i7 920 with 3x 290X Performance Question: Can it take it?

[Deadlyraver]

I have had my 920 for quite some time now, but I am reaching the point where I am coming close to building a whole new system. But before I do that, I wanna make use of all of my PCI-E 16 slots. I want three 290s soooo badly, but I do not know if the i7 will bottleneck it.

What do you guys think?

 

[MxPhenom 216]

You might want to consider getting a higher wattage power supply before running 3 290s.

 

[Tatty_Two]

I would suggest that a 920 @ 3.6ghz will seriousy bottleneck three 290's, even just 2, in fact just go for two and overclock the 920 further. Plus what he said about power supply!

 

[Solaris17]

would a 920 really bottle neck it? I mean given current PCI-E saturation rates even with the performance of new CPUs I dont think a 920 would struggle with a 290. What are your thoughts?

 

[brandonwh64]

I7-920 will not been as bad as you might think. I have a buddy with my old I7-920 that has two 7970's that bench quite well.

 

[Tatty_Two]

I7-920 will not been as bad as you might think. I have a buddy with my old I7-920 that has two 7970's that bench quite well.

There is a difference though between "benching quite well" and bottlenecking, if you surf and turf I think you will find that a 920 at 3.6gig will give you about 75% full capacity of two 7970's, just upping that to 4gig would extend that to about 90%, I really dont think that in "some" games you would get 100% out of them until you hit 4.2gig plus (if ever to be honest).

Now add to that 3 x 290x? Really...... at 3.6gig you will be getting about 60% of the potental of the cards if your lucky, if you really want to test it, all people have to do is run just one of them with any CPU in a bench (that can seperate CPU and GPU performance) at 3.6gig and then do it again at 4gig, and see the difference, that difference only grows the more GPU's you put in.

Obviously there are other dependancies in there that factor into the figures such as resolution, I may be wrong here but I can't believe any CPU without extreme overclocking/cooling could run three 290X's in decent resolutions without bottlenecking, let alone a 920 @ 3.6.

 

[brandonwh64]

There is a difference though between "benching quite well" and bottlenecking, if you surf and turf I think you will find that a 920 at 3.6gig will give you about 75% full capacity of two 7970's, just upping that to 4gig would extend that to about 90%, I really dont think that in "some" games you would get 100% out of them until you hit 4.2gig plus (if ever to be honest).

Now add to that 3 x 290x? Really...... at 3.6gig you will be getting about 60% of the potental of the cards if your lucky, if you really want to test it, all people have to do is run just one of them with any CPU in a bench (that can seperate CPU and GPU performance) at 3.6gig and then do it again at 4gig, and see the difference, that difference only grows the more GPU's you put in.

Obviously there are other dependancies in there that factor into the figures such as resolution, I may be wrong here but I can't believe any CPU without extreme overclocking/cooling could run three 290X's in decent resolutions without bottlenecking, let alone a 920 @ 3.6.

Quite true but after you think about it, 3 x 290x cards is alittle over kill for current games. hell I have a 7970 running ghz clocks and it plays BF4 perfect maxed out now so really he could get away with just one or maybe two if he felt froggy. I still use a I7-920 at work to crunch with and I have 5770 xfire which plays BF4 on medium very smoothly. Alot of people compare arma games to how much rig you need but its how badly the game is coded to how much performance you get. I my opinion I think he should keep what he has and just get one or maybe 2 290x's and leave it until the next release of Intel CPU's

 

[GreiverBlade]

try to take your 920 @ 4.4ghz, mine was able to handle it under air cooling with my actual Thermalright HR-02 Macho Rev.A with 2 Ty-147 @ 1300rpm without a sweat (without voltage add : just bclk, multi 12-22)

and yes a 760w PSU will not handle the 3x 290x+actual setup

 

[Outback Bronze]

I think it will handle it, but as long as its around the 4ghz mark.

 

[Tatty_Two]

Quite true but after you think about it, 3 x 290x cards is alittle over kill for current games. hell I have a 7970 running ghz clocks and it plays BF4 perfect maxed out now so really he could get away with just one or maybe two if he felt froggy. I still use a I7-920 at work to crunch with and I have 5770 xfire which plays BF4 on medium very smoothly. Alot of people compare arma games to how much rig you need but its how badly the game is coded to how much performance you get. I my opinion I think he should keep what he has and just get one or maybe 2 290x's and leave it until the next release of Intel CPU's

I agree completely and thats all my point is, why run 3 at 60%, try running 2 at 75% or one at 100% (ish) instead.

 

[Deadlyraver]

OC'ed to 4.1. Can't seem to get any farther than that for the moment, running on a CNPS12X by Zalman. The KUHLER 620 dried out a month ago.

