Is 290 Xfire really that bad?

Sodapopjones

[H]ard|Gawd
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So I'm really tempted to say fuckit and grab another XFX 290, I have read quite a few bitch stories about Xfire, but for $240 it might be worth it, till Pascal.

So either talk me out of it, or let me loose. I have hacked up my case and have mounted a 200MM NXZT fan directly next to my card now, (It pushes so much air, its bouncing back off the card).
 
if you need it and dont care about the money try it out, if it causes issues can always sell it or deal with it till you upgrade later.
 
there's nothing that affects cf that doesn't also effect sli. the biggest issue is lack of support, or more often in cf's case; a lack of timely support. that said, for those of us who've been on the multi gpu bandwagon a long time, amd's xdma technology is a god send.
 
Performance is great. Support has generally been good, this year has been a bit slower, but now that the 300-series is out I expect more regular updates. They do put off a lot of heat, but if you have two aftermarket cards instead of two reference cards then noise should be tolerable. Since the XFX cards aren't blower-style cards make sure you will have plenty of room between them using your motherboard/case.
 
I have CF 7970s and my experience has been overall really good.

Sure there are some games that don't use it or use it properly, but most of those run fine on even a single card.

Not sure how 290s wouldn't be even better.
 
I never go crossfire or sli.
the drivers cant overcome the technical issues
 
I've had very few issues with my xfire setup. I bought my first card at launch, second one used 7 months later as prices were dropping.

Reference cards are loud, but manageable with headphones (I ran custom fan profiles to avoid throttling) but any non-ref cooled cards, or a wc setup will work great.

My temps with both cards wc'd and oc'd are so low I considered running my fans at 7v to make it even quieter.
 
I had technical issues with sli drivers but generally they all got solved with updates. I haven't had experience with crossfire but I'm assuming its going to be in the same boat from what I read. You will always run in minor issues with a multi-card setup but it all boils down to tweaking your settings. I prefer the one video card setup over a multiple card but it looks like I'm probably gonna have to pick up another amd card and see how crossfire handles with two cards since 4K is so demanding.
 
My xfire 290s work just fine. You may have some issues like not being able to crank up certain settings on launch day but I haven't seen anything make them unplayable yet. Just may take a little googling / tweaking every now and then.

It's easy for people @ 1080p to say go single card but frankly if you are running 4k or eyefinity and want eye candy multi gpu is the only option. Something like a titan x would be your only single gpu option.
 
My xfire 290s work just fine. You may have some issues like not being able to crank up certain settings on launch day but I haven't seen anything make them unplayable yet. Just may take a little googling / tweaking every now and then.

It's easy for people @ 1080p to say go single card but frankly if you are running 4k or eyefinity and want eye candy multi gpu is the only option. Something like a titan x would be your only single gpu option.

Hey Kardonxt,

On your 290x crossfire, how well does it do when adding a smaller display to the main display. Such as a 27" and a 20". Can you still drive the smaller monitor successfully? I had some issues with NVidia but it got fixed whenever they had a driver update a while ago. I'm debating on picking up a 2nd card. But this will be my first time doing crossfire.
 
Not sure. I have used 3 matching monitors in eyefinty and a single 2560x1440. I have never tried a mixed monitor setup. If I have time I'll hook up an old 20 tonight and report back.
 
Not sure. I have used 3 matching monitors in eyefinty and a single 2560x1440. I have never tried a mixed monitor setup. If I have time I'll hook up an old 20 tonight and report back.

Thanks! I had a Dell 30 with two Dell 20"s in SLI for a while. I recently switched back to AMD/ATI but I never had to play with crossfire with multiple monitors. I'm just powering the 40" 4K and a side monitor for monitoring.
 
yes, I had 290 xfire when they were $500 cards. I've had nothing but issues trying to get games to work with it enabled. Yeah, there's a couple that work alright with it enabled.. but even then there's some strange artifacting or texture popping issues. Got some strange color screen going on within a couple games too.

I'd put $500-$600 into ONE card and live happy.

Less issues from developers not supporting it and then drivers being poorly coded or drivers not supporting it ETC ETC.

I cannot get behind xfire.. at least with AMD. I don't have experience using Nvidia so I can't comment there.

But going forward I will always go one card, unless there is some kind of hardware-level support that takes all of the software/driver issues out of the equation of dual card.
 
2x 280x CF and works smoothly enough I forget I'm running CF. Been really nice these last few years.
 
My xfire 290s work just fine. You may have some issues like not being able to crank up certain settings on launch day but I haven't seen anything make them unplayable yet. Just may take a little googling / tweaking every now and then.

