not something that you should attempt. BeQuiet PSUs aren't of particularly good quality either, they aren't bad, just not great.

You can always overclock the 980ti, with luck you can get close quite close to the performance that you would obtain from dual 390 in CF.
 
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How about that then (see pic below) you are not going to get CF on a 600w psu (its actualy cuting it fine with one of them tbh)
I have got to upgrade mine soon as the card oc'ed is stressing my psu

avPX3YG.png
 
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Just my 2 pence, i have a 295X2 which is basically 2 x 290X cores on one pcb, along with my 4790K when gaming my PSU is constantly around 800w+ which was on the limits of my 850Wpsu. i have one of them kilowatt meter things, and i had to upgrade my PSU to stop my card from throttling because my PSU couldn't provide the power

2 x 290X/390X are going to consume around the same sort of power if not more. I learnt the lesson the hard way, you can never have enough PSU watts!
 
OP is there any chance you would be OK with selling the 780 and settling for a 980ti or something as Barnsley reconmended? I understand that you would like to be able to get high fps along with quality. However a 630w will not be suitable for running 2 essentially overclocked 290x graphics cards regardless of the quality of the PSU given the fact that you also have an overclocked CPU installed which adds another variable into the equation. From a rough estimate you would have maybe 450 watts (tad conservative) that can be allocated to the gpus.

Have you had a look at getting a pair of GTX 970 cards in SLI yet? They are a pretty good option. There is a possibility of some coil whine and the cards will be limited to about 3.5GB Vram (fine for 1080p). I realize that you would have to change the motherboard, however there are many great guides out there to help you get the OC sorted.

As I realize that you don't want input in regards to your PSU, however dual 390 in CF is honestly not something that you should attempt. BeQuiet PSUs aren't of particularly good quality either, they aren't bad, just not great.

You can always overclock the 980ti, with luck you can get close quite close to the performance that you would obtain from dual 390 in CF.

Hey Kushiro

I was never opposed to getting a 980ti in fact in reality I'd prefer an nvidia card (i feel dirty for considering an amd card) but I am planning on buying a whole new system next year and wanted to maximize the performance of my current machine until im able to upgrade, had my MOBO been sli compatible id have just gone out and got another 780 which would have been fine.

The whole point here is do I get 2 390's (and PSU if needed) or do I replace my MOBO and get a second 780 and risk losing my overclock. getting 2 390's would be much easier.
 
Hey Kushiro

I was never opposed to getting a 980ti in fact in reality I'd prefer an nvidia card (i feel dirty for considering an amd card) but I am planning on buying a whole new system next year and wanted to maximize the performance of my current machine until im able to upgrade, had my MOBO been sli compatible id have just gone out and got another 780 which would have been fine.

The whole point here is do I get 2 390's (and PSU if needed) or do I replace my MOBO and get a second 780 and risk losing my overclock. getting 2 390's would be much easier.

If you cant run SLI that means to me you have a mobo that cant run both pci slots at x16 x16 (or x8 x8) cossfire can run on lower speeds but you will be running CF @ x16 x4 and thats not ideal (its not optimal)
If you are going to buy a new system next year just do that IMHO
 
So it would seem I will be waiting until I upgrade my whole computer then, oh well lesson learnt, next time I will make sure my computer is SLI compatible.

Thank you for all the replies :)
 
If you're planning to stay at 1080p for a while, get a 980Ti. If you plan to upgrade to 1440p or 4k, get a Fury X. Reason being, the 980Ti beats the Fury X at 1080p but 4k favours the AMD card.

If money isn't an issue, I'd personally go for a 1000W PSU now and a single Fury X, as it's a sure fire thing that the majority of users will upgrade to 1440p high hz displays at some point. Then your system is ready to drop in another Fury X later on to maintain those high framerates at a higher resolution.

If you want to stick to air cooled cards, the Fury offers something like 95% of the performance of the Fury X at 80% of the price.

I just can't recommend the 390 or 390X, which are serious case heaters using older technology.
 
The major difference is that you can overclock the 980ti. So only go Fury X if you are opposed to overclocking a GPU (like me) and don't mind that you can't really overclock the Fury X.

However, multi GPU the Fury X tends to scale a little better. However, that's all complete nonsense for 1080p. If you are set on running 1080p then avoid the Fury line all together, because they don't perform very well at lower resolutions.

Either way whatever you are doing your PSU is completely and utterly insufficient to run any high end cards as a pair. So you will need to start there, and I would go for something strong in case you end up running two 390s.

Which I still think is completely ridiculous for 1080p.
 
The major difference is that you can overclock the 980ti. So only go Fury X if you are opposed to overclocking a GPU (like me) and don't mind that you can't really overclock the Fury X.

However, multi GPU the Fury X tends to scale a little better. However, that's all complete nonsense for 1080p. If you are set on running 1080p then avoid the Fury line all together, because they don't perform very well at lower resolutions.

Either way whatever you are doing your PSU is completely and utterly insufficient to run any high end cards as a pair. So you will need to start there, and I would go for something strong in case you end up running two 390s.

Which I still think is completely ridiculous for 1080p.

You can overclock the Fury X with the new Trixx software however most cards only seem to hit 1130-1150 on the core and 550 seems to be the most common for memory so it really doesn't overclock that well. However it does make a small difference in performance just can't push them further unfortunately. It's probably down to the 28nm HPM(whatever it is can't remember) design they are using which doesn't OC as well as Nvidia's 28nm version(different design, think it's HLP??).

All AMD cards without the crossfire fingers(using the XDMA) all scale extremely well. I'd say it's the most consistently best multi solution in regards to scaling. Just most games aren't very friendly with any multi gpu so it comes down to the games you play as it's pretty specific. But I do agree with you, i'd avoid the Fury line for 1080p, just to light of a load for them to come into there own. That's coming from me and I have a Fury X:p

I do agree with everyone here, need to get a better PSU. Not just for multiple cards either, just in general for even a single card.
 
The major difference is that you can overclock the 980ti. So only go Fury X if you are opposed to overclocking a GPU (like me) and don't mind that you can't really overclock the Fury X.

However, multi GPU the Fury X tends to scale a little better. However, that's all complete nonsense for 1080p. If you are set on running 1080p then avoid the Fury line all together, because they don't perform very well at lower resolutions.

Either way whatever you are doing your PSU is completely and utterly insufficient to run any high end cards as a pair. So you will need to start there, and I would go for something strong in case you end up running two 390s.

Which I still think is completely ridiculous for 1080p.

I already did say that i'd upgrade the PSU if I needed to I also said in my last post that I am just going to wait to upgrade my whole PC, I never really wanted to put AMD cards in my PC was just looking at it as an option just for now.

Also I don't understand what your issue with 2 top end cards for 1080p, 1 it will guarantee 120+ fps at ultra settings, 2 it will mean longer before I have to upgrade again.
 
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