R9 290 Trifire vs Crossfire Scaling results

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negachampa

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Ok, for those who have been following my other thread. I am now back form my work trip and have some results from my trifire and crossfire benchmarks.
All settings are max at 2560x1600.

For BF4 the resolution slider was also set at 150%, which means the game is rendering it at 1.5x the res of 2560x1600 then downsampleing. This have a big improvement on IQ but really stresses the cards.

290s were OC to 1075Mhz for all the tests.

Corssfire (2 290s ) Results:

BF4
Min = 41
Max = 72
Avg = 54.511

Metro Last Light
Min = 14
Max = 186
Avg = 46.02

Crysis 3
Min = 55
Max = 73
Avg = 62.165

Unigine Heavn 4.0
FPS = 57.7
Score = 1454


Trifire (3 290s ) Results:

BF4
Min = 49
Max = 99
Avg = 79.683

Metro Last Light
Min = 12
Max = 182
Avg = 46.08

Crysis 3
Min = 69
Max = 108
Avg = 89.267

Unigine Heaven 4.0
FPS = 85
Score = 2141



And there you have it. Not bad at all. Only odd ball was Metro , for some reason I get the same results. I guess trifire does not work with Metro. But for the reset, when trifire is working the scaling is very, very, impressive. and I am sure things will only improve as driver mature for the R9 series.

Also there is no sign at all of microstutter. Like I said before I am new to AMD so I do not know what the microstutter was like before but from a long time SLI Nvidia user it is just as smooth as SLI.

Over all I am very impressed with these R9 cards, other then the heat and noise. I have to set max fan profile using Afterburner to 80% to maintain 1075mhz on all cards with no throttling. They will all 3 stabilize at 90 C under full loads.

Hopefully this helps other make the choice or not to go trifire. Considering that the cost is less then 2 780tis I still think it was worth it.

Cheers
 
Thanks for the numbers. 2560 x 1600 is what I care about. All these test done with 1080p monitors doesn't really help me.
 
Thanks for the benches, 150% scaling at that resolution is pretty crazy, would love to see some screenies.
 
Could u post results with 2xssao instead of 4xssao in metro. 4x is just horrible at anyresolution cuts framrate in half. May even help scaling. Doubt it tho. I dont think either metro scales in trifire.
 
Could u post results with 2xssao instead of 4xssao in metro. 4x is just horrible at anyresolution cuts framrate in half. May even help scaling. Doubt it tho. I dont think either metro scales in trifire.
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I will do some more metro tests to see what is going on. I only had limited time this morning to run these.

Thanks for the benches, 150% scaling at that resolution is pretty crazy, would love to see some screenies.
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TBH BF4 is with out a doubt the best looking game out right now. It honestly looks incredible. I could only imagine what it would be like on 4K. Imagine, this running at 4k plus the resolution slider at 200% effectively rendering the game at 8K then downsampling, lol, crazy would be close to photo realistic
 
for those that want to do an apple to apple comparison of BF4 at 1600p with resolution slider only t 100% | did another BF4 bench details are

I ran another BF4 trifire test with 1600p with res slider at 100% . I don't know the best way to bench BF4 as there is no built in bench. but I ran fraps . logged into EA DICE test server. Map is important too as some maps are more demanding then others. For this test about I was on Zavoild 311, RU start point and just ran straight for a 90s bench recorded by fraps.

results:
min : 121
max 177
avg 141.73
 
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Holy crap! My 7950s look like toys now.

Nice rig bro, you shall be warm this winter.
 
so i just have a question, i was previously led to believe 90 degrees is waay to hot for gpus and when my crossfired 7870xt was getting to 90-91 i sold them thinking it was too hot for my case.
 
yeah, for most GPUs 90C is too hot , but AMD has many many times confirmed that with the R9 series they are made to run without any issues at 95C !!!, in fact if you just leave all the driver settings at default the card will try to keep a temp of 94C while under full load and just throttle the clock speed to stable at 94C.

I not sure what the tech spec is for the 7xxx series.

