Crossfire R9 280 OC or Go with a R9 290x?

[dachiesa]

Question:

I currently own an R9 280 OC GPU that is working well enough on my budget. When I have time and money, I want to upgrade.

Would it be better to Upgrade to a crossfire ready motherboard, and purchase another R9 280 for Crossfire with my current gpu?

Or would I get more performance Upgrading direcly to a R9 290X OC (like the one from Sapphire that's on sale now for 279) and upgrade my motherboard later (and possibly adding another one for crossfire in the very long run)

Eventually I would upgrade my motherboard to support Crossfire, eventually. I'm just wondering if the performance of Crossfire'd R9 280's would be more than a single R9 290X OC.

The advantage of going crossfired 280's seems to be the expense, since they are cheaper (though I think I would have to upgrade my 750W power supply too)

The advantage of upgrading to the 290x would be that when I upgrade my motherboard later, I would be able to crossfire these, and my second one might be much less expensive at that time. For the short term I could enjoy better performance (or not?)

As you can tell, I like to keep things fairly on a budget, and I'm guessing the new stuff amd and intell are coming out with are going to be pretty expensive for the first two years or so.

Anyhow, thanks for reading. Is there anything else I should be thinking about?

 

[Dazinek]

If there is no bottleneck currently on the motherboard then get the r9 290x.

My suggestion tho is wait until late juneish for amd to release there r9 300 series.

 

[coozie7]

Please provide full system specs, a high calibre graphics system needs fast CPU to keep it fed and a large/fast monitor (or thirst for anti aliasing) to make the big card work at its best.

Personally I don't like multi GPU setups, they add a layer of problems to gaming and are not consistent, they scale well in some games but in others you're essentially no better off with the extra card/s. Factor in the higher power consumption and all too real cooling problems and, to my mind, it's better to have a single, consistent, well cooled and fast card.

With no urgency, I'd wait until AMD release their new stuff, (WORD on the net is June 15) then appraise the situation again.

 

[TNT27]

Id say wait for the 300 series, r9 280 is still very capable of pushing 60+ frames on high/mostly ultra settings in any game out there 1080p.

I personally just start thinking about upgrading when the most demanding game out there I have to lower to mostly medium settings.

 

[dachiesa]

Thanks for the replies.

In terms of my current system specs, I'll put them here, but I'm talking about a new build eventually, which is why I was vague. I just wanted to find out how to think about crossfire/cards.

FX 6300 OC'd to 4.4ghz 1.3v low llc (planning to upgrade to either fx 8320 or i5 4690k)
Hyper 212 Evo on that
Gigabyte GA 970A D3P
8GB Gskill Ram @ 1600 dual channel
Powercolor R9 280 OC @ 1150core, 1425mem
250GB SSD Crucial B100
1 TB WD HDD
750W psu (rosewill)
Rosewill challenger case with a lot of fans
The idea right now would be to upgrade the cpu to i5 4690k (or fx 8320) or a suitable equivalent

And the advice about upgrading when I really need to is probably good--my R9 280 is actually kicking butt in Star Citizen Arena Commander at the moment, I was just thinking ahead for a year or two from now when I decide to make improvements.

 

[TNT27]

I wouldnt go with amd cpu right now,

I also suggest looking into the Xeon 1231, about same prices as that unlocked i5 4690k, but it has same performance as i7 4770, which is 8 threaded and will blow away the fx 8350 in everything.

If you want to save some money the i5 4460 is actually a good choice too, will still perform beter than the fx in most games, and slighlty behind in multi tasking.

Th 6/8 core FX are great cpu, but they are old architecture, poor ipc (this can be helped with oc), tend to use more power, weaker performance in most games due to the ipc, on older motherboards.

FX are great if you need a workstation on extreme budget

 

[coozie7]

@ dachiesa: TNT27 posted a few moments after me, but I agree with his thoughts, and your decision; right now you really don't need to upgrade, so stick with what you have until you DO.
I admire forward planning but you're looking too far ahead, PC hardware moves at a frightening pace and the stuff due for release this year (new AMD cards June, new Intel CPUs a little later and Nvidia parts within a few months at most) will be a generation or even two old in two years time.

Right now I'd hold off on the i5 upgrade, it's a better CPU than the AMD FX series that's true but with the new Intel parts due so soon and your system still 'kicking butt' 😉 I feel you should at least wait until the new parts become available and the reviews are in before making any solid decisions.

 

[dachiesa]

Thanks guys