GPU/Motherboard Compatibility

[DavidYpres]

Alright so, I've finally built my rig and the relevant specs are as follows:

Crosshair V Formula Z
Asus Direct CUII R9 290
16GB G.Skill Sniper 1866MHz
FX 8350 w/ Thermaltake Water 3.0 Ultimate
EVGA SuperNova 750 G2 Gold
Blackhawk Ultra Case

Now on to the questions. First I know I'll need a stronger PSU for this, but I'm aiming to save up and purchase a R9 395x2 once those pop out on the market. However, I undertsand that this will be PCI-E 3.0 which is not a feature of the Formula-Z motherboard. Will this negatively impact the performance of this card if I use it in conjunction with this motherboard? If so, would it even be worth it to get a 295x2 and what would I see with regards to improvement over my current card? I understand 3.0 is backwards compatible with 2.0 but I've read that it's just not quite as good as if I were to have a 3.0 slot.

As a side note, I also followed the ROG guide to o/c the CPU to 4.8GHz and after using Prime95 for about ten minutes, even with the cooling I have, the CPU was still hitting 60 degrees. Did I perhaps do something wrong?

I'm still a bit n00bish when it comes to this, so thanks for your patience.

[elesde]

Since we don't even know the power draw of a 390x it is hard to speculate on how much a possible x2 variant will use but one would guess about the same as the 295x2.
Your PSU is a really good quality build so it may even run a 295x2 as long as you don't go too hard on the CPU overclock.

For single GPU setups PCIe 2.0 is no problem, you may loose 2-3% on edge cases but most reviews I've seen have a hard time measuring a difference. On a dual GPU card like the 295x2 it should be no problem either since both GPUs communicate with each other over an internal bridge chip. For this generation of GPUs PCIe 2.0 is sufficient I guess, the whole situation might look a bit different for the next gen running on DX12 / Vulcan though. 😃

With dual GPU systems it is always a question of game and driver support for a good experience. New and big titles usually run quite well with good scaling approaching 100% over a single GPU. Games on old engines or releases by devs who don't give a sh*** about performance run from suboptimal to so bad that it's best to disable Crossfire altogether.
It really boils down to what kind of games you play, scaling issues and micro stutter are mostly under control for DX11 games after a few weeks and will give you a nice performance uplift from the 290. Quite a few games will also just not work right on CF however, in this case you only have the uplift form stock 290 to 290x speeds.

FX chips do draw a lot of power when overclocked / overvolted especially in Prime95, luckily most real workloads do not come close to that kind of power draw. You might want to keep a look at the socket / VRM temps as well when running on water though.

[Ipswicher]

One may need to consider whether the new graphics card has a bridge link ribbon. I notice a lot of new high end cards without one.

I notice the new Motherboards allow crossfire via the PCI-E bus, so no ribbon on top of card. The speed and capacity of the bus will need to be considered. I note that new Mother boards have power plug on the board itself, and no power plugs on the new graphics cards.

Things are changing, so that old stuff cannot be used on new stuff !!!

Woe is me.

[HighlanderMonk]

The Plug on the Motherbaord is if your running a xfire or SLI configuration that is on top what you have to plug in, into your video cards, basically 3rd cable that is 😞
and all the revision MB today run with PCI-E but with 3.0, unless you have an older version for the ROG Crosshair V Formula Z :), but bios should have fixed all that 🙂

And til AMD releases the next Gen Video Cards you can only Dream ha ha 🙂