Which 290 for crossfire ?

[sportbilly]

Right I'm finally ready to plump down the cash for an upgrade.

I currently have an I7-2600K at 4.5ghz - and a 6990. I have an OCZ ZX Series 1250W '80 Plus Gold Certified' Modular PSU and a Coolermaster HAF 912 Plus case. I have a Gigabyte Z68X-UD4 motherboard which will do 16x single lane or 8x/8x with a gap between the slots I think. It's only PCI-e 2.0 though.

I run triple screens at 5760 x 1080. I mainly play racing sims like iRacing, Assetto Corsa and rFactor 2 plus some flight sims. I have dabbled with mainstream games like Battlefield etc but never sold on triple screens for them partly because didn't really have the horsepower to do them justice. I will try again with the new GPU's and if not sold will run a separate screen at a desk for normal PC use and any games that don't fare well on triple screens.

So what to buy ? I'm reasonably set on a R290 non-x. I have enjoyed the frame rates from the 6990 but have at times been frustrated with stuttering - crossfire and eyefinity is probably the worst combination for it. I was really tempted by the 7990 when sub £400 and should have gone for it. The thing that stopped me was that there was no released solution for frame pacing at that time for crossfire and eyefinity - although now due anytime we are told. It is built in to the 290 series and the frame pacing figures are much improved. That said nvidia still seem to have the edge on that and so I haven't completely ruled out the 780.

Given the resolution being pushed I am likely to get 2 cards for crossfire and so cooling is critical - which R290 works best to cool in crossfire ?

I was tempted by the reference design in that it exhausts heat out of the back rather than dumping it into the case. However, the custom cooled solutions seem to solve the dropping clocks and stabilise performance as well as reducing the GPU temperature massively. The Sapphire Tri-X in particular seems to get reviews in this regard and had a good write up when running in a case here http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/r9-290x-case-performance,3710-2.html

Unfortunately, price of that card seems to be creeping up - although it includes BF4 - and it's now out of stock here. That's then getting up to nearly £400 per card which then brings the 780's into play. Hoping to recoup a bit by selling the 6990 too.

The MSI 290 gaming edition for around £350 looks good value and seems well liked but not sure how that fares on cooling or in crossfire.

How much of an upgrade is a single 290 over a 6990 particularly at triple screen 4gb as opposed to 2gb - I'm thinking 6990 is roughly equivalent to a 7970 ?

So which card(s) would you go for triple screen and which particular brand / model or cooler ?

Thanks All.

 

[sportbilly]

Does anybody have experience of reference and non reference 290's in crossfire ?

How do your particular models fare temperature wise in crossfire ?

Looking for some real world experience / advice.

Thanks

 

[Darren_uk]

I would wait tell better Stock coolers for the 290/x I have 1 of the 290 non x, and done like it at all , the stock fan blower at one end and temps ,crap , people going for a hd7990 better & best cooling , the price gone right up on them now and selling over £580 ,600 or more as people know they the best for now, check out the bay u see what I mean.
another thing about the new r290 is the single fan blower is at one end and can make a case building a night mare in a M-ATX CASE ,like the new BitFenix Prodigy M MATX Cube Case , would all be fine if the card as 3 stock fans.

but if you go for a hd6990 here is a link on hd6990 vs r9 290
you can pick what cards to compare each other .
http://www.hwcompare.com/16230/radeon-hd-6990-vs-radeon-r9-290/

 

[Gregster]

Personally, I would go for 2x780's. I have gamed on triple screens with 680's in SLI and Titans in SLI and the overall experience was a breeze on both set ups. I am not sure if AMD have the stutter fixed yet for Eyefinity and crossfire sorted yet? (maybe someone can confirm).

I am biased with what I know

 

[LtMatt]

Right I'm finally ready to plump down the cash for an upgrade.

I currently have an I7-2600K at 4.5ghz - and a 6990. I have an OCZ ZX Series 1250W '80 Plus Gold Certified' Modular PSU and a Coolermaster HAF 912 Plus case. I have a Gigabyte Z68X-UD4 motherboard which will do 16x single lane or 8x/8x with a gap between the slots I think. It's only PCI-e 2.0 though.