It's easy for people @ 1080p to say go single card but frankly if you are running 4k or eyefinity and want eye candy multi gpu is the only option. Something like a titan x would be your only single gpu option.

I could get away with a 980Ti for single card use, but I'm not dumping money into something that's going to be obsolete the second Pascal hits.

I agree though, 1440p and 4k both depending on how you have your settings *Higher FPS for FPS or eyecandy with 4K*, itsn't fun with a single 290 lol.
 
I ran 2 290x's cross-fired for quite a while. They were reference cards with a gelid icy v2 after market coolers installed on each, so minus just the space requirements they were pretty great. I ran at 2560x1440 mostly maxing out the games that I tried. With that being said minus the few random glitches, which I have seen in Nvidia setups as well, I was overall pretty happy and think 4k might have been a possibility for most games (minus the lack of HDMI 2) or display port on most TV's ;). I would say if you can find a second one cheap, give it a try.
 
I recently moved to a 295x2 after swearing off multi-gpu solutions after 10 years experience with sli and Crossfire. My experience with the 295x2 has been pretty good with the exception of a handful of games in which I just revert to a single GPU. I still get the common multi-gpu weirdness (which happens with both sli and Crossfire) e.g., Shadows of Mordor wants to run at an upscaled resolution with the new 15.7 drivers for some reason, but these issues are few and there are almost always workarounds.

In short, I'd say go for it. Two 290s should definitely hold you off nicely until Pascal.
 
i am looking at getting a second 290X,,, but i am still gunshy with dual cards.... the days are twin 9960's kicking arse for pennies are long ago
 
I've been using 290x CF for a year, and I'm yet to find a game that doesn't work or has issues. Yes some games don'T utilize the second GPU, but they still work properly on one even if CF is enabled.
 
290x's xfired and since last November with no real issues. Runs BF4 and GTA5 @ 4k pretty stellar. I usually install the latest drivers within a couple days of release with no issues.

My one word of advice... make sure you have a PSU that can handle both cards.
 
throws off a lot of heat, but gaming is super smooth at 2560X1440 with everything cranked up, I really only play BF4 and GTA5 currently.
 
Since I started using VSR ->4K, I can't go back to 1440p in GTA 5, I just can't. For the moment I gave up on 290 Xfire, maybe 390 Xfire in the future but 4GB of ram is not enough for non FPS games for me. Plus now that I hacked my case, my room is actually cold, I'm not missing much haha.
 
I have quadfire 290x. Love my setup, minus the random issues after upgrading to Windows 10 (randomly, 3 of the cards stop loading on startup, and I have to restart a few times to get them to load - bios detects all four).
 
Hey Kardonxt,

On your 290x crossfire, how well does it do when adding a smaller display to the main display. Such as a 27" and a 20". Can you still drive the smaller monitor successfully? I had some issues with NVidia but it got fixed whenever they had a driver update a while ago. I'm debating on picking up a 2nd card. But this will be my first time doing crossfire.

I have crossfire 290's and three dissimilar monitors. A primary 1440p, and two 1080p smaller ones. No problems playing games on the one screen.

In fact, crossfire is pretty painless for me
 
I've been running a pair of Radeon R9 290x in Crossfire since launch (end up 2013). The only issue I've had was when I tried to play DOTA2 in Eyefinity. It wouldn't scale properly and only used a single GPU. That was fixed a long time ago.

I suppose the bonus will be once multi-adapter Split Frame Rendering hits with the first DX12 titles. The ability to use that 8GB of frame buffer (rather than being limited to 4GB) and the efficient use of both GPUs, without needing to rely on profiles, should offer some pretty intense gaming on your 2 year old hardware.

On another note, my GTX 780 Ti SLI rig has also not had many issues. Sure, there's the odd and rare title where both Crossfire and SLI don't seem to function, but I've always gotten around that with Crossfire by creating my own Crossfire profile using http://www.radeonpro.info/tag/crossfire/.

All-in-all... I'd have to say I've been quite satisfied. The only upgrade I may do, in the future, will be towards either Greenland or Pascal (varying on which architecture pleases me the most).
 
To be honest, I haven't been following the development with DX12, unless there's something I've missed implementation of new DX versions are never rapid and widespread. I'm still going to be stuck with 4GB for some time on major releases.

I do like the fact you wont need to create an xfire profile going forward which is nice, and why I was contemplating going with the 390's, unless like I said there's some type of rapid adoption of DX12 I don't know about.
 
My xfire 290s work just fine. You may have some issues like not being able to crank up certain settings on launch day but I haven't seen anything make them unplayable yet. Just may take a little googling / tweaking every now and then.

