Gadgetory

hey everyone today we're looking at dual r9 390 s and crossfire versus SLI GTX 970 to try and determine one which is better than two is it even worth doing multi card configurations in opposition to obviously a single more expensive card like a 980ti for more depth on that specific aspect of the argument check out our previous video 980ti vs SLI GTX 970 s to see what we thought about multi card configurations in the modern era versus a single GPU for today's test we are using one r9 390 card with two GPUs on it so it's actually a dual core video card and that is the power color devil 13 r9 390 dual GPU card it is massive quite obviously you can tell from the side profile view of it here it's got 32 power headers which is actually about what most dual card setups will take if you're using two independent cards it just looks a lot more impressive on one and it's also got a huge heatsink that's very loud but we don't do noise testing so that is one thing that I will not be objectively looking at today I can subjectively tell you right now that this card is much louder than any other video card I've ever tested especially at load and as far as the tests we are running today for objective measurements we're looking at the power consumption of at 970 s and s live versus r9 390 s in crossfire and we're also looking at the framerate performance and temperature or thermal performance as always you can check the website for test methodology the testing systems used and all the charts not shown here hit the link in the description below for more information on that or just go to gamers nexus dotnet today we're starting with the power draw so the pcs duel card GPU or dual GPU card draws 580 2.73 watts at full system load that is the full system power consumption the r9 390 measured at 341 Watts previously with just 1 r9 390 and the sli GTX 970 sr at 400 11.7 2 watts so the 970 is quite obviously are significantly lower power consumption for peak system load with the crossfire sli battle here head-to-head that is 170 Watts difference between the two can figurations and that is actually noticeable enough to change what kind of power supply you're buying but let's look at how that impacts thermals and then performance thermals are average between both these cards but the dual card the PCs devil 13 is very loud and we test on an open bench but if you had in a case it would still be pretty loud the thermals delta T over ambient are fifty four point four three Celsius for the sli nine 70s that's GPU number one and 53.6 two Celsius for the 390 GPU diode number one so the sli 970 first GPU is actually a bit warmer marginally one degree than what we're looking at here for the devil thirteen now this is obviously massively impacted by the cooler use by the manufacturer the AIB but the 390 is running cooler just frankly because it's pushing so much air so fast that's what produces the noise but keeps the temperatures manageable as for gaming performance we're only going to focus on a few charts here but there's a table at the end of this video discussion in the video that shows a head-to-head comparison who won which round and by what percentage they won so that is a new thing we're doing that I hope will help you figure out at a glance what's the best option for you getting started with fps Metro last light at 1080p saw the 970 s in sli winning out over the crossfire 390 s 116 fps against 115 fps that is a 0.87 percent Delta and that is just barely outside of our margin of test error so the difference is unnoticeable entirely and the 980ti for reference runs at 122 fps a slight bit more than either of these two configurations and costed about the same as the 970 s in SLI the devil 13 since I didn't already mention it is priced at $500 after a rebate it's $100 rebate but $600 normally so depending on whether or not you count that rebate you're looking at a fairly even head-to-head in terms of price between these configurations but if you do count the rebate $500 puts it at the cost of a single 980 and significantly under the cost of 9 ATI or 2 970 s slightly over the cost of 390x at 4 20 dollars getting back into things here Metro last light at 1440p the nine 70s in sli again better than three 90s in crossfire that is 89 verse 88 FPS or 1.1 3% Delta again effectively unnoticeable to any user and the 980 I about the same 89 FPS at 4k the crossfire 3 90s pull ahead which makes for some interesting data even over the 980ti and that's 58 fps verse 56 FPS on the 970 s and 58 FPS again 3 90's against 50 7.3 FPS on the 980 iso they're all right they're next to each other fallout 4 is a quick one at 1080p the 970 is an SLI are superior to the 390 s in crossfire by a massive amount 36.5% that is actually very noticeable in gameplay that's 81 fps vs. 56 fps and that's obviously in our specific test course your mileage may vary depending where you test there's no crossfire scaling right now and fallout 4 as far as we can tell I haven't tested thoroughly on all of the cards but definitively on to 390 s in this instance at least with a devil 13 we saw no crossfire scaling and that means that your money is effectively wasted if you do have a second physical GPU or a dual GPU card shadow of Mordor at 1080p shows the first 1080 victory thus far for the crossfire 3 90s over the sli 970 that's one 30 FPS versus one 24 FPS again effectively unnoticeable to the user but worth showing that's a 4.7 percent Delta there is a massive 0.1% FPS dip to the tune of 51 FPS versus the average for the three 90s and that is definitely something worth note the 980 eye is at 122 FPS just for sort of a benchmark of where things fall at 1440p the crossfire 390 is retain their lead 100 FPS 4 is 96 or 4.1 percent that's pretty linear terrible 0.1% lows however on the crossfire 3 90s at 32 versus 45 for the SLI 970 so that is something that AMD has historically struggled with is the frame times or 0.1 percent lows and that show is here at 4k again 390 s in the lead this time by 8% which measures up with our previous test where we saw an advantage as