I run triple screens at 5760 x 1080. I mainly play racing sims like iRacing, Assetto Corsa and rFactor 2 plus some flight sims. I have dabbled with mainstream games like Battlefield etc but never sold on triple screens for them partly because didn't really have the horsepower to do them justice. I will try again with the new GPU's and if not sold will run a separate screen at a desk for normal PC use and any games that don't fare well on triple screens.

So what to buy ? I'm reasonably set on a R290 non-x. I have enjoyed the frame rates from the 6990 but have at times been frustrated with stuttering - crossfire and eyefinity is probably the worst combination for it. I was really tempted by the 7990 when sub £400 and should have gone for it. The thing that stopped me was that there was no released solution for frame pacing at that time for crossfire and eyefinity - although now due anytime we are told. It is built in to the 290 series and the frame pacing figures are much improved. That said nvidia still seem to have the edge on that and so I haven't completely ruled out the 780.

Given the resolution being pushed I am likely to get 2 cards for crossfire and so cooling is critical - which R290 works best to cool in crossfire ?

I was tempted by the reference design in that it exhausts heat out of the back rather than dumping it into the case. However, the custom cooled solutions seem to solve the dropping clocks and stabilise performance as well as reducing the GPU temperature massively. The Sapphire Tri-X in particular seems to get reviews in this regard and had a good write up when running in a case here http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/r9-290x-case-performance,3710-2.html

Unfortunately, price of that card seems to be creeping up - although it includes BF4 - and it's now out of stock here. That's then getting up to nearly £400 per card which then brings the 780's into play. Hoping to recoup a bit by selling the 6990 too.

The MSI 290 gaming edition for around £350 looks good value and seems well liked but not sure how that fares on cooling or in crossfire.

How much of an upgrade is a single 290 over a 6990 particularly at triple screen 4gb as opposed to 2gb - I'm thinking 6990 is roughly equivalent to a 7970 ?

So which card(s) would you go for triple screen and which particular brand / model or cooler ?

Thanks All.

At your res 5760x1080 id probably be looking at 4gb+ as a minimum vram requirement when looking for a card. No point spending a lot of money on multi gpu cards to only find out in 6 months time you're running short and your 3gb cards aren't quite cutting it anymore.

I'd get a couple of Sapphire Tri X 290 cards if i was you. Like you mentioned they have excellent reviews, are quiet fast overclock well and are definitely faster than similarly price 780's. Not to mention the extra vram they offer, wider bus, plus Mantle is a feature that should excite you as thats one of your games you mentioned. A ocuk user picked up a couple of Sapphire Tri X's in crossfire and said they worked well together with no temp issues.

There is no issue with microstutter on 290 crossfire so don't be put off. It works on single and multi screen and combines software and hardware frame pacing. Its a thing of the past for Hawaii cards.

 

[Ragnahex]

I have 2 290 at that res and it is a breeze. However I can't advise which ones to get as I water cooled them so had to get ref. But no issues I have seen yet

 

[sportbilly]

Thanks everyone.

Tending toward 2 sapphire 290 tri-x non x version but not in stock and notice the 290x version on offer at £450 "only" £60 more than a standard 290 but for 2 cards that's £120.

The other option is the MSI 290 gaming edition for £350 this week. No BF4 but £40 cheaper than the tri-x. However, I'm reading really good reviews regarding cooling on the tri-x even in a case.

Anybody with 1st hand experience of any custom cooled 290's in a case even better in crossfire - an idea of what temps to expect would be good.

Do any of the custom cooled cards including those due vent heat out of the case ?

Is my CPU ok for these cards - i7-2600k at 4.5ghz ?

Cheers

 

[Confused Stu]

Sorry, late to the party as I've been away from t'interweb for the day.