It's easy for people @ 1080p to say go single card but frankly if you are running 4k or eyefinity and want eye candy multi gpu is the only option. Something like a titan x would be your only single gpu option.

And even then, two GTX 970 or 980 would probably be faster for less $ unless you really really want to avoid any scaling issues with newer games... ' Course two 980 Ti would be even better.

I haven't yet tried SLI, I had CF HD6950 and moved to R9 290 when prices dropped last year... Right before the GTX 970 launch (/facepalm), but I think the pricing/positioning of the 970 caught many by surprise so I didn't lament it too much.

With both setups I've thought about side-grading at times to a single card (like going to a 980 Ti now) but it's usually not worth it, I'll just ride the R9 290s out until I can get another two cards for $250-$350/each that will actually provide a performance upgrade.

I don't live or die by launch day compatibility tho, most of the time I'm playing games well after they've launched, been patched, divers updated, etc. Running 3x 1920x1200 Eyefinity right now, possibly 4K in the future.

I'll be pleased the day either NV or AMD put out a card for $650 or less that's actually faster than a dual card setup from the same gen for the same $, 980 Ti is probably the closest we've seen and it didn't really launch until half a year later.

Until that happens I'll deal with CF/SLI.
 
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throws off a lot of heat, but gaming is super smooth at 2560X1440 with everything cranked up, I really only play BF4 and GTA5 currently.

You can get rid of most of the heat by enabling FRTC in the drivers. It works on any game that is DX10+ compliant I believe and the game must be run in fullscreen mode. It's under the Performance tab and called Frame Rate. To experiment with it I set the maximum frame rate to 62, left VSYNC off as usual, and fired up some games. All of my games that I ran fullscreen were limited to 62 fps. Computer ran a lot cooler this way.

So if you want to cut back on the heat then give it a try. I didn't notice input lag or erratic behavior with it turned on. AMD says that it makes their cards use significantly less watts of electricity to run.

http://www.amd.com/en-us/innovations/software-technologies/technologies-gaming/frtc
 
It says:

Available on the following products: AMD Radeon™ R9 Fury X GPU, AMD Radeon™ R9 300 Series, AMD Radeon™ R7 300 Series, and AMD Radeon™ R7 260 and above GPUs

Last bit is kinda confusing, it's all Fury/300s then all of a sudden R7 260 and above? :confused:
 
I've had multi GPU from both camps and came back disappointed. I always suggest going top end rather than two slower GPUs.

Especially with the switch to Windows 10/DX12.... You want to be running a single GPU IMO.
 
R9 290 is not bad for the majority of games. The only game that seems to have issues for me is planetside 2. But for that I can just disable a GPU and it runs just fine. Any game with mantle is extremely smooth.

A set of 290s is probably the best value right now in high end graphics. Heat becomes a lot less of a problem if you can undervolt and use FRTC
 
It says:

Available on the following products: AMD Radeon™ R9 Fury X GPU, AMD Radeon™ R9 300 Series, AMD Radeon™ R7 300 Series, and AMD Radeon™ R7 260 and above GPUs

Last bit is kinda confusing, it's all Fury/300s then all of a sudden R7 260 and above? :confused:

They just want to highlight the new cards first, then basically say "everything 200 and newer"
 
CFX 290x/290, worked better than I expected. Allowed me to go to 3440x1440 resolution with great FPS. I do use Frame Rate set at 61 (since my monitor is 60hz it is pointless for the video card to render more FPS then the monitor and cause tearing). Anyways it seems that for games that really require a lot of GPU CFX generally works and many cases rather good. For games that don't support it generally run great anyways on a single gpu. Developers seem to support multiple GPU's when the game really needs it and when it doesn't it becomes pointless for them to worry about it.
 
Does microstutter still exist? At least a few years ago, it was enough to turn me away from dual cards (I had 2 different 2 card setups at and before that time)
 
Does microstutter still exist? At least a few years ago, it was enough to turn me away from dual cards (I had 2 different 2 card setups at and before that time)

Not on the 290 series. They use XDMA crossfire with no bridge, and it worked wonders for Crossfire.

The problem with Crossfire is getting AMD to release profiles for games....they lack in this area....BADLY.

Crossfire right now is smoother then Nvidia SLI. But Nvidia releases SLI profiles WAAAAAYYYYY quicker then AMD. So it's a trade off.
 
The only problem I have is I am using a reference R9 290. As a single card, it is great. However, I tried in crossfire once and they ran way to hot in my Fractal Design Define r3 case. This is wild too considering I was able to run 2 x 2900 Pro flash to XT clocks in a smaller case without overheating. (I did the same with an 4870 and 4890 crossfire without overheating.)
 
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