7990 still worth it?

[skittle101]

Just wondering if the 7990 is still a option.

 

[Joseph DeGarmo]

Not really. Go for the Fury X or GTX 980 Ti instead. If you need more performance, two GTX 970s in SLI is also an option.

 

[photonboy]

Depends what you are paying for it.

In general I recommend the best SINGLE GPU solution you can afford even if multi-GPU gets you higher frame rates.

I would get the GTX980Ti over the Fury X. A lot of reviewers have said that the GTX980Ti beats it slightly on average and that is before overclocking which the GTX980Ti does better.

The GTX980Ti also has more features (PhysX etc), and has more VRAM. AMD has stated that 4GB will not be an issue but tests in GTA5 using settings that eat more than 4GB caused the frame rate to PLUMMET relative to the 980Ti (6FPS vs 17FPS... okay not playable either way but the point is the lack of VRAM was an issue).

The ONLY benefit to the Fury X I see is that it is relatively QUIET. I appreciate that but then I would personally just spend 15% more and buy the EVGA Hybrid 980Ti which can overclock to about 1500MHz and get about 25% higher performance!

 

[skittle101]

The only reason I'm considering a upgrade is I.Can get the 7990 for $350 and for the performance I get out of it it seem like a great upgrade over my 7970

 

[Joseph DeGarmo]

The 7990 is basically two 7970s in CF. You can save money and crossfire your GPU with another 7970.

 

[skittle101]

But once I sell my 7970 for about $200-$250 it will work out cheaper than buying a 2nd 7970

 

[renz496]

You can even combine it with your current 7970 making it into 7970 3 way crossfire setup. But as usual you will need quite big PSU for it. And the most crucial are CF profile. When we talk about CF profile (drivers) this is the area where AMD will drop the ball sometimes. For example earlier this year crossfire user have no CF profile for games that launch early 2015 for almost three months. (Before AMD comes out with 15.3 beta the last AMD driver release was Omega in December 2014). The decision is yours to make but at least you should know what kind of trouble you can get before going multi gpu route. This is true for both AMD and nvidia.

 

[skittle101]

I'm aware of amds CF support but when the 7990 works in cf is it still a high end card

 

[Joseph DeGarmo]

3-way CF has poor scaling in most situations. Even 3-way SLI with NVIDIA cards are not really worth it, except in a few games. You can sell your current 7970 towards a 7990 or even an R9-295X2, which is better than a 7990. But in terms of cooling and power efficiency, it's better to get a single GTX 980 Ti or Fury X.

 

[renz496]

Nah I just suggesting that since OP already got one 7970 to start with. With the third card you could probably expect 20-30% more performance from on top of dual card performance. But if you don't have faster cpu to back it up the plan might back fired with of negative scaling

@OP If you were thinking of new card I think it is better for you to get at least GCN 1.1 based card. GCN 1.0 such as 7970 while still have formidable performance it is getting less and less supported by AMD.