Crossfire worth considering?

MoNkeE · 17 Jul 2017 at 10:41

Hi y'all,

I've got a 2500k i5 running at 3GHz, 8GB DDR3 and an MSI twin Frozr R9 280X.

Obviously I need more RAM (I have 16GB but this becomes unreliable when all 4 sticks plugged in, not sure if mobo or ram fault), but I was wondering if it's worth picking up a second 280X for £70 and running Crossfire, as my motherboard supports it.

I don't necessarily think my 1156 socket architecture has much Upgrade opportunity, save for spending £300 on a grapahics card.

Thoughts?

old gamer · 17 Jul 2017 at 10:47

For 70 quid I would say yes, not all games will work with xfire but the ones that do will give you a decent boost for not much outlay

LeMson · 17 Jul 2017 at 10:49

Try bumping the voltage up one notch for the ram to see if it's more stable

MoNkeE · 17 Jul 2017 at 11:11

@old gamer yeah that's my thought. The majority of major releases SHOULD support Crossfire. And I can't see any other way I can improve performance with value in mind. This rig has just been a stop gap after my ex wife poured liquid in to my PC!

@LeMson do you think that could work? It seemed fine for a while, then I noticed it was only detecting 8GB of RAM, then it started blue screening with all four sticks in. I might have a play around tonight...

Funnily enough the motherboard supports 1600MHz ram, but I can't seem to enable it within the BIOS... (mobo is an Asus P7P55D LE)

LeMson · 17 Jul 2017 at 11:53

It's worth a go, just bump it up one notch and test, you can up mobo voltage as well, just go small, test/stress test and watch temps

LoadsaMoney · 17 Jul 2017 at 12:01

Its complete and utter garbage, yes, ive got Xfire, but i rarely use it, my 2nd card just gets re-enabled once in a blue moon, when i want to go back through the Metro games, and HL2 and the episodes (which ive got fakefactory modded), as it works ok in those, id just stick to a single.

MoNkeE · 17 Jul 2017 at 12:35

Having just read some views on Reddit, it seems @LoadsaMoney is right - Crossfire seems a pain to work with and has limited longevity in the market

First step is to get the RAM working I guess, then look at a graphics upgrade in the future.

justbeingmiko · 17 Jul 2017 at 14:22

My 2 cents....which is darn cheaper than the price of the pain that Crossfire will bring!!

On paper and in some games, the performance is amazing. Crossfire is a cheap way of increasing frame rates. The reality is that you will spend a lot of time chasing drivers, settings, configurations and the like. And when you finally have all those sorted, some games will lag, pulse, stutter or just not run very well.

I ran crossfire for years, and those wonderful single cards with crossfire built in. The early gens were a marvel. But in the last 3 years, the difficulties are just not worth the rewards. I switched to a single GPU late last year and the only regret I have is asking myself why I didn't do it earlier. Games are smooth, I spend more time in the game as opposed to the settings screen. Yes the fps is lower on some titles, that is for sure...but the payoff...well, smooth and consistent gaming no matter what the title!!

cainer · 17 Jul 2017 at 14:31

MoNkeE said:
Funnily enough the motherboard supports 1600MHz ram, but I can't seem to enable it within the BIOS... (mobo is an Asus P7P55D LE)

is it linked to CPU clock speed? mine is with my i7 920, i also have an Asus mobo
at stock CPU speed i can select 1600mhz, but when i oc the CPU the speed of the RAM that is selectable changes

Psycho Sonny · 17 Jul 2017 at 14:34

what voltage is your RAM

.

ideally it needs to be 1.5V or lower. If it's 1.65V sell it and buy the correct voltage RAM. sandybridge was meant to be used with 1.5V RAM and the mobos don't support 1.65V properly.

TonyTurbo78 · 17 Jul 2017 at 14:37

DO NOT DO IT!!!!!!!

3 or so years ago crossfire was amazing, at that time i was rocking 7950 crossfire, they were absolutely murdering every game you threw at it. So I upgraded to 390 crossfire around 18 months ago and it's been the worst upgrade ever. Didn't know how bad it would get at the Time, but now it's absolutely shocking. 1 in 5 games work, well I say work, you might get maximum 70% usage on both cards. Most of the time now I just leave it disabled, lots games have texture flickering or micro stutter now, and on freesync you get screen flicker at times. I'd never recommend multi gpu today.

djbully · 17 Jul 2017 at 14:47

Works well on GTA V, and...... ummm and....... ummm oh thats about it

AiiR · 17 Jul 2017 at 15:12

Could even try getting a cheap 7970 to crossfire with.

benjii · 17 Jul 2017 at 15:16

TonyTurbo78 said:
DO NOT DO IT!!!!!!!

3 or so years ago crossfire was amazing, at that time i was rocking 7950 crossfire, they were absolutely murdering every game you threw at it. So I upgraded to 390 crossfire around 18 months ago and it's been the worst upgrade ever. Didn't know how bad it would get at the Time, but now it's absolutely shocking. 1 in 5 games work, well I say work, you might get maximum 70% usage on both cards. Most of the time now I just leave it disabled, lots games have texture flickering or micro stutter now, and on freesync you get screen flicker at times. I'd never recommend multi gpu today.

This. My 5970 (dual gpu) and later added 4870 to run tri-fire was amazing. I upgraded to 290 crossfire and it was trash, I'm not sure I ever managed to use both cards with a game on launch, there was always problems or lack of driver support. Even months later there would be issue. Admittedly, since that time AMD have massively improved their driver support, but I still wouldn't recommend crossfire.

TNA · 17 Jul 2017 at 17:17

Don't do it!

Minstadave · 17 Jul 2017 at 17:31

AiiR said:
Could even try getting a cheap 7970 to crossfire with.

Don't bother, it's utter garbage.

Put the money towards a second hand 980Ti.

Minstadave · 17 Jul 2017 at 17:33

Psycho Sonny said:
what voltage is your RAM .

ideally it needs to be 1.5V or lower. If it's 1.65V sell it and buy the correct voltage RAM. sandybridge was meant to be used with 1.5V RAM and the mobos don't support 1.65V properly.

I thought this was a worry at release that never actually amounted to anything. I happily ran 1.65V RAM with SB for years.

Rroff · 17 Jul 2017 at 17:39

Problem is a lot of newer games use advanced/complex rendering techniques that don't work well with multi-GPU more recent stuff tends to not work more often than it works. Eventually things like explicit multi adapter will probably start to see some support but that seems some way off yet - might not even happen if MCM type GPUs do take off in a few years time.

Minstadave said:
I thought this was a worry at release that never actually amounted to anything. I happily ran 1.65V RAM with SB for years.

Mixed story from what I remember - for some (most) people it worked fine for others resulted in premature degradation.

AiiR · 17 Jul 2017 at 18:23

Minstadave said:
Don't bother, it's utter garbage.

Put the money towards a second hand 980Ti.

I'd argue it's worth a punt if you can pick a 7970 up for around 50 quid like I did.. You won't lose much on it if you resell at all.

Minstadave · 17 Jul 2017 at 18:26

AiiR said:
I'd argue it's worth a punt if you can pick a 7970 up for around 50 quid like I did.. You won't lose much on it if you resell at all.

I thought and did similar (7990 - essentially two 7970s) and it was terrible, wish I had never bothered - poor support, stutter, flickering textures. Moving to a 980Ti was the best move I ever did.