No. *checks down there* still no. Crossfire and SLI are dead. From the moment we switched to the new consoles they were pretty much dead. See, with an old console the architecture was entirely different to a PC. Games are made in chunks (piles and piles of code, textures etc) and some of it can be used when compiling for a PC (say, textures, sounds etc). However, other code that handles the graphics and CPU and so on can not be used so must therefore be completely rewritten from scratch. Now when that used to be done (from say a PS4 game or Xbox 360) massive portions of code had to be written for the game to work on a PC. It's not a port, it's literally the code the PC needs to make the game work. And this was lots of work and this was why some devs bailed on the PC market completely, some made stinker "ports" and some made half decent attempts. Either way, adding AFR (alternative frame rendering) to that code as they were doing it any way was viable. This was why for many years SLi was fantastic and when AMD sorted out the runt and dropped frame issue it too was very good. However. This new breed of games require pretty much nothing to run on a PC. The consoles use an X86 based CPU and GPU and therefore you can literally take the exe (not absolutely literally but you get my drift) and then run it straight on a PC almost. As such it means far less work to practically no work to make it work on a PC. Thus, we have not been getting AFR friendly games ever since the very latest console "ports" came out. And as such, unless Nvidia/AMD pester/pay for this support game devs are simply not bothering to add it. SLi lately has been better than Crossfire but only because a lot of PC games lately have been Nvidia Gamedoesntwork. Crossfire on the other hand has been absolutely dire. Non existent, because AMD have not been courting game devs and getting them to implement it and the result is it simply doesn't work. When you look on AMD's driver page for advice it literally tells you to disable Crossfire in all of the latest games. So yeah, kind of long winded and a bit of a rant article but please, DO NOT waste your money on Crossfire as we know it as Crossfire as we knew it is dead. Now if you are talking mGPU from DX12? well that works in the one properly done DX12 game (Ashes of the Singularity). If you are talking ways of handling more than one GPU in Vulkan or Liquid VR? those are coming too. However, they are not here yet and could take a year or two in the very least before they start using more than one GPU. So that is pretty much where we are at at the moment. It's not worth buying more than one of any GPU, and people on 4k are still left chasing their tails hoping the 1080ti will be as fast as they hope.
You could start with one and add another later if needed. That's what I did with the 5770's but my only concern is multicard support in games became very hit-and-miss after a while, which was really annoying (hence the single 580).
Definitely pumped for this, might have to upgrade my trusty 660GTX for one of these, keeping the colour changing pattern going!
Before the 1080 and 1070 wasn't the quickest setup for ashes a 980ti and a fury X giving 5 more fps than either card in direct SLI or CFX. From what I remember of the older benches
I would ignore the ashes benches if you want to go crossfire. And actually see the games you play are crossfire enabled. Vault is biggest AMD fan here and he would not recommend it. If games go the ashes route then crossfire is very viable as is SLI. Problem is no recent launch supports either. Need for speed finally got SLI support as did just cause 3 but the performance benefits in either are sketchy at best. Think ashes will be more a exception than a given though. Tomb raider and Hitman are both dx12 none support CFX or SLI.
I've crossfired everything from 3870's to 290's and on the whole it's been pretty good, if the 480's don't work I will just sell them, but for the price it's got to be worth a go
I'm interested to see if they actually overclock. Over the past few years AMD really haven't left in much meat for overclockers. Also, FWIW I would not buy the 480 just yet. I really can't see AMD developing a whole technology just for one GPU and would be amazed if they are done yet. IMO they have a card better than the RX 480 (maybe a RX 480x or 490) and are holding their cards close to their chest to see what Nvidia do with the 1070. I know from what I have read that it probably won't be as fast as the 1070 but it could be close and will only cost another £50 or so making it a much better budget option than running two of these in Crossfire. As for Crossfire? I'm really growing tired of repeating myself. Please for the love of god do not touch it until we see what transpires in the future because right now it is a complete waste of time and electricity.
https://youtu.be/nUG9jgERvEQ R9 Nano performance for $199 If you follow the Reddit link you can see why this story could hold water. Basically a Chinese guy has got a aftermarket 8gb MSI card and doesn't want to break the NDA on the MSI cooler or what not. So he removed the stock cooler and bodged on a 290x Lightning cooler. Here is a stock 290x Lightning. And the MSI 8gb 480X with the cooler bodged on. This is apparently why the card is hitting 90c, because some one with a 290x Lightning explained that only one of the heat pipes could be on the core.