That is how they are made to run.

that is why most people are waiting for the cards with 3rd party cooling solutions. I didn't wait for a couple reasons, first one being that I knew I wanted to try out Trifire with these cards seeing has how good a value they are. Many of they 3rd party coolers that work well are the kind that vents the hot air back into the case, they are not the blower kind that the stock coolers are. Theses are no issue for single or crossfire as you have a good gap between the cards but in trifire you only have a few mm of a gap, so you have to use a cooling solution that only vents the hot air out the back.

I am sure eventually there will be good blower style cooling solutions , but I didn't want to wait.
 
Ah did not know that, thanks. I will probably also get these cards hopefully on black Friday. One can hope lol.
 
So it scales well for BF but not other programs. Looking forward to similar comparisons with non-referenced cars in upcoming weeks. Thanks for sharing.
 
Enilder said:
So it scales well for BF but not other programs. Looking forward to similar comparisons with non-referenced cars in upcoming weeks. Thanks for sharing.
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It had excellent scaling from 2 to 3 cards, check the numbers again. Metro was the only one which didn't scale at all.
 
Honestly 90 C isn't hot at all. Most GPUs hit that amount. With my overclocked 780s, I am usually in the 85C temperature when using temp target at 95C through EVGA. I am mostly concerned about noise and heating up my other components (for example when I had my GTX 670 SLi, I had to downclock my CPU).

Scaling on the cards is pretty good as well.
 
collegeboy69us said:
these results mean I will be very happy with my crossfire 290 (non X) setup at 1440p :)
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Heh you'll probably be able to maintain 120fps+ in most any game. If you happen to have one of those OC'd Korean 1440p monitors with a 120-144Hz refresh rate you're going to really love it.
 
Jesus....those are some insane Bf4 and Crysis 3 numbers.


What cpu ( overclock) , mobo, ram and ssd are you using?
 
Thanks for the properly relevant benchmarks at 1600 and upscale rendering! As it was said earlier, 1080p results are basically worthless for such setups.
I want to see those screenshots though!!!! :cool:
 
Great results! Can I ask what is the specs of your rig? I'm interested in grabbing another 290x and replacing my 3570k.
 
OK, here are the answers to some of the questions. My systems is:
3930K @ 4.4
Asus P9x79 Pro
32GB RAM
OCZ 1250W PS
Silver stone Raven case ( love this case as board is turned 90 degrees to allow a bottom up airflow, HardOCP has done a review on this case )

290s are form HIS

Temps and noise.
I am running all 3 cards at 1075mhz and temp is 90c under full load. But to get this to stay under 94c and not throttle I have to set max fax at 80%.
Noise, yeah , it is VERY loud. I happen to have my system on the other side of my room so it is over 10ft from where i am sitting. I don't mind it, when gaming it just fades into the background noise, but if i had this sitting next to me it would be too loud. I might go water later on, but not sure yet.

I have not posted any BF4 screens at 1600p with 150% res ( actually last night i was playing at 160% and still maintaining 60fps.) just cause it seems like the only way to put a pic into these forums is to link it to a Http site. which would mean i needs to create an account on a pic sharing site and then up load. If someone has an easy way to upload pics let me know but i just don't have the time for it right now. I have limited time on the computer and would rather use my time gaming, lol. Maybe if i get some more time i will try. But trust me, it is absolutely beautiful !!
 
negachampa said:
Silver stone Raven case ( love this case as board is turned 90 degrees to allow a bottom up airflow,
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I have a FT02 for much the same reason.

Temps and noise.
I am running all 3 cards at 1075mhz and temp is 90c under full load. But to get this to stay under 94c and not throttle I have to set max fax at 80%.
Noise, yeah , it is VERY loud. I happen to have my system on the other side of my room so it is over 10ft from where i am sitting. I don't mind it, when gaming it just fades into the background noise, but if i had this sitting next to me it would be too loud.
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Alas, such a noise level is an absolute killer for me. I had hoped that the vertical orientation would have a considerable benefit. Looking at that motherboard, I see you must have all the GPUs right next to each other. The [H] article recommended a slot free between each card.
 
How do you have your computer on the other side of the room? Wireless keyboard/mouse? What about monitor connection?
 
Yeah, I use extention cables for usb and DVI-D . Both 15 ft. I also have some audio extention cables.

Have had no issues at all using them.
 
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