[DISCLAIMER] Firstly, I haven't seen/tested or experienced any custom cooled 290's and my only Nvidia card since a 6600GT is the 460 that's in my LAN gaming PC, so I can't help with the full picture - only my experiences in my own system. [/DISCLAIMER]

I run a 2600K at 4.6GHz, 3 screens at 5760x1080 for gaming and an add-on screen at 1600x1200 for system monitoring, e-mail, etc. When the 7970s launched, I went from 2 x 5870's at stock to a single 7970 and found a drop in performance until I overclocked the 7970 to 1125/1575, then performance was pretty much even with the 5870's. I did find situations where I was memory starved were transformed (Crysis benched the same with both systems at 4xAA, then tanked on the 5870's with 8xAA - we're talking 1 frame every 10 seconds where the 7970 was fine). As your 6990 will be faster than my 5870s were, and a 290 is 10%-15% faster than a 7970, you should find a 6990 roughly equal to a single 290 in pure FPS terms. This definitely means a change to 2 290's will be VERY worthwhile in pure grunt.

Frame pacing, crossfire and eyefinity definitely works in the 290/290X where it currently doesn't with other AMD cards - for example your 6990 and my 7970s. For me, this manifested that I would need 80-90FPS for a game to feel as smooth as it did with one card running at 60FPS in most of the games I play. I spend a lot of time in Just Cause 2, so that's where I mostly notice differences, but I do notice the same thing in other games. Switching to the 290's after my 7970's died, it was a revelation - games were smoother than I ever remember them being before, a much more marked difference than the FPS difference would justify especially as the FPS was always above 60 anyway. I hadn't realised how smoothly the animation was in some of my games (it's been a long time since I wasn't crossfiring whatever card I have) until now. The nearest equivalent I can come up with is driving on a motorway, sometimes you don't realise how much road/wind/background noise there is that you're not noticing until you hit that new, smooth piece of tarmac and it's suddenly gone. If you'd asked me when I had my 7970s if I was happy with it in game in eyefinity, my answer would've been yes - now I've seen the 290's in action I could never go back.

My 290's are both stock cooled Sapphire models, I bought them before the non-reference models came out and with my old cards dying unexpectedly, waiting wasn't really an option for me. Also, the cooling setup in my case (Silverstone Raven RV03) is apparently more suited for stock cooled cards rather than open coolers, so I figured I'd go stock and this would also help keep the costs down.

I don't like the idea of my cards throttling, and I'm quite happy to put up with extra noise to achieve this, so my fan limit in CCC is set to 100%. In practice, my cards usually average out at 50%-55% fan on card 1, and 45%-50% on card 2 but both cards maintain 947MHz all the time. At this level, the cards are definitely not quiet but I don't find the noise distracting at all and I tune it out very easily as soon as I'm in game. I am happy for a PC to make some noise when it's being worked hard, but I cannot stand a noisy PC at idle - it's just a bugbear of mine. At desktop, card 2 shuts down (I leave ULPS active) and card 1 idles at 20% fan and is completely inaudible unless I press my head almost against the PC.

Since changing from open-style coolers on my 7970's (Accelero and Windforce, then later Accelero and Twin FrozR) to stock coolers on my 290's, I have noticed that my other components no longer heat up at all when I'm gaming. Previously my HDDs would inch their way up to 10C increase after a long gaming session, now they only move by 1-2C after the PCs been on for a while and I've even removed the fan that I'd installed behind the motherboard tray for them (the RV03 is a very weird setup, part of the reason I love it!).

Apologies for the long, rambling thread that doesn't really help decide which custom cooler is best, but I would definitely advise changing from your 6990 to 290's - you should be VERY pleased with the result. I know from experience the stock 290's don't suffer at all from being run in crossfire with at least 1 slot gap between the two, but you do have to appreciate they're not quiet cards under load. As for whether other 290's play as nicely together, I'm afraid I simply don't know, but helpfully Gibbo has posted a thread with his opinions on which will play nicely together in crossfire and which won't:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18575360

Let us know what you choose, and most importantly - post pictures of the finished setup!

