Techs that are up to date

breathe3asy · 26 Apr 2014 at 11:26

Whats happening guys?

Currently running two 6850's in Crossfire but performance is starting to tap off for me now. Am I bottlenecked?

i7 920 @ 3.3Ghz
6GB DDR3 1600Mhz
(gaming @ 1920x1080)

If the cards could do with a refresh could any of you tech guru's advise on whats good bang for your buck these days? Or possibly even to hold off for something up & coming.

Having a Crossfire setup atm I would personally like to move to a single GPU setup for simplicity reasons (Crossfire scaling, heat, noise). Any thoughts on these would be taken on board.

EDIT: I've been playing a bit of Titanfall lately which is not the greatest on Crossfire so thats the reason why I am here

Have a great weekend
Chris

shankly1985 · 26 Apr 2014 at 11:29

You have a budget?

LtMatt · 26 Apr 2014 at 11:32

ceaton88 said:
Whats happening guys?

Currently running two 6850's in Crossfire but performance is starting to tap off for me now. Am I bottlenecked?

i7 920 @ 3.3Ghz
6GB DDR3 1600Mhz
(gaming @ 1920x1080)

If the cards could do with a refresh could any of you tech guru's advise on whats good bang for your buck these days? Or possibly even to hold off for something up & coming.

Having a Crossfire setup atm I would personally like to move to a single GPU setup for simplicity reasons (Crossfire scaling, heat, noise). Any thoughts on these would be taken on board.

EDIT: I've been playing a bit of Titanfall lately which is not the greatest on Crossfire so thats the reason why I am here

Have a great weekend
Chris

Your cpu should be ok for your crossfire setup. However you should try to overclock it to 4ghz or so. That will see a nice gain for you. Your gpu's are rather dated now so a move to a faster single gpu should be a nice gain in performance and smoothness. A 290 or a 780 would be a good choice i think, depending on your budget and how much you want to spend.

breathe3asy · 26 Apr 2014 at 11:33

shankly1985 said:
You have a budget?

Oops knew I missed something, I'm all about longevity with PC tech so would like to believe I could get something for around £200? (ouch)

breathe3asy · 26 Apr 2014 at 11:36

LtMatt said:
Your cpu should be ok for your crossfire setup. However you should try to overclock it to 4ghz or so. That will see a nice gain for you. Your gpu's are rather dated now so a move to a faster single gpu should be a nice gain in performance and smoothness. A 290 or a 780 would be a good choice i think.

Completely agree, I need to purchase a decent cooler for my CPU and get as close to 4Ghz as I can

thanks for confirming that. Are AMD & nVidia still considered to be pretty much the same or has one started to pull away?

LtMatt · 26 Apr 2014 at 11:39

ceaton88 said:
Oops knew I missed something, I'm all about longevity with PC tech so would like to believe I could get something for around £200? (ouch)

Erm to be honest if you could stretch your budget a bit you could get a much better card with the money. You could look for a second hand 290, but even then you'd be looking at more than £200.

If £200 is your maximum then this would be the best card you can get.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-091-HS&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1842

Solid card tbh, but slower than a 290. Would give you a nice little boost in performance. However a 290 would be better.

If you can stretch your budget to £320 you get a lot more card and power for your money. Enough vram to survive a nuclear holocaust as well so lots of longevity for you. If you ever upgrade your cpu you could always stick another one in your computer further down the line as well.
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-017-VX&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1752

ceaton88 said:
Completely agree, I need to purchase a decent cooler for my CPU and get as close to 4Ghz as I can thanks for confirming that. Are AMD & nVidia still considered to be pretty much the same or has one started to pull away?

Even on everything except price.

breathe3asy · 26 Apr 2014 at 11:51

These cards look tasty!! Is that 290 a dual GPU solution? (I'm seeing two coolers)

On dual chip cards the VRAM is split no? I'm suffering from VRAM that is not combined with my current Crossfire setup which kind of sucks, actually it does suck

LtMatt · 26 Apr 2014 at 11:53

ceaton88 said:
These cards look tasty!! Is that 290 a dual GPU solution? (I'm seeing two coolers)

On dual chip cards the VRAM is split no? I'm suffering from VRAM that is not combined with my current Crossfire setup which kind of sucks, actually it does suck

No its a single 290 card with 4gb usable vram.

To be honest if you're going to spend £320 you may as well put in another tenner and get the second best 290 card going. Excellent cooler, quiet and will overclock very well should you need to.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-348-SP

EDIT

All these cards come with 3 free games via a AMD gold ticket as well btw.

breathe3asy · 27 Apr 2014 at 09:54

Thanks for the advice bud. Is there any word on a new range of cards coming out soon that I should think about holding off for?

