Titan X vs R9 295x2 CF

[likes0079]

Since the benchmark for Titan X came out, and I never had any AMD/ATI cards, should I give it a try with two 295X2 over the up coming Titan X?

I don't mind the heat output and power efficiency, just needing pure performance for gaming and very little 3D modeling.
PSU: Corsair 1200AXi
Will also put a custom block on either the Titan X or both 295x2.
It seems like the cost difference of these two set-up varies from $250~$350 (295x2 CF more expensive)

 

[chenw]

More like $700

 

[bishopi5]

More like $700

sucks living in aus, 1100 for meh

 

[chenw]

Ouch, although Taiwan isn't faring much better either, my pair of 970's costed $900 in total....

Ironic, as JHH is Taiwanese, and MSI is also Taiwanese lol...

EVGA is much closer to US price though, about $350 for the ref.

 

[likes0079]

But you won't be able to run at 4k with dual 970s

 

[bishopi5]

if u cant run 4k with 970's you can;t run 4k with 980's, 500mb of "faster" vram won't help a huge amount, and a good o/c 970 can get much faster then stock 980

 

[likes0079]

if u cant run 4k with 970's you can;t run 4k with 980's, 500mb of "faster" vram won't help a huge amount, and a good o/c 970 can get much faster then stock 980

...I got two 980 under water with about 10% OC on both core and VRAM. I still can't run everything 4k... so I said, 970's cant do cuz my 980's with stable OC can't do...... And I don't know why you limit the 980 at stock tho... and don't know why you starts a debate abt 980 vs 970....vram

 

[bishopi5]

if u cant run 4k with 970's you can;t run 4k with 980's, 500mb of "faster" vram won't help a huge amount, and a good o/c 970 can get much faster then stock 980

...I got two 980 under water with about 10% OC on both core and VRAM. I still can't run everything 4k... so I said, 970's cant do cuz my 980's with stable OC can't do...... And I don't know why you limit the 980 at stock tho... and don't know why you starts a debate abt 980 vs 970....vram

all you did was confirm what i said... " if you cant run 4k with 2x 970's you cant run 4k with2x 980's "
and they both have the same vram, the 500mb slower vram has been blown way out of proportion, that along with the fact that my 970 runs 14%faster then a STOCK 980 means even once o/c it wasn't easy to beat the performance of the 970 at double the price.

 

[leeb2013]

if u cant run 4k with 970's you can;t run 4k with 980's, 500mb of "faster" vram won't help a huge amount, and a good o/c 970 can get much faster then stock 980

So why wouldn't you overclock the 980s then?

 

[Vici0us]

Linus did a overview with the card.. Titan X has numerous heating and voltage problems.. It's like the Asus 760 MARS.. Cool idea but 12GB is hardly practical or useful.

Anyways it seems like, everyone on this forum hates R9 295X2 or AMD cards. Just pick whichever one suits your wallet better, judging by benchmarks R9 295X2 is still faster then Titan X in most games.
I have a buddy with QuadFire R9 295X2 and he's running 4K beautifully, he's amazed with the horse power of the cards and has not experienced any problems with drivers, stuttering, etc. He's had QuadFire for about 5 or more months now.

 

[renz496]

I never really understood this part. Why do we need a Crossfire/SLI profile for every single game? Why doesn't it work directly through some "program" in the driver itself? If they can incorporate G-Sync via add-in hardware for a monitor, they can incorporate this. The GPU's their own, after all. And NVIDIA drivers do work even if the board is not reference(board I'm talking about, not cooler).

well GSync only dealing with frame rates and monitor refresh rate. multigpu are much more complex than that. and most game engine are not developed to take advantage of multi gpu config (unlike multi core CPU). and the new UE4 is much more less multi gpu friendly than UE3.

https://forums.unrealengine.com/showthread.php?29105-Crossfire-support-
https://answers.unrealengine.com/questions/21746/does-the-ue4-engine-support-sli.html

 

[renz496]

Linus did a overview with the card.. Titan X has numerous heating and voltage problems.. It's like the Asus 760 MARS.. Cool idea but 12GB is hardly practical or useful.