 

[Rowsol]

This might be dumb, but why not just add 2 more 7850s? I'm not sure if that particular card supports more than 2 cards in crossfire. i7 is still pretty decent today and 2 of those cards would be more than sufficient to play games.

As for the original question, if your resolution is really high the cpu wouldn't make much difference anyway, and with that much gpu power you'd better be playing at least 3 monitors or 4k display.

 

[TheHunter]

Mobo will bottleneck more, since R9-290's use pcie3.0 for crossfire communication. On top of that cpu bottleneck.

 

[a_ump]

What hunter said i hadn't even thought of and i wonder if anyone else had. That's an older mobo, pci-e 2.0 as its data highway to GPU's, only with the 290x's it now has to handle crossfire communications. Well said hunter.

 

[Solaris17]

I dont think so Only theoretical limits PCI-E 2.0 is not saturated yet unless you doing some crazy shit.

 

[human_error]

I noticed improved framerates in quite a few games when I upgraded my 920 @ 3.6GHz to my 4770K at stock speeds - not sure if it is purely CPU or just combined platform improvements.Civ V was the biggest difference - there used to be occasional stutters or delays when loading assets but now it's silky smooth. All of that with a 5970 card (2x 5870 GPUs) so I'd be shocked if it didn't bottleneck 290's.

 

[Deadlyraver]

This might be dumb, but why not just add 2 more 7850s?

Understandably, it would be the best option at this time. However, I prefer to be up to date than up to par when it comes to graphics despite the lack of difference in 11.2. I am probably going to downgrade the idea to maybe two way or maybe even 270s or 280s but a part of me is saying "Oh, what the hell!"

Either way, I can just return them if they are a hassle in performance. XD

 

[Deadlyraver]

I noticed improved framerates in quite a few games when I upgraded my 920 @ 3.6GHz to my 4770K at stock speeds - not sure if it is purely CPU or just combined platform improvements.Civ V was the biggest difference - there used to be occasional stutters or delays when loading assets but now it's silky smooth. All of that with a 5970 card (2x 5870 GPUs) so I'd be shocked if it didn't bottleneck 290's.

There has been some talk about the X58 platform causing frame stutter, but I don't notice it once I even start small with overclocking my CPU. I might upgrade to Z87 within a year, but for the moment that idea isn't so necessary as adding frame rates to my favorite games starting with one 290 and working my way up.

 

[GreiverBlade]

PciEx 2.0 to 3.0 real bump is around 1% so i don't think the 2.0 will hinder it too much, plus X58 plateform usualy can do dual x16 wich equal to a dual x8 3.0 but with 3 it's x16/x8/x8 iirc

 

[a_ump]

wish to quote "PciEx 2.0 to 3.0 real bump is around 1% so i don't think the 2.0 will hinder it too much, plus X58 plateform usualy can do dual x16 wich equal to a dual x8 3.0 but with 3 it's x16/x8/x8 iirc"

i'm pretty sure the bump is more than 1% if PCI-e 2.0@16x is equal to PCI-e 3.0@8x. also how the hell do you quote in the new forums?

 

[Solaris17]

wish to quote "PciEx 2.0 to 3.0 real bump is around 1% so i don't think the 2.0 will hinder it too much, plus X58 plateform usualy can do dual x16 wich equal to a dual x8 3.0 but with 3 it's x16/x8/x8 iirc"

i'm pretty sure the bump is more than 1% if PCI-e 2.0@16x is equal to PCI-e 3.0@8x. also how the hell do you quote in the new forums?

pretty sure it honestly doesnt matter because we havent saturated the pci 2.0 bus yet.

you just hit the reply button

 

[Tatty_Two]

pretty sure it honestly doesnt matter because we havent saturated the pci 2.0 bus yet.

you just hit the reply button

This.

 

[GreiverBlade]

wish to quote "PciEx 2.0 to 3.0 real bump is around 1% so i don't think the 2.0 will hinder it too much, plus X58 plateform usualy can do dual x16 wich equal to a dual x8 3.0 but with 3 it's x16/x8/x8 iirc"

i'm pretty sure the bump is more than 1% if PCI-e 2.0@16x is equal to PCI-e 3.0@8x. also how the hell do you quote in the new forums?

i don't meant the jump in bandwidth but the performance increase (with a same GPU respectively) is 1% (pondered average)

i ran my 770 with a i5-2400 (pciEx 2.0) and a Xeon E3-1275v2 (pciEx 3.0) not so much difference in game and it was x16 2.0 and x16 3.0 (which compare to x32 2.0 if it was possible )