LtMatt · 27 Apr 2014 at 10:11

ceaton88 said:
Thanks for the advice bud. Is there any word on a new range of cards coming out soon that I should think about holding off for?

Nothing new coming for a long time.

Tonester0011 · 27 Apr 2014 at 10:19

Don't forget the *B-Grade* section

There's a 290 on there for £229.99, and a 280X for £169.99. Only 90 days warranty mind

breathe3asy · 27 Apr 2014 at 10:57

Tonester0011 said:
Don't forget the *B-Grade* section
There's a 290 on there for £229.99, and a 280X for £169.99. Only 90 days warranty mind

Just seen, that seems very cheap for a 290X!? Whats the general opinion of B-Grade cards from the forum members?

LtMatt · 27 Apr 2014 at 11:02

ceaton88 said:
Just seen, that seems very cheap for a 290X!? Whats the general opinion of B-Grade cards from the forum members?

YMMV. If its Gigabyte you may get manufacturer warranty. You may get warranty with other manufacturers if you show them the invoice ocuk give you. However you may not. Risk you take. Personally when it comes to a gpu i prefer new cards with warranty, but you can get a bargain sometimes with a fully working card on b grade.

Tonester0011 · 27 Apr 2014 at 11:02

Its a 290P non X

Still a decent price.
I like my B-Grade items lol, tend to look through there every few weeks see if there's any bargains. Everything i've bought from there has worked, no faults etc. Only had one thing that's turned up 'different' was advertised as a TF3 cooler but was the original TF1

Didn't bother me because it clocked like a dream

If you've got a strict budget, using b-grade opens you up to a lot more bang for your buck if you have no other access to reputable second hand sources.

LtMatt · 27 Apr 2014 at 11:05

Tonester0011 said:
Its a 290P non X Still a decent price.
I like my B-Grade items lol, tend to look through there every few weeks see if there's any bargains. Everything i've bought from there has worked, no faults etc. Only had one thing that's turned up 'different' was advertised as a TF3 cooler but was the original TF1 Didn't bother me because it clocked like a dream

If you've got a strict budget, using b-grade opens you up to a lot more bang for your buck if you have no other access to reputable second hand sources.

Yeah can't disagree with this really. Bought a b grade motherboard once. Ended up sending it back as it was poor in comparison to my Asus board but it did work perfectly. It came quite badly scratched though which was a bit of a let down. Ended up DSR'ing it and taking the hit on postage.

breathe3asy · 27 Apr 2014 at 11:17

Tonester0011 said:
Its a 290P non X

"VTX3D Radeon R9 290 X-Edition"

Is this a typo or am I just being a noob? I've only just started looking into latest cards & all the different versions are throwing me.

Appreciate your thoughts though guys, I need to work my priorities out. Its only because of Titanfall & hopefully GTA V coming to PC that I am behind the gaming comp as of late.

LtMatt · 27 Apr 2014 at 11:20

ceaton88 said:
"VTX3D Radeon R9 290 X-Edition"

Is this a typo or am I just being a noob? I've only just started looking into latest cards & all the different versions are throwing me.

Appreciate your thoughts though guys, I need to work my priorities out. Its only because of Titanfall & hopefully GTA V coming to PC that I am behind the gaming comp as of late.

Its a 290 Pro, just a bad name scheme. Its this card.

http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-017-VX&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1752

If you can afford the extra, id go with the brand new 290 Tri X with warranty, but if you don't mind a b grade then as Tone says you can get a bargain. You still get 3 months warranty with OcuK and you can DSR it if not happy so its not all bad.

breathe3asy · 28 Apr 2014 at 16:46

Okay so after some more research it appears the 290X is designed for gaming higher than that of 1080p. Considering thats the res I am playing at, am I wasting my money?

I'm quite happy with my 1080p monitor & can't see myself getting sucked in to 4K gaming or split monitors etc + its better for performance at lower res.

Maybe something like the GTX 780 with less VRAM is more suited? Any thoughts on this would be appreciated

Tonester0011 · 28 Apr 2014 at 17:23

It's being advertised as 4k ready, not 1080 overkill

There's a good few games @1080 where the single 290 wouldn't cope, so not wasting your money

If you can find a good value 780, then sure. Go for it, you get PhysX etc with Nvidia. The performance difference between the 780 and 290 is nil, they offer near identical performance.