Soldato
- Joined
- 29 Aug 2010
- Posts
- 8,609
- Location
- Cornwall
I've been trying to decide this for a few days now and keep flip-flopping between choices.
Hoping I could get the views of some people here to see if I can finally make a decision. Hopefully this won't come down to people just arguing over brand loyalty.
Currently (as in my sig) I've got 1 PC with 2 x 290s and another with 3 x 980s. Both PCs are connected to a 4K screen.
3 x 980s on air run really quite hot. A single Heaven run will get them up to 75ºC or hotter depending on ambient. At 78ºC they will start to throttle. So this isn't ideal.
Now I do plan, eventually, to watercool both PCs, so this should eliminate this issue. However I'm also aware that at 4K AMD cards often edge out Nvidia cards.
So this is basically what my choice revolves around.
Do I:
I quite like having a mix of AMD and Nvidia, plus the 980s are quite new, so I'm less sure about the first option. Wouldn't cost much though.
Selling 1 980 allows me to space them better so cooling hopefully isn't an issue. 3 x 8GB 290Xs shouldn't run out of VRAM and should have enough grunt to handle most things. Also hoping that with the UDMA Crossfire I could space the cards better on air to not get so hot. Downside is that the 2 x 980s would probably struggle with some things at 4K and in the odd scenario may run out of VRAM. So while 1 PC will be ok, the other may struggle. Having to turn down settings, even at 4K, doesn't sit right when spending over £800 on GPUs. Also, as nice as the 8GB 290Xs are, they are 150% the price of a 4GB 290X (+£120 each, £1080 vs £720) which seems like quite a big markup (not sure what the markup was on 6GB 780s) considering how often VRAM is likely to be an issue.
There would also be a bit of e-peen to go along with 3 x 8GB 290Xs though, which wouldn't influence me, but is a nice addition
.
With the AMD price drops I imagine 2nd hand prices for 290s are next to nothing now, so not sure how much I could get back selling these, hopefully the reference MSI 980 would still recoup a decent amount. So could knock that off the £1080.
There is also the fact that if I got used to having 3-way SLI/Crossfire it'd probably be hard to go back to 2-way from then on. But upgrading 3 cards yearly will get quite expensive!
I'm guessing this would cost ~£500 depending on what the 2nd hand GPUs sell for.
Selling a 980 and getting the ROG Swift is a cheaper option for sure. The ROG Swift also seems like a really nice monitor regardless of having GSync. However having GSync would make me feel like I need to have Nvidia cards while using it.
For all the nice bits of having 4K I also find a few issues too. For a start a large number of the games I've played at 4K using Crossfire have flickered and glitches to the point it's unplayable. Disabling Crossfire solves the issues in every game. I'm nervous about buying 3 x 290Xs only to find I have to disable 2 of them to play games at 4K.
So I'm hoping 2560x1440 would be less problematic. I would hope to be able to do 2560x1440 @ 144Hz with 2 x 980s in most games. I sometimes feel I can notice being at 60Hz more than being at 4K.
I also would only need to upgrade 2 cards when I upgrade.
The downside is that the ROG Swift, like all GSync monitors, only has a single DisplayPort connection, so I wouldn't be able to connect both PCs to it unless I had a splitter box and then you'd need to find one that will do 2560x1440 @ 144Hz. So the 290CF PC would go back to a 1080p @ 120Hz screen.
Then when 2 GPUs can do 4K without issues (hopefully AMD's 390 series) I could go back to my 4K monitor for the main rig and move the 980s and ROG Swift to my 2nd PC.
I'd guess this would cost ~£300.
I guess the 4th option would be to get 3 x 290Xs and use them on the 4K monitor, sell the 2 x 290s and 1 x 980 and get the ROG Swift to go with the 980s in the 2nd PC that probably would struggle at 4K. But I reckon that even after selling this option would cost around £1000.
So what does everyone think is the best course of action?
Is there an option I haven't considered?
As said, I'm hoping this doesn't turn into a brand loyalty argument, but I also realise that the reason for going with one option over the other may come down to the features offered by one brand or the other. Let's at least try to keep it civil eh?
Thanks.