 

[sportbilly]

Thanks Stu - that's helpful and interesting to hear that stock 290's are fine in crossfire if you let the fans do their job. I haven't ruled out stock cards on the basis that they exhaust most of the heat out of the case.

That said looking at Gibbo's post has confirmed my initial poking around the internet that the Sapphire Tri-x is probably the pick of the bunch for clocking and cooling. Only problem is they are listed at £390 (albeit with BF4) and not in stock !!

 

[Confused Stu]

Thanks Stu - that's helpful and interesting to hear that stock 290's are fine in crossfire if you let the fans do their job. I haven't ruled out stock cards on the basis that they exhaust most of the heat out of the case.

That said looking at Gibbo's post has confirmed my initial poking around the internet that the Sapphire Tri-x is probably the pick of the bunch for clocking and cooling. Only problem is they are listed at £390 (albeit with BF4) and not in stock !!

Yeah, actually being able to buy them would be a fairly major plus for the Tri-X, I guess!

Just to clarify, the stock cards will throttle their clock speed to maintain 94C/47% fan if left to their own devices. I simply altered the maximum fan speed in CCC to allow the cards to go higher and don't touch any other settings, but technically I don't run them at stock/out of the box settings (in before someone else points this out).

If you've got any games/settings you want me to bench to give you an idea of the performance 290s give you, feel free to post some details and I'll run it if I've got it. At least that way you can see if it's worth the cash to upgrade (or justify it easier to your conscience/bank manager/significant other)!

 

[sportbilly]

Thanks Stu

What you were saying about the frame rate not feeling as smooth as the figures tell you sums up some of my experiences with the 6990. I generally found a workaround to smooth it out with radeonpro by setting a frame limit or different crossfire profile but even then it often feels a little off. I'm excited about the solution for frame pacing on these cards in crossfire and eyefinity.

In terms of benchmarks it would be interesting to compare as our systems are very similar apart from the graphics card. I have Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs, Metro 2033 (not LL but looking to pick it up), Dirt 3, probably Grid 2 as it's £4.99 at the moment, F1 2013, Hitman. Most mainstream things in Steam library. Don't put yourself out too much but it would be interesting to have hard figures to compare.

Cheers

 

[LtMatt]

Sorry, late to the party as I've been away from t'interweb for the day.

[DISCLAIMER] Firstly, I haven't seen/tested or experienced any custom cooled 290's and my only Nvidia card since a 6600GT is the 460 that's in my LAN gaming PC, so I can't help with the full picture - only my experiences in my own system. [/DISCLAIMER]

I run a 2600K at 4.6GHz, 3 screens at 5760x1080 for gaming and an add-on screen at 1600x1200 for system monitoring, e-mail, etc. When the 7970s launched, I went from 2 x 5870's at stock to a single 7970 and found a drop in performance until I overclocked the 7970 to 1125/1575, then performance was pretty much even with the 5870's. I did find situations where I was memory starved were transformed (Crysis benched the same with both systems at 4xAA, then tanked on the 5870's with 8xAA - we're talking 1 frame every 10 seconds where the 7970 was fine). As your 6990 will be faster than my 5870s were, and a 290 is 10%-15% faster than a 7970, you should find a 6990 roughly equal to a single 290 in pure FPS terms. This definitely means a change to 2 290's will be VERY worthwhile in pure grunt.

Frame pacing, crossfire and eyefinity definitely works in the 290/290X where it currently doesn't with other AMD cards - for example your 6990 and my 7970s. For me, this manifested that I would need 80-90FPS for a game to feel as smooth as it did with one card running at 60FPS in most of the games I play. I spend a lot of time in Just Cause 2, so that's where I mostly notice differences, but I do notice the same thing in other games. Switching to the 290's after my 7970's died, it was a revelation - games were smoother than I ever remember them being before, a much more marked difference than the FPS difference would justify especially as the FPS was always above 60 anyway. I hadn't realised how smoothly the animation was in some of my games (it's been a long time since I wasn't crossfiring whatever card I have) until now. The nearest equivalent I can come up with is driving on a motorway, sometimes you don't realise how much road/wind/background noise there is that you're not noticing until you hit that new, smooth piece of tarmac and it's suddenly gone. If you'd asked me when I had my 7970s if I was happy with it in game in eyefinity, my answer would've been yes - now I've seen the 290's in action I could never go back.