Anyways it seems like, everyone on this forum hates R9 295X2 or AMD cards. Just pick whichever one suits your wallet better, judging by benchmarks R9 295X2 is still faster then Titan X in most games.
I have a buddy with QuadFire R9 295X2 and he's running 4K beautifully, he's amazed with the horse power of the cards and has not experienced any problems with drivers, stuttering, etc. He's had QuadFire for about 5 or more months now.

not really. both have their own advantage and disadvantage. 295x2 indeed is a very powerful solution but the fact it needs crossfire to really shine is a valid concern to some. before they release the driver for FreeSync AMD has not releasing any drivers since Omega. the price for 295x2 has since dropped since it's first comes out but paying $600+ for a gpu still not cheap by any mean. when you pay such money on GPU you would expect to have full support from the company you buy the GPU from not waiting for every 3 months before you can take advantage the GPU full power everytime you want to play new games.

 

[Vici0us]

Linus did a overview with the card.. Titan X has numerous heating and voltage problems.. It's like the Asus 760 MARS.. Cool idea but 12GB is hardly practical or useful.

Anyways it seems like, everyone on this forum hates R9 295X2 or AMD cards. Just pick whichever one suits your wallet better, judging by benchmarks R9 295X2 is still faster then Titan X in most games.
I have a buddy with QuadFire R9 295X2 and he's running 4K beautifully, he's amazed with the horse power of the cards and has not experienced any problems with drivers, stuttering, etc. He's had QuadFire for about 5 or more months now.

not really. both have their own advantage and disadvantage. 295x2 indeed is a very powerful solution but the fact it needs crossfire to really shine is a valid concern to some. before they release the driver for FreeSync AMD has not releasing any drivers since Omega. the price for 295x2 has since dropped since it's first comes out but paying $600+ for a gpu still not cheap by any mean. when you pay such money on GPU you would expect to have full support from the company you buy the GPU from not waiting for every 3 months before you can take advantage the GPU full power everytime you want to play new games.

It's not like, they BS for 3 months everytime. It happens here and there but even now I don't experience any problems with Crossfire. I'm sure if there were major problems with Crossfire, they would have released something by now.

 

[likes0079]

if u cant run 4k with 970's you can;t run 4k with 980's, 500mb of "faster" vram won't help a huge amount, and a good o/c 970 can get much faster then stock 980

...I got two 980 under water with about 10% OC on both core and VRAM. I still can't run everything 4k... so I said, 970's cant do cuz my 980's with stable OC can't do...... And I don't know why you limit the 980 at stock tho... and don't know why you starts a debate abt 980 vs 970....vram

all you did was confirm what i said... " if you cant run 4k with 2x 970's you cant run 4k with2x 980's "
and they both have the same vram, the 500mb slower vram has been blown way out of proportion, that along with the fact that my 970 runs 14%faster then a STOCK 980 means even once o/c it wasn't easy to beat the performance of the 970 at double the price.

ALL U DID WAS CONFIRM WHAT I SAID?
1. my original post is abt the 295x2 and titan x... dual 970 are no where near close to any of these two setup
2. B4 you quoted me the first time, I said 970 can't run 4k. I did not say anything comparing 980 and the 970... I ain't arguing what the FACT you stated, I am saying your response is odd and irrelevant.
3. The whatever double the price and this whole stock 980 ... common, 980 owner will OC their 980.. And they don't need to rely on SLI driver...(well there's another debate about whether this is an issue or not, since all demanding major titles have SLI driver, those don't have, probably aint that graphical demanding.)
I agree 970 is a really good price/performance card even at dual 970 vs 980 I would still agree with you. However, at 4k, it is not enough whatsoever.

 

[likes0079]

Linus did a overview with the card.. Titan X has numerous heating and voltage problems.. It's like the Asus 760 MARS.. Cool idea but 12GB is hardly practical or useful.

Anyways it seems like, everyone on this forum hates R9 295X2 or AMD cards. Just pick whichever one suits your wallet better, judging by benchmarks R9 295X2 is still faster then Titan X in most games.
I have a buddy with QuadFire R9 295X2 and he's running 4K beautifully, he's amazed with the horse power of the cards and has not experienced any problems with drivers, stuttering, etc. He's had QuadFire for about 5 or more months now.

not really. both have their own advantage and disadvantage. 295x2 indeed is a very powerful solution but the fact it needs crossfire to really shine is a valid concern to some. before they release the driver for FreeSync AMD has not releasing any drivers since Omega. the price for 295x2 has since dropped since it's first comes out but paying $600+ for a gpu still not cheap by any mean. when you pay such money on GPU you would expect to have full support from the company you buy the GPU from not waiting for every 3 months before you can take advantage the GPU full power everytime you want to play new games.

