Sapphire R9 280x Dual X 3 GB question

My current build is set at:

Windows 7 Professional

8gb Ram 1333 MHz

Sapphire ATI 6970 2gb

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T Processor (6CPUs) ~ 3.3 GHz

I'm looking to upgrade my current video card from the 6970 to the Sapphire R9 280x as I can get it for 349.99 at a local computer store brand new.

What do you guys think, is it fair to say the upgrade is decent?

I want to specifically be able to run games such as battlefield 4 on a higher level with good fps etc.....

I also want to be future proof for about a year or two like I have been with my 6970!

I'd go with a single 290 or 290x over a dual 280x. But yeah, that's definitely going to max out games for a couple of years. I just wonder about the CPU, I'm not that knowledgable about it and if it can hold up for the next few years.

It should be a good upgrade for about 30-60% stronger/faster/better.

Either 280X or the GTX770 - both are great.

They'll be future proof, just don't excpect it to be everything maxed in 2 years (medium-high)

Might as well upgrade in a year or so to FX6300 or 8320

Were talking a 150$ price difference between the two though. Not sure I want to add an extra 150 for 290 let alone. Just wondering how the 280x would hold up and if it's worth purchasing.

the 280x is just basically a 7970ghz. how much is the GTX 770 at your local store? Most go for around $330 or so and are slightly faster then the 280x at 1080p and equal at 1600p. But as of right now online retailers are charging 400+ for the 280x, because of the short supply. So it might be a good idea to jump on it when you can.

I was thinking the 770 but my local store doesn't have it. I'm also worried my mobo won't support a 770 if I do buy it.

You can just order it on the internet and well your 2nd statement makes me wonder what the hell you're spending all of this money not knowing that there is no such GPU that isn't compatible with all motherboards. All you need is a PCI Express 2.0 slot.

If you can get 280X at the price of 770 I think you should concider the benefit of Mentle for future if you don't want to upgrade CPU.

MOBO got nothing to do with supporting GPUs, you install any GPU in the world, problem is how much PSU capacity you've got.

Well when battlefield 3 first came out, I bought a GTX 560 for it, then consistently got blue screen until I tried a 6970 that actually worked without issues. A month later I put the 560 back in to have it completely destroy my MOBO which I had to end up buying a new one. That's why I'm wondering if the 770 would actually work okay with me here.

I did indeed take it into a computer shop nearby and they were the ones who told me the 560 wasn't supported by my mobo, so they gave me the 6970 instead without having to pay extra for the price difference.

There's no way the 560 was not compatible. It was most likely the card being dysfunctional.

So then I can by all means go and purchase a 770 to run with my current computer?

That is if its the better buy?

Another thing is AMD Mantle will be increasing bf4 performance by 45%. ON top of that AMD has the better optimization because of DICE working alongside them.

770 should be fine, but with the potential MANTLE being released I think I would stick with the R9 280X.

Dont base purchases on unconfirmed claims made by companies that are trying to sell to you.

AMD may say you may see upto set amount with with games like BF4 but their results based on a single specific AMD APU platform, and real world gains will be much less then what what most people are hoping for.

Of course it's just a company giving is the claims, but then again I'm sure there will be a decent amount of FPS gains from it. Just wanting to get a video card that'll last me about 2 years before I can crossfire it. That's why I've been looking at the R9 280x

@Mortalmaster123: Sounds like your mind is made up and you won't be disappointed.

So then it is a good amount of an upgrade from the 6970?

Yes expect anywhere from 40% to 100% increase depending on the game.

@Mortalmaster123: Like stated above you will see a big increase. Things I was reading for you said 64%.

I bought the card, running battlefield 4 on ultra but I get random frame drops.

Is that normal, I'm thinking its the optimization of the actual game itself.

I'm talking about 40-100 fps at ultra, should I have vsync on or?

Don't run BF4 on ultra on multiplayer, it's a crap of optimization - everyone knows that, anyone who at least played it and stay tuned on this forum anyway.

Set it to high, you should be fine.

Didn't say anything about him loosing anything, just stated that "Mentle" (lol I like that)..... just saying don't based purchases on the unconfirmed and hype of PR.

Yes I figured it was a crap optimization. Well I'm good to go then, thank you to all the fast replies everyone!

Last question: I'm currently running 8gb 1333 MHz.

What would upgrading to 1600MHz 8gb doo?

Nothing.

Seriously might be 1fps increase if you stay on low CAS

Thats that then, thanks so much guys. Loving the card, hoping mantle does some justice and helps optimize the games its said too.

Battlefield 4 seriously needs some good optimization

Enjoy the card dude, congrats on the purchase!

The game has been plagued by bugs and crashes, the optimization is actually just fine. What's probably happening is that it's a CPU heavy game and yours just isn't very good.

Wrong, this isn't hog CPU game.

Proof:

@PredatorRules said:

@RevanBITW said:

@Mortalmaster123 said:

Thats that then, thanks so much guys. Loving the card, hoping mantle does some justice and helps optimize the games its said too.

Battlefield 4 seriously needs some good optimization

The game has been plagued by bugs and crashes, the optimization is actually just fine. What's probably happening is that it's a CPU heavy game and yours just isn't very good.

