Graphic card upgrade - need advice!

[Matson]

Thought i would make my own thread instead of posting in random ones on here .

At the moment im running 2 5870 cards in crossfire which are about 4 years old now? i think and its time to upgrade again.

Firstly my motherboard has 1 x16 slot and then its only a x4 slot....so is that a waste for a crossfire setup?

My old motherboard had 2 x16 slots but i bought an overclockers bundle early this year and the board only has 1 x16 slot.

Does that mean it would be best to go for a high end single card or a dual GPU card on one PCB like the 7990?

Would crossfiring 2 290x cards when they come out later this month be a waste as i don't plan to upgrade for 3/4 years again so id be willing to go up to £900/£1000 for 2 290x cards.

With the price of the 7990 going up soon to £600+ i need to decide soon so any advice would be apprechiated.

 

[opethdisciple]

What is the rest of the spec of your machine. Most importantly what CPU are you running?

 

[kefan77]

wanted to ask the same.

if it's all 4 years old, you might opt out for 7990 and upgrade the rest too.

 

[Matson]

The board, ram and cpu is from a bundle i got early this year.. i5 3570k running at 4.4

 

[opethdisciple]

The board, ram and cpu is from a bundle i got early this year.. i5 3570k running at 4.4

Then the world is your oyster. Except to really get the most out of dual cards you probably want to have an i7 preferably.

I would wait for the new AMD cards and get the single most powerful card you can afford.

 

[Matson]

will the second slot only being x4 hinder too much and make going dual cards a waste of money?

 

[Matson]

Also wanted to add... im using the Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H motherboard which is the one that came with the overclockers bundle and these are the slots it has.

Expansion Slots: 2 x PCI (32 bit)
3 x PCIe 2.0 x1
1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 Bandwidth)
1 x PCIe 3.0 x16

How will this effect what card setup would run the fastest for me?
Will a 7990 being on one PCB be effected by this?
I imagine 2x 290x cards would be wasted on this board.

 

[Hades]

I am no expert but from googling my findings are that x4 doesn't have as big an impact as you would expect. Maybe 5% to 10%? Hopefully someone else can confirm.

 

[Matson]

Yeah it would be good if some others could chime in about that before i go ahead and spend £500-£1000 on one or two cards lol.

 

[Matson]

Would still like some others to give there thoughts on this....

"Also wanted to add... im using the Gigabyte GA-Z77-D3H motherboard which is the one that came with the overclockers bundle and these are the slots it has.

Expansion Slots: 2 x PCI (32 bit)
3 x PCIe 2.0 x1
1 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (x4 Bandwidth)
1 x PCIe 3.0 x16

How will this effect what card setup would run the fastest for me?
Will a 7990 being on one PCB be effected by this?
I imagine 2x 290x cards would be wasted on this board."