Asus R9 290X paired with a Asus R9 290? or stick with my 970

[GET CARTER]

I currently have a Gigabyte GTX 970 G1 in my rig.

I kind of have an issue with seeing good deals and buying them, so I recently came across a brand new asus r9 290x DirectCU II for a smoking price.. and bought it. In the mean time I have also come across and near identical card Asus R9 290 DirectCU II. When I look up info between the X and Non X they are damn close in specs.

My question is: Would you crossfire the two R9's or would you keep the GTX 970?

 

[Vexillarius]

If your PSU can handle it, Crossfire. A single 290X is already very close to a 970 in raw performance, the added 290 takes you way beyond a single 970.

 

[GET CARTER]

I believe my psu can handle it, I never noticed it was not in my sig.

My current psu is a XFX 850 black Edition but I also have a brand new OCZ 1000W Gold psu that I was thinking of putting in my computer and selling the XFX 850... its just a lot of people say the xfx is a better psu.

I personally hate the ribbon style modular cables.

I do know that if I crossfire the 290X and the 290 that it will only be as powerful as the weakest card which is the 290. But when I compare them online the 290 seems just as powerful as the 290X

 

[GET CARTER]

one problem I currently see is that I plan to purchase a 1440P monitor but it seems there are none above 60hz other than the rog swift which is 144 @ 1440p but it is a g-sync nvidia monitor that I would not utilize with amd cards.

 

[Vexillarius]

850w should be fine unless you're also running an FX-9590 or twenty HDDs or something. I'm not entirely sure on how Crossfire handles differences in clock speed and cores, but even two R9 290s (or one actual 290 and a 290X pretending to be a 290 for Crossfire) will eat a 970 alive.

The XFX is definitely the better PSU, but assuming the OCZ is the OCZ ZX or a different decent-quality one you'll be fine with that one too.

I'm not well versed in monitors, especially above 1080p, so I can't make a recommendation there I'm afraid.

 

[GET CARTER]

Yup the OCZ 1000w is the OCZ ZX Gold Series.

Maybe I should sell my 290x and 970 and purchase a single 980?

 

[Vexillarius]

The 980 is only 10-15% more powerful than a 970, and it's bloody expensive.

If you want a really good single card I'd wait for AMD's R 300 series, which should come out sometime next month. There will probably be an actual significant performance jump with those. By then we'll probably know a bit more about Nvidia's plans as well for the 980 Ti/Titan 2. I'd say it's worth holding out for, especially if you already have 3 high-end cards lying around 😉

 

[GET CARTER]

Ahhh I hate waiting lol. Well maybe I will run my 290x for now and sell the other two and get a monitor.. But I'm sure I will change my mind again.

 

[GET CARTER]

What if I threw in another card: evga titan black sc 6gb (found one of these for $400)


970g1, asus 290x or titan black