Wrong, this isn't hog CPU game.

Proof:

That is Single player benchmarks, MP its more demanding as the player counts go up.

So unfortunately at first it was all fine, now when I join games (32 - 48 players) I'm getting consistent 30-45 fps and thats on high to. Not sure exactly why that is when I was just playing with a perfectly fine high FPS.

AMD Phenom II X6 1100T 3.3GHz (6 CPU)
Windows 7 64 bit
8GB ram
R9 280X

Not sure why they dropped so much and it was in the past 3 servers to!

Try out some other games (preferably newer releases) and see how it goes. Then you'll know.

@04dcarraher said:

@PredatorRules said:

@RevanBITW said:

@Mortalmaster123 said:

Thats that then, thanks so much guys. Loving the card, hoping mantle does some justice and helps optimize the games its said too.

Battlefield 4 seriously needs some good optimization

The game has been plagued by bugs and crashes, the optimization is actually just fine. What's probably happening is that it's a CPU heavy game and yours just isn't very good.

Wrong, this isn't hog CPU game.

Proof:

That is Single player benchmarks, MP its more demanding as the player counts go up.

I know, with that the line of fps of CPUs kept pretty much the same

That's kind of odd. Is catalyst up to date? (really important)

Can you OC your cpu (if the performance increases by a good bit it may be your cpu bottlenecking your multiplayer experience.

The 280x should do a 60 fps consistently on bf4 no problem.

I was thinking that it would be CPU as well. OC would really help. (OC CPU is pretty easy).

your cpu is crap to be honest. You would have been better served if youd kept your 6970 and upgraded the cpu to an intel core i7 4770k and whatever mobo

@04dcarraher said:

@PredatorRules said:

@RevanBITW said:

@Mortalmaster123 said:

Thats that then, thanks so much guys. Loving the card, hoping mantle does some justice and helps optimize the games its said too.

Battlefield 4 seriously needs some good optimization

The game has been plagued by bugs and crashes, the optimization is actually just fine. What's probably happening is that it's a CPU heavy game and yours just isn't very good.

Wrong, this isn't hog CPU game.

Proof:

That is Single player benchmarks, MP its more demanding as the player counts go up.

Yep, I could run SP maxed at over 100fps but on Shanghai it would drop to ~50fps and my GPU usage would get cut in half. That's with a 2500k @4.5Ghz. It's much better with a 4770k, BF4 really loves the i7s.

But battlefield's suppose to love AMD too :(.

Anyways up on that chart my cpu is just 3 fps below the i7-4770K.


I do understand there single player benchmarks, but I just don't think my CPU is the main cause the FPS. Wouldn't my CPU have to take up 90%+ of my performance tab to be bottlenecking my video card?

Again it's not a CPU problem, the game is heavy on the GPU in multiplayer, BF3 wasn't like this at all, I didn't see difference that much in graphics but in terms of performance they've f^cked up badly.

I'm thinking the same thing myself, I can't see it being a problem with my CPU but rather an optimization problem on there part.

Another question I have is my windows 7 boot time has become much longer since I've installed the new r9 280x. The video card should not have any cause in that correct?

Nah, got nothing to do with it.

You must have filled your HDD to 90% of it's capacity.

Try to defragment your HDD.

Or get SSD of 60Gb just for OS, there's cheaper solution for all of that and it's called "sleep" - yes put your PC on sleep instead of shutting it down.

Also curious, instead of purchasing an AMD Bulldozer FX-8350 Eight Core 4Ghz CPU, would I be better just overclocking my current CPU (AMD 1100t).

I have never overclocked a CPU, ONLY my video cards.

Should be easy, make sure you don't own stock cooler or it will go frenzy and might fry your CPU.

If you don't have any I recommend on the Evo 212.

You can always OC to safe zone without taking risks, you might fry it if you go with something wrong too so make sure you do have some spare money, just to be sure you won't end up without a PC afterall.

I've never overclocked and I do have a Cooler Master Hyper T4 CPU cooler on it currently.

I'm kind of worried to OC it as I don't know how much I should OC it by for a decent performance increase.

http://youtu.be/5a7AxZJ7tWc

That guy uses 8gb 1600Mhz, I use 1600 Mhz. Is there a difference?

If not, if I do it exactly how he did with the same settings should I be fine?

Yeah, the amount of RAM really don't matter.

Well he talks about how you don't want to go over your DRAM amount. Mines set at 1333 Mhz compared to his at 1600, thats why he has his DRAM at 1525 Mhz.

Unless that's only like that for him because he has 1600

You can play with it and tweak it as you like.

Keep your RAM at your speed, you know you can OC RAM as well besides GPU and CPU.

Overclocking CPU is easy, just do a little research if you're unsure about something. You can easily overclock your RAM to 1600mhz. Just click on RAM in your BIOS, select 1600mhz, save and you're done! (keep in mind overclocking CPU decreases its life time. specially if you turn your voltage up for higher overclocking). But if you plan on upgrading in a year to two years then it shouldn't really matter.

Sometimes OC RAM is pointless since MOBO and CPU got limits for it's speed.