I'm a bit lost on an upgrade path

[hozzdutch]

Hi all,

I currently running a Sapphire R9 295x2 in my system and it's still a very capable card that can chew up most of what I throw at it.
I am however looking at upgrading for something newer and (hopefully) better.
My questions is though, what actually is better than this?
Would a newer (RX 580 for instance) type card be an improvement over the 2 GPU beasty the 295x2 is? Would I see any noticeable difference in the running of games?
Is the difference in performance worth the upgrade?

 

[hozzdutch]

you'll have the guarantee and hassle free gaming that comes with a single card.

In all honesty, I've never had any hassle from this card apart from this last week when trying to get an Oculus Rift working on it. It seems that those cheap mini-dp to HDMI adaptors just don't want to do the job, though this isn't the fault of the card per se.

Vega 64 but it'll be a reference blower card. Should see a bit better performance over the 295x2

'a bit better performance' is not, in my books, a good upgrade. Considering the 295x2 has passed its 3rd birthday, I'd want an upgrade to completely blow me away. Surely the Vega should blow me away? maybe give it another 6 months or so for the drivers to mature?

If you go green there are better options. 1080ti?

It really depends on how much you wanted to spend on it and how bothered you are. There are better cards out there, but if your getting all that you need out of what you have do you really want to spend £700 on a 1080Ti?

I'll admit to being bit of an AMD fanboy, but I don't mind switching to where the power is. But I was really hoping to avoid having to drop 3 quarters of a K on another card. I was hoping (perhaps wildly) that newer tech will give me some great extra performance in card that perhaps doesn't cost the world (and hopefully doesn't need a small external generator to power! )

 

[hozzdutch]

Out of interest what games are you playing and is crossfirie working in all of them?

I jump back and forth between quite a few at the moment..Elite Dangerous, Project Zomboid, DayZ (mod and standalone) Battlefield 1, Minecraft, Dirt 3, Skyrim...depends on my mood at the time Once I get an adaptor that works for the Rift, I'll most likely be blowing the dust of a lot of other games as well.
I can't imagine the smaller games like MC and PZ would be using crossfire, but the bigger ones, I'd be surprised if they weren't.

What resolution are you using?

Depends on the game and what I'm doing. I currently have 3 monitors hooked up each using 1980x1024.
If doing battles in Elite Dangerous then I'll enable eyefinity and use all 3 monitors in 5760x1024. I also use the same resolution when in DayZ mod and Skyrim.
Anything else then I'm in standard 1920x1080.
Again, once the rift is up and running I'll be doing everything I can to try and get stuff running on that instead.

 

[hozzdutch]

I'd have thought you would absolutely be aware of what games use crossfire and which games don't. Usually you get an on screen display in the top right hand corner that says AMD Crossfire Technology when the game is running in crossfire. You also usually need to manually enable crossfire in your driver settings for it to work. If you haven't had to mess around with driver settings or seen the AMD Crossfire in the top corner of your screen when playing games, then the chances are you haven't had it enabled, possibly ever?!

You've very possibly made me sad! I'm going to have to check on this tonight when I get home and see if I've been half utilising my card forever.

Except in VR the 1070 or 1080 will be a huge upgrade over what he has. It would be worth it if VR is his main point of upgrading now.

The whole reason I was looking at upgrades was down to the fact that after trying two different mini-dp to HDMI adaptors and both not working, I was thinking it might be worth looking at another card altogether (though an upgrade for ugprades sake is always welcome!).
At the moment it's more of a 'would be nice to have' rather than a 'I must have this!'. It's nice to know people's opinions on where to go...or not...at this point in time.
I know a lot of games don't support VR, other are shoehorned in with 3rd party software. I think, when it comes down to it the main question is probably this -

For the limited amount of games around at the moment that do actually support VR (directly or indirectly), and given that some of the games I play doesn't, is it worth up(or side)grading at all given what card I'm already running which pretty much does what I need it to when outside of VR.

 

[hozzdutch]

you would have to be a carrot to stick with the 295x2 IMO.

I'll try not to take offence to that

 

[hozzdutch]

your telling me it's the smart move to say no to £500?

No. I was telling you that I'll try no to take offence to you suggesting I'm a carrot