resolution increases that is 61 verse 56 point 3 FPS not super noticeable but that is starting to enter the range of a player potentially actually noticing it at least for anyone who's hyper focused on that 60 FPS metric Just Cause 3 has no reasonable scaling for crossfire or SLI and is a complete waste for this game so if you have multi card configurations from either vendor in Just Cause 3 you're not going to see gains that are worthwhile in the least black ops 3 is actually one of the most interesting benchmarks we have for you today other than fallout and that is because at 1440p the crossfire 3 90s produce a 154 FPS versus the 139 FPS of sli 970 s now you could drop settings just slightly for the sli 970 s and managed to produce a 144 FPS but we're getting it with pretty much everything maxed out with the crossfire 390 s the only reason I say that this 10-point to 4% Delta is noteworthy here is because black ops is a type of game where people with 144 Hertz displays will actually want to push for that extra couple FPS to satisfy the 144 Hertz throughput potential as far as Assassin's Creed syndicate this one is also problematic but we had crashing issues that we could not resolve the game would crash within about a minute of getting into the game with the crossfire 390 s it worked fine with SLI 970 s not particularly impressive but fine ran but with the three 90s we were able to execute exactly one task before it crashed and that shows the three 90s in crossfire slightly behind the 970 however I would discard this data or disregard it anyway just because it's it's it's really not too representative of a real scenario since you can't even play the game in our current test and finally here's a chart showing the head-to-head matchup of all the data I just went through and some additional data GTA 5 and others included so hopefully that will give you an idea there are notes here as well I've gone through most of those in the last minute or so talking but you can find it all in the scription below where the website is linked check that out so then is it worth getting crossfire 390s or GTX 970 s in SLI generally the 970 s in SLI perform a bit better than the crossfire 390s and when they do perform better it is by a lot and that's because the game or drivers don't support the crossfire setup properly especially the case with Just Cause 3 and fallout 4 where you see the 36% gap between this and 2 9 70s and that gap is because of the lack of crossfire scaling so when the s are better they are a lot better when the crossfire setups are better they are kind of better by a couple percent three four or five percent on average but the biggest gaps we saw were about 10% would I buy either of these setups I'm going to tell you right now no I would personally buy a single card whether that's a 980ti or a fury ax kind of depends on what you're trying to do specifically what your use case is do you have a radiator slot all that stuff I won't go into that argument here but I would buy one of those two cards instead of either multi-gpu setup and that is largely for reasons I discussed pretty heavily in the 970 SLI versus the 90 ati video where we see sort of the same day 1 launch support is a little questionable at times it takes a bit longer for SLI or crossfire to get full adequate support for games out the gate and then of course your disabling one card sometimes when there's problems or there's always some kind of micro stutter in some kind of game it seems like with these setups and microsites infuriating enough again to disable a card this card anyway is not a bad buy but there's potentially better value now that said it's currently $500 after a rebate and that's a pretty big price gap considering your performance is about matched with the 970 so if you are strictly looking at 2 970 s versus 2 390s meaning you're not considering the possibility of a 980 TI for some reason maybe price then in that case this is actually currently with $100 rebate a better value but it does depend a bit on my games you're playing because you're playing Fallout 4 exclusively then what I just said is irrelevant frankly because crossfire scaling at least with this setup is basically non-existent on fallout 4 and Assassin's Creed syndicate hardly even worked so it does depend a bit on which game you're playing whether this is better than SLI 970 s or not to a noticeable level and because of the degree the way that it depends on game the game performance support stuff like that that is why I generally recommend the single card because you are basically guaranteed that the game will work and if it doesn't work then you can bet that it's probably not working on basically any single card configuration at least from that manufacturer and that's a bit more reliable than multi-gpu setups so that has remained true for a long time however the one argument we haven't discussed here is power and thermals the thermals don't worry about them because the temperature was about the same for the sli 970 s and this card but the devil 13 was very loud so it depends on which three 90s setup you get if you just buy two independent three 90s either from power color or sapphire or anyone else it will be quieter than this thing here the next thing with regard to power the power draw for the two three nine you set up was 580 is something watts for the peak system load and for the sli nine 70s it was 411 or something like that so 180 170 watt difference is big enough that it changes what power supply you're getting actually by a good amount there's a good margin there you need to increase your power supplies they need to spend more money on it so that is an argument also worth looking at depending on what you're trying to build for your system if you already have a power supply stuff like that so that is the look at crossfire 390 versus GTX 970 is an SLI article down below for more information please hit that patreon link post roll video if you want to help us out with the next content that we create and as always thank you for watching I'll see you all next time