Eagerly awaiting my second r9 390 :)

So I got a second cheap r9 390 on eBay instead of getting a GTX 1070 and selling off my 390. Anybody else on here have this setup? What is it like with the games you play? Which games do you play? I hear that micro-stutter is really a thing of the past with Crossfire now. I am also wondering what it would be like with VR. Don't have a setup for that, my Dell 1440p IPS panel isn't looking old enough to upgrade yet, at least for gaming.

What games do you play?

Ugh multiGPU has been getting worse not better... and AMD's market share seems to be declining which means they have even less funding.

Vega should launch soon if you like team red. A single powerful card will most likely serve you way better but can't say for sure since you didn't mention what games you play.

I play BF4, Overwatch, and Titanfall 2 usually. I'm looking for the extra horsepower for Mankind Divided, Rise of The Tomb Raider, and Shadow's Of Mordor.

Let's hope Vega turns that around for them.

How much was it?

My stance on mGPU solutions in general are, after using SLI 970's in lieu of a single 980:

1. It's a short-term solution, not a longterm one. mGPU support or not are only ever guarenteed for games that have been released, future games are never certain with mGPU, so evaluating whether mGPU is worth it or not generally is limited by whether the games you currently are planning on playing supports mGPU, leading it to being a short-term solution (improving your immediate gaming experience, not investing in longer term performance, assuming such a term is applicable).

2. Your game choices. Are you in the camp where you buy hardware, and cherry pick games that can take advantage of your hard earned hardware, or are you in the camp where you choose the games you want to play, and go buy hardware that best suits that game, or are you in the "don't know, don't care" camp? mGPU only has firm justification in the first camp, some in the second, and none in the 3rd.

3. It's only really worth going mGPU if a single GPU solution is not possible with what's available on the market, and you absolutely need the performance of the mGPU setup due to the resolution you are running at. Personally, from this angle alone, I would have preferred even a Fury X over a second 390 to crossfire, simply because Fury X is sure going to me better performance in every game I am playing or going to play that is GPU limited.

I also have personal distaste for buying second hand and refurb electronic equipment, but that's not really relevant to the discussion of mGPUs. I definitely would prefer selling my old GPU to buy a brandnew one as opposed to buying a second hand second GPU, regardless of price (my justification is that it only takes 1 dud to make the entire venture pointless and a complete waste of time, so may as well get it right from the start and not bother with them).

The only one of those games I play is Overwatch, and I can say the Crossfire support is amazing there from Blizzard. At 1440p with everything ultra in settings I get 100-120 fps at all times with my 295X2.

I think the primary factor in the efficacy of multiple GPUs is the number of games on plays. The more games you play, the more often you'll get mGPU support. And of course if your favorite games have mGPU then there's more advantage. While mGPU isn't great, it's also far from dead. Obviously you get the most advantage from it when using faster cards and faster cards obviously help when there is no mGPU for a particular game. You seem to be on a certain budget where the second used card might have a good bang for the buck which goes back to the first point, number of games played or favorite games having mGPU support.

There's really no right answer to the question. I personally will continue to go with two higher end cards until it looks like mGPU really is dead.

I got it for around $250 CAD shipped which isn't bad considering I got my first card for roughly $450 CAD brand new. I could have probably paid less if I had decided to mix brands, but I am weirdly picky about things like that, yet ok with buying used equipment. I only really decided to buy used because Powercolors particular implementation of this GPU will aggressively manage clock speeds to keep temperatures under control. I initially had the Asus Strix version of this card and the VRM's got up to 100+ degrees Celsius. :/

I totally understand the angle of Fury over 390, until I start plugging in high resolution texture packs or mods or whatever, which have more room to breathe on the 8GB of VRAM present on the 390. Titanfall 2 insane textures need it, even Black Ops 3 I have had up to 5GB utilization. I am not sure if the HBM would help with that on the Fury or not.

I am also banking boldly on DX12 adoption helping out with mGPU performance consistency. I think that would sort of bypass this whole driver optimization that has to occur for every new title with mGPU right? Correct me if I am wrong.

chili dog said:

How much was it?

Click to expand...

I had a good experience when I had 290X crossfire, worked great in Battlefield 3 at the time. Only game I played that I think I didn't see good gains was Skyrim.

Micro-Stutter is still alive and well. Every time a new GPU comes out people think it's gone. What's actually happening is you're simply pushing much higher FPS where it's virtually eliminated. As time goes by and games get more demanding and your FPS starts going down, that's when you'll immediately notice 60fps on a single GPU feels a lot better than 60fps on multi GPU.

It looks like the three games you bought it for actually support mgpu half decently. You basically got really lucky.

Is that due to frame time variation? Older cards from nvidia tend to tank badly over time with that, because nvidia drops support for old architectures fairly quickly. I am curious to see how this holds up over time.

RamonGTP said:

Micro-Stutter is still alive and well. Every time a new GPU comes out people think it's gone. What's actually happening is you're simply pushing much higher FPS where it's virtually eliminated. As time goes by and games get more demanding and your FPS starts going down, that's when you'll immediately notice 60fps on a single GPU feels a lot better than 60fps on multi GPU.

Click to expand...

Sifting forums around the internet late last night seems to support what you said! I can hardly wait. I might even post some results in this thread. Kind of like a "state of the union" address for mGPU. It has been a while since I had a pair of HD6850's.

Dayaks said:

It looks like the three games you bought it for actually support mgpu half decently. You basically got really lucky.

Click to expand...

spikeline said:

So I got a second cheap r9 390

Click to expand...

Is it that cold in Canada now, that you decided to make a space heater out of your PC?

RamonGTP said:

Micro-Stutter is still alive and well. Every time a new GPU comes out people think it's gone. What's actually happening is you're simply pushing much higher FPS where it's virtually eliminated. As time goes by and games get more demanding and your FPS starts going down, that's when you'll immediately notice 60fps on a single GPU feels a lot better than 60fps on multi GPU.

Click to expand...

Is it still the case that microstutter basically goes away with 3-4 way multi GPU? Back in the GTX 680 / original Titan days, it was very clear that 3-4 GPUs smoothed out microstutter tremendously... in applications that supported 3-4 GPUs. I'm told new Nvidia GPUs don't even support 3 and 4 way SLI, which saddens me....

Caedo said:

Is it still the case that microstutter basically goes away with 3-4 way multi GPU? Back in the GTX 680 / original Titan days, it was very clear that 3-4 GPUs smoothed out microstutter tremendously... in applications that supported 3-4 GPUs. I'm told new Nvidia GPUs don't even support 3 and 4 way SLI, which saddens me....

Click to expand...

I personally have not heard of micro stutter going away with 3 or 4 way SLI but I've never went past 2-way SLI so I can't answer that with any personal experience. What I can say though is scaling goes to shit past 2 GPU's which is probably why NVidia doesn't officially support anything beyond that.

Yeah, it was definitely an older GPU thing. I'll see if I can find some of the older articles of folks measuring the microstutter; if memory serves it first came to light with a Catalyst driver and the 7990 / crossfire 7900 GPUs, but was measurable on any multi-GPU setup.