[SOLVED] Crossfire my old card, or Upgrade?

[ccfabian]

Hey there Guys!

A few Infos about my current System:

Built in 2017
CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 1700
Motherboard: AX-370-Gaming 5
Ram: 32gb (4x8gb)
GPU: PowerColor Radeon RX480

The idea is to upgrade each component, one by one over time, so it can last another 4 Years or so. I have started with a new Mobo ( Gigabyte B550 Pro V2 ) which is arriving in the coming days and I am now making plans for the next hardware.

My question regarding a GPU upgrade, does it make sense to crossfire my current card vs. buying a new one?

The new one I wanted currently costs more than 1000 Euro. Whereby I can find a used Powercolor RX-480 8GB for about 200 Euro giving me also a total 16gb of video ram when paired.

What do you guys think?

 

[DSzymborski]

VRAM doesn't add that way. It's mirrored; you'd still have 8 GB of VRAM.

As for multi-GPU solutions, SLI and Crossfire have been dead for some time. Support ended years ago.

Now, if you're doing non-SLI/Crossfire non-gaming stuff like using it for workstation activities that can utilize GPUs, you'll have more success.

 

[ccfabian]

VRAM doesn't add that way. It's mirrored; you'd still have 8 GB of VRAM.

As for multi-GPU solutions, SLI and Crossfire have been dead for some time. Support ended years ago.

Now, if you're doing non-SLI/Crossfire non-gaming stuff like using it for workstation activities that can utilize GPUs, you'll have more success.

Ah I didn't know that's how it worked with the VRAM

Okay, so even though these are old cards from a time where crossfire was a thing, you are saying I can not get it to work?

 

[DSzymborski]

Ah I didn't know that's how it worked with the VRAM

Okay, so even though these are old cards from a time where crossfire was a thing, you are saying I can not get it to work?

The problem isn't that it won't work, just that it won't do much of anything. Driver support from both Nvidia and AMD ended years ago and support in software has been spotty for even longer than that. If, say, a particular game worked relatively well in 2010 -- the scaling was never very good -- it would still work about the same today. But for most things, you'll get a slim boost at most, and sometimes no change and, once in a while, a negative hit to performance. SLI/Crossfire was always a very small niche and with it never really catching on to a larger percentage of consumers, it's mostly a waste of time on both the hardware and software sides.

 

[ccfabian]

OK, cool. Case closed haha

Thanks

 

[hang-the-9]

I would have started with the video card as an upgrade first. A new motherboard will have just about 0 impact on the PC performance. A $180 (using normal GPU prices that is LOL) 1650 Super is faster than the RX 480