Soldato
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Getting cross with myself, tell me what to buy! (with reasoning and graphs please)
- Thread starter TheBigCheese
- Start date
The 8GB Sapphire Tri-X which is sort of in the middle of the prices here: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-360-SP&groupid=701&catid=56&subcat=1752 should cool really well like the Vapor X and would be the one I would be going for.
I think the MSI might struggle to cool as well compared to the triple fans in crossfire and the PowerColor does take up more than two slots. The Tri-X and Vapor X are long cards though so keep that in mind.
When you're fortunate enough as i am to work in the industry, you do get a lot of hardware for free. As I'm still an enthusiast at heart though i tend to buy my fair share as well.
It's important that I'm familiar with all of our hardware though, so it just enables me to do my job to the best of my ability. It's important for a AMD community manager to be confident and comfortable using all AMD hardware.
keeping these badboys cool is no easy task in crossfire, if it were me then i think i would go the 295x2 and just drop the aa settings then uninstall fraps and never look at framerates again, if it looks and plays good then happy days
Soldato
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This is probably the most important question in the thread and I haven't seen an answer yet. If your 4k Philips only has HDMI then none of the AMD options will work as they don't have HDMI2 yet, so will only be able to send 30Hz to the TV at 4k. If it's got Displayport, then I'd have to go with 2 x 290X 8GB cards at their current price.
Soldato
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Soldato
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Do you really need to game at 4K? Maybe downgrade to a 1200p monitor and keep to one card for now?
- Joined
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Thanks for your continued help guys, this forum is fantastic! 
Sorry, I missed the displayport question, as Uncle Petey has answered, yes it does, I'm using it now...the screen makes me very sick at 30Hz!
There's some really good points here about cooling as well which I hadn't considered. I was looking at the raw power of them, and not necessarily thinking about the heat dissipation.
I have an Antec 1200 case so there's no problem with room and there's 3 120mm fans at the front and two 120mm fans sucking it out the back so with the cooling solutions of the Tri-X recommendations, I think that's going to be the ones to go for.
Before I press buy, can I just check one last thing...
This is my motherboard, it does say crossfire...there's no reason why that wouldn't work with them is there?
Also, am I right in thinking that crossfire doesn't need the little bridge connecting the cards like Nvidia SLI does? I got an SLI bridge in the motherboard box, but nothing for crossfire, I think I remember reading that some (all?) AMD cards don't need a bridge?
Thanks!
Sorry, I missed the displayport question, as Uncle Petey has answered, yes it does, I'm using it now...the screen makes me very sick at 30Hz!
There's some really good points here about cooling as well which I hadn't considered. I was looking at the raw power of them, and not necessarily thinking about the heat dissipation.
I have an Antec 1200 case so there's no problem with room and there's 3 120mm fans at the front and two 120mm fans sucking it out the back so with the cooling solutions of the Tri-X recommendations, I think that's going to be the ones to go for.
Before I press buy, can I just check one last thing...
This is my motherboard, it does say crossfire...there's no reason why that wouldn't work with them is there?
Also, am I right in thinking that crossfire doesn't need the little bridge connecting the cards like Nvidia SLI does? I got an SLI bridge in the motherboard box, but nothing for crossfire, I think I remember reading that some (all?) AMD cards don't need a bridge?
Thanks!
Soldato
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- 17 Jun 2012
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Not really, it's not a case of it not being able to use 8GB of RAM it's just that RAM doesn't scale on dual GPUs, it's just the same as running two 4GB 290X in crossfire, you wouldn't get 8GB of RAM with that set up either.
Advertising any dual GPU as twice the RAM of the single unit it's based on is a bit cheeky really, as it doesn't have 8GBs of RAM as most people would assume it to mean.
Although it seems this will be coming soon, I don't know too much about it.
Thanks for your continued help guys, this forum is fantastic!
Sorry, I missed the displayport question, as Uncle Petey has answered, yes it does, I'm using it now...the screen makes me very sick at 30Hz!
There's some really good points here about cooling as well which I hadn't considered. I was looking at the raw power of them, and not necessarily thinking about the heat dissipation.
I have an Antec 1200 case so there's no problem with room and there's 3 120mm fans at the front and two 120mm fans sucking it out the back so with the cooling solutions of the Tri-X recommendations, I think that's going to be the ones to go for.
Before I press buy, can I just check one last thing...
This is my motherboard, it does say crossfire...there's no reason why that wouldn't work with them is there?
Also, am I right in thinking that crossfire doesn't need the little bridge connecting the cards like Nvidia SLI does? I got an SLI bridge in the motherboard box, but nothing for crossfire, I think I remember reading that some (all?) AMD cards don't need a bridge?
Thanks!
That board will be fine for Crossfire and yes, Crossfire does not require a bridge as we now use the PCI-E lanes (which have huge amounts of Bandwidth vs a bridge which has 900MB) to allow the gpu's to communicate to each other.
You're all set, sir.
- Joined
- 6 Sep 2005
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Thank you all so much for your help, I've been reading and reading and getting really befuddled about which I should be going for ever since I found out about the 970 memory problems!
All your advice has been absolultey invaluable in making sense of it all and I've now bought two of the suggested 8GB Sapphire Tri-X, which I hadn't even been looking at before!
Reading the reviews of how it runs at 4K, it seems to batter even an Nvidia 980, so I'm very excited to see what it can do for me at 4K...roll on Monday!
I'm quite glad to be moving back into the AMD fold, I always used to use AMD processors from the K6-200 onwards back in the day, then when I needed more video processing grunt I moved back to Intel and have been that way ever since.
If AMD can produce processors of the calibre of their graphics cards it'll be an exciting time for purchasing again!
All your advice has been absolultey invaluable in making sense of it all and I've now bought two of the suggested 8GB Sapphire Tri-X, which I hadn't even been looking at before!
Reading the reviews of how it runs at 4K, it seems to batter even an Nvidia 980, so I'm very excited to see what it can do for me at 4K...roll on Monday!
I'm quite glad to be moving back into the AMD fold, I always used to use AMD processors from the K6-200 onwards back in the day, then when I needed more video processing grunt I moved back to Intel and have been that way ever since.
If AMD can produce processors of the calibre of their graphics cards it'll be an exciting time for purchasing again!
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Get out and stay out!
Hah!
Yeah I do as it happens. I moved to 4K resolution due to the video etc., I'm working with, I had videos to edit etc., and I couldn't even see them at their native resolution!
Now I've got the monitor I do want to put the best I can through it.
I'm very happy and settled with what's coming now...should be good!
I sense a sick day coming up on Monday *cough* *cough*, good thing I'm my own boss.
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Hope so! Mei asked me earlier what sort of games I'm looking at...all sorts really:
Hitman Absolution
Skyrim (modded hopefully)
GTA IV modded
ARMA 3
Sniper Elite 3
Bioshock series
Sleeping Dogs
Broforce (really looking forward to crossfiring that one!
)...all sorts really!
i play all kinds of weird games so i know i will end up turning the res down a lot
but even if u not weird like me, dyinglight when it come out had no xfire/sli support at all, duno if thats improved any since i last tried but at 4k that game with 1 card cant be playable, its just a guess but 15fps?
just accept some games you will have to run at lower res i guess im saying, the world isnt ready for 4k
but even if u not weird like me, dyinglight when it come out had no xfire/sli support at all, duno if thats improved any since i last tried but at 4k that game with 1 card cant be playable, its just a guess but 15fps?
just accept some games you will have to run at lower res i guess im saying, the world isnt ready for 4k