AMD have asked him to remove all the posts and the videos showing the performance. I wonder why that would be, Performance is showing AMD in a good light. Not happy to see a 8pin and 6pin power connectors on a mid range card though.
Yeah that part is kind of strange. However, if it aids with overclocking then all's the better IMO. It's been quite a while since AMD have offered a GPU that offered any sort of meaningful overclocking because they've always released their cards pushed hard stock but I will be very interested to see how Polaris overclocks. However, it's good news to me either way. It shows MSI are making a large variant of the card with a decent sized cooler on. I don't think it's AMD he is trying to hide from I think it could just be the design of the MSI card and the cooler he is trying to hide. Some are saying that reviews could come soon, and the NDA for the 29th could actually be the 490. I remember seeing a benchmark list. Either Firestrike or 3DM11 and at the bottom end of it there was a AMD card. Then toward the mid to top end there was another AMD card, then two AMD cards right near the top that had the same DEV_ID as the card toward the bottom. If that was not faked then AMD have a card that will sit between the 480 and the 1070. And, it could be the rumoured $300 card that AMD hinted toward months ago. It was quite critical that they kept the performance of both under wraps though IMO. If they let too much slip then Nvidia could have countered with the 1060 and 1070. However, now that the 1070 cat is out of the bag that leaves AMD free to release the 490, spank the 1070 in price and make Nvidia look the greedy outfit they really are. I don't really care too much about the performance of the 480 now tbh. It doesn't matter to me and I doubt I will be buying one as I could be downsizing my place soon and will likely only have one rig but this is very important for gaming. A few years back you could go out and buy a Clarkdale I3 and board with a 7850 for £500 all in. Overclock the CPU and you basically had a rig that could run any game maxed out for £500. Now? that same sort of rig is an I5 and 970 and costs a grand. The entry level for high end gaming has doubled in price. If AMD can knock out a reasonably priced quad core Zen chip for cheap we could well be headed back to the £500 gaming rig maxed out days. That to me is far more exciting than anything Nvidia have done. All they have done is shown that they can make stupid levels of performance for stupid prices. The cheaper PC gaming is the more people get into it. The more people get into it the better prospect it becomes and that attracts more games and better games. PC gaming should be about fun, not snobbery and showing off.
1080p gaming can still be done for £500 depending on games you want to play. AMD are not releasing Zen as a Quad core chip is what most reports are saying. 6 core and 8 core chips will be first out of the door. We may even see a 10 core chip is what rumours are suggesting. Zen is AMDs play at the high end, it wont be cheap if it comes near skylake expect near skylake prices. If AMD offers a true 6 core cpu for £300 thats a huge win for AMD. More so if they can get back some of the single core performance that they have given up over the years. The APU range covers the low end of the market, It will do for a few years to come with small updates. CPU performance in this section is plenty for the target. Its once you get to the mid range that the FX chips do not really contest on anything but price.
Half decent Intel bundle is £250-£300 (I3) and struggles in the very latest games. R9 390 costs around £240, 970 costs more. That's before you add PSU, case and so on. For the past 18 months Nvidia have been the cards to have. However, the 960 was pretty dire so you still needed a 970 to absolutely max out 1080p or entry level VR. That's because of two things. Firstly Intel have no competition and Nvidia only sort of had competition. Don't blame AMD for that that's like blaming poor people because there are rich people. The highlight of PC gaming for me was when AMD had Athlon XP and ATI were kicking serious behind on £ per performance. Back then you could build an entire gaming PC for £300 or less. If AMD can crack out a decent reasonably priced quad core CPU we could actually see that again. And that will do more for PC gaming and VR than Nvidia dream of. It's funny really. I'm more excited about stuff I doubt I will ever use than Pascal. That's Nvidia's fault.
