SLI R9 280

[cuteclaire]

Hi

I have the Sapphire Radeon R9 280 Dual-X 3072MB GDDR5 PCI-Express Graphics Card I want to put a 2nd card in. How do i do it? Is it a matter of installing the card and putting the link over? Do i need different drivers and must it be the same card?

Thank you

Claire

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

You mean XFire right?? What PSU and motherboard do you have??

You will need another R9 280 card(I think an HD7950 will be OK too),but make sure you have enough space between cards,unless you get a card with a blower cooler.

 

[teh_captain]

It depends on a few factors.

What model motherboard you have; it is SLI (Nvidia) / Crossfire (AMD) compatible?
What wattage is your PSU?

You can CF your 280 with an HD7950, another 280 or a even 280X but if you do the latter the extra stream processors will be disabled and it will revert to the clocks of the primary card. Also it doesn't matter which brand you were to get it depends on the model.

Unless you can get another 280 dirt cheap I personally would probably save the money, sell your current card and get a 290 or 290X. Crossfire is decent these days but on some games it struggles and one card would give you pretty much zero headaches.

This card is ridiculously good VFM at the moment:
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-166-PC&groupid=701&catid=56

 

[CinderzFTW]

Basically install it, add the crossfire bridge onto the cards. Then boot into windows, go to the control centre and enable xfire, the reboot.

About it!

 

[cuteclaire]

Superflower goldengreenHX 450 "80 plus gold" power supply (ca-002-sf)

Gigabyte Z97 HD3 intel soxket 1150 (mb-497-gi)

I7 4790k 4.00ghz (devils Canyon) not over clocked

 

[cuteclaire]

If it is better to stick with 1 card i am looking at GTX 970

 

[CinderzFTW]

hmmm not on that PSU

 

[peahead]

hmmm not on that PSU

He can run a one GTX 970 with that 450w PSU.. 970 only requires around 145w

 

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

He can run a one GTX 970 with that 450w PSU.. 970 only requires around 145w

You can run a R9 290 or GTX780TI off it too.

But the thing is that a new PSU and a R9 280 is still going to cost less than a new GTX970.

I might be inclined to see what new AMD cards are launching in the new few months too unless the need is urgent.