My 290's are both stock cooled Sapphire models, I bought them before the non-reference models came out and with my old cards dying unexpectedly, waiting wasn't really an option for me. Also, the cooling setup in my case (Silverstone Raven RV03) is apparently more suited for stock cooled cards rather than open coolers, so I figured I'd go stock and this would also help keep the costs down.

I don't like the idea of my cards throttling, and I'm quite happy to put up with extra noise to achieve this, so my fan limit in CCC is set to 100%. In practice, my cards usually average out at 50%-55% fan on card 1, and 45%-50% on card 2 but both cards maintain 947MHz all the time. At this level, the cards are definitely not quiet but I don't find the noise distracting at all and I tune it out very easily as soon as I'm in game. I am happy for a PC to make some noise when it's being worked hard, but I cannot stand a noisy PC at idle - it's just a bugbear of mine. At desktop, card 2 shuts down (I leave ULPS active) and card 1 idles at 20% fan and is completely inaudible unless I press my head almost against the PC.

Since changing from open-style coolers on my 7970's (Accelero and Windforce, then later Accelero and Twin FrozR) to stock coolers on my 290's, I have noticed that my other components no longer heat up at all when I'm gaming. Previously my HDDs would inch their way up to 10C increase after a long gaming session, now they only move by 1-2C after the PCs been on for a while and I've even removed the fan that I'd installed behind the motherboard tray for them (the RV03 is a very weird setup, part of the reason I love it!).

Apologies for the long, rambling thread that doesn't really help decide which custom cooler is best, but I would definitely advise changing from your 6990 to 290's - you should be VERY pleased with the result. I know from experience the stock 290's don't suffer at all from being run in crossfire with at least 1 slot gap between the two, but you do have to appreciate they're not quiet cards under load. As for whether other 290's play as nicely together, I'm afraid I simply don't know, but helpfully Gibbo has posted a thread with his opinions on which will play nicely together in crossfire and which won't:
http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=18575360

Let us know what you choose, and most importantly - post pictures of the finished setup!

Excellent post Stu.

Thanks Stu

What you were saying about the frame rate not feeling as smooth as the figures tell you sums up some of my experiences with the 6990. I generally found a workaround to smooth it out with radeonpro by setting a frame limit or different crossfire profile but even then it often feels a little off. I'm excited about the solution for frame pacing on these cards in crossfire and eyefinity.

In terms of benchmarks it would be interesting to compare as our systems are very similar apart from the graphics card. I have Tomb Raider, Sleeping Dogs, Metro 2033 (not LL but looking to pick it up), Dirt 3, probably Grid 2 as it's £4.99 at the moment, F1 2013, Hitman. Most mainstream things in Steam library. Don't put yourself out too much but it would be interesting to have hard figures to compare

Before you switch make sure you play some games on your old setup with frame limiters off so you can literally feel the difference when you switch. Most of those games are AMD gaming evolved titles so you can be guaranteed they will run well on crossfire with excellent scaling. I have all of those games you mentioned aside from F1 2013. You're in for a nice treat with XDMA + Frame Pacing.

 

[Confused Stu]

OK, run the built in benches for the games I've got from your list mate (sorry, no F1 I'm afraid). All are at 5760x1080 with GPU stock clocks (but fan allowed up to 100% in CCC), with my monitoring screen on and my normal Windows processes running the in the background - I'm not going for records, just real world performance.