That's my concern with this whole picking gpu solution, just because I didn't know AMD doesn't actually update their drivers regularly on major titles.
I have no issue with them not covering as many games as nVidia does since a single 290x is more than capable of "non-graphical demanding games" etc, LOL, Smite and pretty much all MMORPG/MOBA.

But you are right, the whole AMD not paying attention to their "supposedly" flagship card scares me.

 

[renz496]

Linus did a overview with the card.. Titan X has numerous heating and voltage problems.. It's like the Asus 760 MARS.. Cool idea but 12GB is hardly practical or useful.

Anyways it seems like, everyone on this forum hates R9 295X2 or AMD cards. Just pick whichever one suits your wallet better, judging by benchmarks R9 295X2 is still faster then Titan X in most games.
I have a buddy with QuadFire R9 295X2 and he's running 4K beautifully, he's amazed with the horse power of the cards and has not experienced any problems with drivers, stuttering, etc. He's had QuadFire for about 5 or more months now.

not really. both have their own advantage and disadvantage. 295x2 indeed is a very powerful solution but the fact it needs crossfire to really shine is a valid concern to some. before they release the driver for FreeSync AMD has not releasing any drivers since Omega. the price for 295x2 has since dropped since it's first comes out but paying $600+ for a gpu still not cheap by any mean. when you pay such money on GPU you would expect to have full support from the company you buy the GPU from not waiting for every 3 months before you can take advantage the GPU full power everytime you want to play new games.

It's not like, they BS for 3 months everytime. It happens here and there but even now I don't experience any problems with Crossfire. I'm sure if there were major problems with Crossfire, they would have released something by now.

i'm not talking about stability or performance issue with CF. i'm talking more about crossfire profiles. for a single GPU setup even without driver updates you can run games without problem if there is no major bug that need driver update. but that is different story with multi gpu setup. you can try forcing the game to use CF/SLI but it might lead to other problem like flickering or other annoying graphical glitch. being late with drivers is quite known with AMD. the mantra 'if you don't mind waiting for a bit" can often be heard when people talking about AMD driver support. i still remember that they were late with drivers for skyrim in the past. and that is a game that many gamer would like support from both AMD and nvidia on day launch. personally i just hope AMD step their game in regard to this. some people might be okay with it but to some that might swing them to the green team solution.

 

[rbarnhart]

This discussion has gone off the rails. The fact is, any single card solution will generally be better and have less driver/performance issues than any dual card solution.

This is true of crossfire AND sli. In fact, crossfire is better performing than sli currently when a proper profile is available, but both camps are guilty of poor optimization across a variety of titles, take far cry 4 as a perfect example.

So, if you want the opportunity or "chance" for peak performance the 295x2 is the current king, but if you want consistent performance that is not that far off, then the Titan X is your choice.

There are more products from both team green and team red coming soon, so I see no need to rush into buying either, especially if this card is for gaming.

AMD is going to release their next generation of products and I do not think Nvidia is going to lag in response the way they did to the AIB versions of the r9 290x (I am suggesting here that the 780 Ti was the closest response, but price to performance not an actual overcoming of its competitor. This because the cards traded lumps across games, and at higher resolutions and refresh rates [why you buy these cards, do not buy them to game at 1080p], they were evenly matched with the r9 290x being much cheaper, were it not for the coin miners).

So consider what you need the card to do and whether or not you will be fine with a dual card solution of any kind from either side that has to wait on driver updates and support. Both sides can be chastised on that point.

 

[MKeehl]

Yeah, waiting for that long without a PC, not happening with me, lol. Plus I want to see how Nvidia is doing these days since I just switched sides AMD might and possibly be better, but without DP 1.3, all that GPU power is pretty pointless.

I'm with you on this one, but I'm not an enthusiast. For an enthusiast it's much more important to wait. My criteria is pretty much any DP 1.3 that retails below $500, the first one on the shelf is the one I'll get. Will probably be R9 300 lets see in a few months... hopefully.