Hoping I could get the views of some people here to see if I can finally make a decision. Hopefully this won't come down to people just arguing over brand loyalty.
Currently (as in my sig) I've got 1 PC with 2 x 290s and another with 3 x 980s. Both PCs are connected to a 4K screen.
3 x 980s on air run really quite hot. A single Heaven run will get them up to 75ºC or hotter depending on ambient. At 78ºC they will start to throttle. So this isn't ideal.
Now I do plan, eventually, to watercool both PCs, so this should eliminate this issue. However I'm also aware that at 4K AMD cards often edge out Nvidia cards.
So this is basically what my choice revolves around.
Do I:
- Sell the 980s and get 8GB 290Xs
- Sell the 290s and 1 980, move the 980s into the 4770K PC and get 3 x 8GB 290Xs
- Sell 1 980, buy a ROG Swift and shelve the 4K monitor until 2 GPUs can run it more comfortably (and games support it a little better)
I quite like having a mix of AMD and Nvidia, plus the 980s are quite new, so I'm less sure about the first option. Wouldn't cost much though.
Selling 1 980 allows me to space them better so cooling hopefully isn't an issue. 3 x 8GB 290Xs shouldn't run out of VRAM and should have enough grunt to handle most things. Also hoping that with the UDMA Crossfire I could space the cards better on air to not get so hot. Downside is that the 2 x 980s would probably struggle with some things at 4K and in the odd scenario may run out of VRAM. So while 1 PC will be ok, the other may struggle. Having to turn down settings, even at 4K, doesn't sit right when spending over £800 on GPUs. Also, as nice as the 8GB 290Xs are, they are 150% the price of a 4GB 290X (+£120 each, £1080 vs £720) which seems like quite a big markup (not sure what the markup was on 6GB 780s) considering how often VRAM is likely to be an issue.
There would also be a bit of e-peen to go along with 3 x 8GB 290Xs though, which wouldn't influence me, but is a nice addition
.With the AMD price drops I imagine 2nd hand prices for 290s are next to nothing now, so not sure how much I could get back selling these, hopefully the reference MSI 980 would still recoup a decent amount. So could knock that off the £1080.
There is also the fact that if I got used to having 3-way SLI/Crossfire it'd probably be hard to go back to 2-way from then on. But upgrading 3 cards yearly will get quite expensive!
I'm guessing this would cost ~£500 depending on what the 2nd hand GPUs sell for.
Selling a 980 and getting the ROG Swift is a cheaper option for sure. The ROG Swift also seems like a really nice monitor regardless of having GSync. However having GSync would make me feel like I need to have Nvidia cards while using it.
For all the nice bits of having 4K I also find a few issues too. For a start a large number of the games I've played at 4K using Crossfire have flickered and glitches to the point it's unplayable. Disabling Crossfire solves the issues in every game. I'm nervous about buying 3 x 290Xs only to find I have to disable 2 of them to play games at 4K.
So I'm hoping 2560x1440 would be less problematic. I would hope to be able to do 2560x1440 @ 144Hz with 2 x 980s in most games. I sometimes feel I can notice being at 60Hz more than being at 4K.
I also would only need to upgrade 2 cards when I upgrade.
The downside is that the ROG Swift, like all GSync monitors, only has a single DisplayPort connection, so I wouldn't be able to connect both PCs to it unless I had a splitter box and then you'd need to find one that will do 2560x1440 @ 144Hz. So the 290CF PC would go back to a 1080p @ 120Hz screen.
Then when 2 GPUs can do 4K without issues (hopefully AMD's 390 series) I could go back to my 4K monitor for the main rig and move the 980s and ROG Swift to my 2nd PC.
I'd guess this would cost ~£300.
I guess the 4th option would be to get 3 x 290Xs and use them on the 4K monitor, sell the 2 x 290s and 1 x 980 and get the ROG Swift to go with the 980s in the 2nd PC that probably would struggle at 4K. But I reckon that even after selling this option would cost around £1000.
So what does everyone think is the best course of action?
Is there an option I haven't considered?
As said, I'm hoping this doesn't turn into a brand loyalty argument, but I also realise that the reason for going with one option over the other may come down to the features offered by one brand or the other. Let's at least try to keep it civil eh?
Thanks.