Tomb Raider
Ultimate preset
Min FPS: 62.0
Av APF: 73.0
Max FPS: 85.6

Sleeping Dogs
Extreme preset
Min FPS: 28.0
Av FPS: 45.3
Max FPS: 72.6

Metro 2033
Both DX11 settings on, Very High Quality, MSAA 4x, AF 16x, PhysX off
Min FPS: 6.96
Av FPS: 44.33
Max FPS: 260.89

Dirt 3
All settings on highest
Min FPS: 94.14
Av FPS: 112.20
Total Frames: 11,094

Grid 2
All settings on highest, except Intel options which were both off
Min FPS: 63.66
Av FPS: 81.81
Max FPS: 107.27

Hitman Absolution
Ultra preset with 8xMSAA
Min FPS: 4.008016
Av FPS: 42.122749
Max FPS: 64.077667

If you get a chance to run these on your 6990, I'd be genuinely interested in how the above compare. Also, if you think of any other games you fancy a test of, pop them up and I'll play them if I've got them.

 

[sportbilly]

Thanks Stu that's brilliant - really helpful of you.

I have had to come into work today and as you see from time of my posts last night I was working late too. I will run some benchmarks later in the weekend or early next week.

Gibbo has indicated that the 290 tri-x should be in stock later in the week and he might be able to put up a pre-order deal on Monday which would be great.

I'll run the benchmarks to compare - as mentioned rest of PC is very similar.

Will then be interesting for me to run them afterwards once I have the 2 tri-x in crossfire to compare to reference. Likely very similar numbers just cooler.

Thanks Again - Appreciated

 

[sportbilly]

Before you switch make sure you play some games on your old setup with frame limiters off so you can literally feel the difference when you switch. Most of those games are AMD gaming evolved titles so you can be guaranteed they will run well on crossfire with excellent scaling. I have all of those games you mentioned aside from F1 2013. You're in for a nice treat with XDMA + Frame Pacing.

That's what I'm hoping for - not just the increased frame numbers but actually how it feels in terms of smoothness.

Any other titles that should be on my test rotation - ideally with built in benchmarks or standard test runs ?

Cheers

 

[LtMatt]

That's what I'm hoping for - not just the increased frame numbers but actually how it feels in terms of smoothness.

Any other titles that should be on my test rotation - ideally with built in benchmarks or standard test runs ?

Cheers

I'm uploading some Battlefield 4 gameplay footage in the Mantle thread. Make sure you check it out later when i post it. Will give you an idea how smooth things are.

 

[sportbilly]

I'm uploading some Battlefield 4 gameplay footage in the Mantle thread. Make sure you check it out later when i post it. Will give you an idea how smooth things are.

Will do Thanks.

Any other standard benchmarks I should run ? Don't mind sourcing some games to give my new cards a chance to stretch their legs.

Think I have Crysis 2 / Warhead and keep meaning to pick up Crysis 3.

Cheers

 

[LtMatt]

Will do Thanks.

Any other standard benchmarks I should run ? Don't mind sourcing some games to give my new cards a chance to stretch their legs.

Think I have Crysis 2 / Warhead and keep meaning to pick up Crysis 3.

Cheers

Yeah the Crysis games are a good shout but a pain in the ass to bench as they have no consistent in game benchmarks. Bioshock infinite is worth getting as is Dirt showdown. Both cheap now. Both have excellent crossfire scaling and consistent in game benchmarks.

 

[sportbilly]

Yeah the Crysis games are a good shout but a pain in the ass to bench as they have no consistent in game benchmarks. Bioshock infinite is worth getting as is Dirt showdown. Both cheap now. Both have excellent crossfire scaling and consistent in game benchmarks.

Thanks I have Bioshock Infinite on Steam so I'll run that benchmark too.

Cheers

 

[sportbilly]

OK, run the built in benches for the games I've got from your list mate (sorry, no F1 I'm afraid). All are at 5760x1080 with GPU stock clocks (but fan allowed up to 100% in CCC), with my monitoring screen on and my normal Windows processes running the in the background - I'm not going for records, just real world performance.