Max out what the 3 most popular games on pc are Dota 2, League of legends and World of warcraft. a APU can max out all 3 games at 1080p no problem. Counter strike closely follows behind another game a APU could max. Not sure why a AMD fan like you would undersell that? The amount of people that plays the latest and greatest graphical games is slim to 0 in comparison. Ashes has less than 5000 players playing it on steam does not even make the top 90 list. League has more concurrent players than Steam concurrent Users. ( 15million concurrent vs 10.8 million concurrent.) AMD fans do not even know AMDs target market is funny. There APUs are perfectly acceptable for 1080 gaming at medium settings and do not need to cost the earth. Even capable for 720p gaming which is still very popular. Please price check both R9390 and 970. R9390 is alot less than the 970 by about £30 minimum. I am better at promoting AMD than you are lol. AMD has a target market its just not us at the moment in cpus anyway.
Why do you continually bang on about me being an AMD fan? You do realise that both of my gaming rigs are Intel based, yes? My main gaming rig has a Titan X in it yet you continually make snide remarks about me being an AMD fan. Please, stop with the nonsense. I am a PC gamer. I love technology. However, I want there to be more of us. I am only excited about Polaris because of where it will end up. It will give PC gaming a real shot in the arm. I've been openly critical of both companies. However, if you think I will lavish Nvidia with praise for releasing a £620 card that they get first dibs on bumming the market with then you're wrong. With Pascal Nvidia did it all wrong. With what I've seen from AMD with Polaris they've nailed it so far. http://www.forbes.com/sites/jasonev...-campaign-incites-gpu-rebellion/#45e8c4d71c8d Says it all really.
Indeed, just look at what the actually most played games are... (in no particular order) CS:Go League of Legends Dota 2 TF2 WoW Overwatch Minecraft and so on Not one of them would struggle to run at 1080p (or even 1440p) on a £500 PC. Of course Witcher 3 at 4K would be completely unplayable, but yep we certainly shouldn't forget that there are tons of games that run just fine on "bargain" hardware.
470 benchmarks. http://www.guru3d.com/news-story/radeon-rx-470-benchmarks.html This card should cost £100-£150 meaning we have a new 5770. It's a shame that Crossfire is so badly broken right now.. Other gossip/possible facts. Apparently there are going to be two types of 480. Your stock standard 4gb model which follows the power spec quoted by AMD and then some sort of 480 "Beast Mode" card. The latter is apparently the one that rivals the Nano's performance and sits just under the Fury X. This would explain a lot actually, especially if there is no 490. A couple of months back (and they've been posted here recently) I saw a benchmark table with an AMD part between the 970 and 980. Higher up the chart there was a different card with a different DEV_ID that sat just below a 980ti. Then above that two cards sharing the same DEV_ID as the bottom one. Now this could also explain the leak video I posted recently, showing a 290X Lightning cooler cobbled onto a card with an 8 and 6 pin. Pretty much every one immediately jumped up and cried foul, because why would Polaris need an 8 and 6 pin connector? Well, it could be simple logic. The 6 pin 1266mhz model could be like that to increase performance per watt optimally, whilst adding an 8 pin may allow ridiculous clock speeds (but blowing the wattage spec out of the water). Something has been nagging inside me that 1266mhz on a tiny die like that on mid range silicon like that is completely lame. Especially when Nvidia's tank sized dies can do 1500mhz and their new Pascal well in excess of 2ghz. Now my speculation could be wrong here and maybe they're just pants clockers but hey, it's something to think about. So my prediction is now as follows. 1. The stock 4gb Polaris card costing $199 will sit comfortably between the 970 and 980. 2. The supposed "Beast Mode" card will sit between the 980 and possibly above the Nano, just, and cost up to $299. I've also been told that there will be no AMD stock Polaris 10 cards with 8gb. These will *all* be partner cards on custom boards and so on, so none of this Founders nonsense.
Problem with SLI/crossfire is that it requires support from the game developers. If it was a completely transparent system it would be great. It should be seen as one GPU as in DX12 and should not require a game developer to incorporate it.