PS: I plan to play games with high refresh rate on 4K+ with my "high-end but still not enthusiast card", just not the latest (open world) AAA games. Something like Heroes of the Storm or DoTA, for Star Citizen I'll probably have to drop to 1080p. Anyway good luck on making the right choice

 

[dr230]

Wait for the next generation then. The second 295X2 will go to waste. Better get a single 980, save the remaining money, or get a single Titan X(although I'm not a fan of the excessive VRAM, it never goes above 6GB in any game).

GTA 5 is using over 6GB Vram at 4k with everything maxed plus a little MSAA on textures and reflections.. I know atleast one person who likes some anti-aliasing at 4k. 😉

Wait for the R9 390x which may be here sometime between june-august.. Maybe. 😛 Even that now is rumoured to have 8GB instead of the initial 6 when info first surfaced! Its a good move for those adopting 4k/5k tech now.

 

[englandr753]

I just picked up the following at my local Microcenter today:

Asus Rampage V Extreme mobo
5930K CPU
Crucial Ballistix 32G ram
Corsair H110i GT cooler

My Sapphire R9 295x2 came today from newegg as well.

I hope to get together tomorrow and possibly post some benchmarks.

You can do like me and put a single 290x in trifire with it and get much better scaling and blow away the titan x single card setup for about the same price as the titan.

I'll do my best to get this rig together and post some benchmarks.

 

[chenw]

That would be theory, in practice third GPU in either Crossfire or SLI scales half as much as the second card (EG your first card would be 100% of base performance of 1 card, 2 would be around say 160% on average, 3rd would be around 190%).

 

[englandr753]

Youre correct, it is theory but benchmarks here is good enough for me. I already owned the r9 290x so it was an easy decision for me to go with the R9 295x2. The titan is a solid path to go if you are starting ground zero with the idea to drop a 2nd one in later.

http://www.tweaktown.com/tweakipedia/80/amd-radeon-r9-295x2-versus-geforce-gtx-titan-sli-6480x3840/index.html

 

[gatygun]

The reason why benchmarks are insane high resolutions is to combat the bottleneck on cpu department. 2x 295x2 needs a beast of a cpu to get any performance out of that second card let alone the last gpu on the card. But the high resolution also gives another issue that is v-ram limitation.

The best solution to test is to test games to have zero bottleneck on cpu department + below 4gb barrier. But not much benchmarks really reflect this at all.

Murdering the 295x2 in cf with 6000x4000 pixels is absolutely worthless as the v-ram will bottleneck on the 295x2 which results again in not getting the raw gpu output the card can deliver.

Dx12 will fix this tho.

Still i wouldn't advice to go 4gpu card department and avoid it like the plague unless you just like to benchmark it for fun. Because for games it really is a terrible idea to go for. Either you have miccrostutter, or the second gpu's wreck your framerate, or visual bugs etc etc, there really are just a handful of select games that are old that work well with it, but even then the lag keeps coming forwards now and then.

With 2 gpu's max, and your budget beying 1500 dollars, i would suggest either do the following:

Either go 2x 980's, 1x titan x or 1x 295x2 or wait on 395x2.

Options to go for:

2x 980's:

Put watercooling blocks on it ( if you got watercooling yourself ) to oc them really well, fastest solution to go for under a 1500 budget.

Price: 1000 for 980's, 300 for waterblocks = 1400 dollars

295x2:

As it already has watercooling but for really high oc solutions get a costum loop block which costs about 150 euro's ( if you got water cooling ) and make the card perform stock 980 sli speeds on higher resolutions and 970 stock on lower resolutions. There is a good 20% performance increase to get on both gpu's easily.

By far the cheapest solution with the most raw performance to go for.

Price: 570 for 295x2 and 150 for waterblock = 720 dollars.

Titan x:

While expensive the card heats up pretty darn high when you oc it even a little bit, putting a waterblock on it is a must. You get a lot more performance also out of it which also would add 150 with it. It will yield in lower resolutions lower performance then 2x 980's / or 295x2 but will be more stable because of a single gpu solution and on higher resolutions it will mirror the performance of those dual gpu cards but still fall behind a bit if v-ram isn't a issue.

Price: 1200 dollars + 150 = 1350 dollars.

My conclusion = wait for 395x2, hope it's under the 1500 dollars and buy that card. It will be way faster then anything on the market atm. Think about Oc'ed titan x sli performance.