Tomb Raider
Ultimate preset
Min FPS: 62.0
Av APF: 73.0
Max FPS: 85.6

Sleeping Dogs
Extreme preset
Min FPS: 28.0
Av FPS: 45.3
Max FPS: 72.6

Metro 2033
Both DX11 settings on, Very High Quality, MSAA 4x, AF 16x, PhysX off
Min FPS: 6.96
Av FPS: 44.33
Max FPS: 260.89

Dirt 3
All settings on highest
Min FPS: 94.14
Av FPS: 112.20
Total Frames: 11,094

Grid 2
All settings on highest, except Intel options which were both off
Min FPS: 63.66
Av FPS: 81.81
Max FPS: 107.27

Hitman Absolution
Ultra preset with 8xMSAA
Min FPS: 4.008016
Av FPS: 42.122749
Max FPS: 64.077667

If you get a chance to run these on your 6990, I'd be genuinely interested in how the above compare. Also, if you think of any other games you fancy a test of, pop them up and I'll play them if I've got them.

I have managed to run some benchmarks to compare - not yet ran Hitman it was still downloading from Steam - all 11.7GB ! Will add that over next day or so.

My CPU was at 4.3ghz and I didn't bother tweaking - I can run it higher when required. Just to note there is a slight CPU speed advantage in your favour I7-2600K at 4.5 vs 4.3 if that makes any difference at all.


Tomb Raider
Ultimate preset
Min FPS: 23.3
Av APF: 30.4 but very jerky / stuttery
Max FPS: 34.8

Stu's
Min FPS: 62.0
Av APF: 73.0
Max FPS: 85.6


Sleeping Dogs
Extreme preset (with high res textures on)
Min 3.7
Ave 15.7 very stuttery / juddery
Max 29.2

Stu's
Min FPS: 28.0
Av FPS: 45.3
Max FPS: 72.6


Metro 2033
Both DX11 settings on, Very High Quality, MSAA 4x, AF 16x, PhysX off
Min 0.71
Av 6.55 >> 4x MSAA too much for resolution with only 2gb per gpu ?
Max 166.06

Stu's
Min FPS: 6.96
Av FPS: 44.33
Max FPS: 260.89


Dirt 3
All settings on highest including 8xMSAA
Min 45.99
Ave 54.13 >>> Pretty smooth and fluid - no real stuttering.

Stu's
Min FPS: 94.14
Av FPS: 112.20
Total Frames: 11,094

Grid 2
All settings on highest, except Intel options which were both off
Not sure which AA setting you used Stu so :-

8f16x EQAA
Min 32
Av 38.74 - Pretty stuttery
Max 50.18

8xMSAA
Min 35.15
Av 43.4 - much smoother despite being only a few frames more - looks great.
Max 53.88

Stu's
Min FPS: 63.66
Av FPS: 81.81
Max FPS: 107.27

Hitman Absolution
My results awaited.

Stu's
Ultra preset with 8xMSAA
Min FPS: 4.008016
Av FPS: 42.122749
Max FPS: 64.077667

Some more run which may be of interest to others :-

F1 2013
6008x1080 - bezel corrected resolution
Ultra 8xMSAA
Ave 60.0 - Fairly smooth - no stutters - looks great.
Min 50

Bio shock infinite
Ultra 6008x1080
Av 24.99 - stuttery and juddery
Min 2.73
Max 339.36

Upon quick analysis 290 crossfire is at least twice as fast as a 6990 and more where GPU RAM comes into play ie with more demanding games with higher AA - see Metro 2033 !!

The 6990 still fared reasonably well and with some tweaking most of those games could be brought to pretty playable frame rates - usually by dialling down the AA which is the Achilles heel of the 6990 at eyefinity resolutions with only 2GB per GPU. I was genuinely impressed with some of the graphics - sleeping dogs / Bioshock Infinite and Grid 2 in particular looked stunning. I think I have previously been a bit conservative in my setting to achieve higher framerates.

Nevertheless, double the frames is generally my tipping point for upgrades so just ordered a pair of Sapphire 290 tri- x on the pre-order special.

I will update the results using my new cards in due course.

Thanks again Stu - was really helpful and interesting to compare.