AMD Radeon RX 590 Crossfire and the State of Multi-GPU Technology

[Julio Franco]

It always surprises us how often we get requests for Crossfire and SLI benchmarks. Despite flatout telling readers not to invest in either technology for years now, there still seems to be quite a lot of interest. Both AMD and Nvidia have made no secret about the fact they're pulling back on multi-GPU technology, but recently two RX 590 cards came our way and we thought, why not?

Read the full article here.

https://www.techspot.com/review/1763-radeon-rx-590-crossfire/

 

[meric]

I wonder how much the tensor cores increase power consumption. Other than that, I am really impressed by the efficiency of Nvidia cards. They managed to increase performance and keep the efficiency without a real die shrink. And that's despite the additional tensor cores. Hoping that some day AMD would achieve this kind of efficiency and we could get these cards for even cheaper

 

[BSim500]

Even if multi dGPU is dead for many of us, I still like these unusual articles that makes Techspot, well, Techspot.

 

[mosu]

It's not like the Crossfire setup is obsolete, but game devs dropped the multiGPU support. Still it makes sense when you got cheap AMD cards from discontinued crypto rigs. Really good article, makes you aware of drawbacks and limits.

 

[Vulcanproject]

Multi cards setups haven't moved on in 10 years. Still entirely reliant on developer and driver support, which is extremely patchy and unreliable on the best of days.

I remember when technologies such as Lucid Hydra trumpeted the answer. Circa 2009 or so. Having a controller on the motherboard that would load balance any random GPUs you felt like pairing together. It was a small company with limited resources, the chips ended up too expensive and still in need of a lot of driver support and development work.

The idea was sound, but it just didn't work because of the need for lots of good software profiles and the scale of that task was beyond Lucid. It was also not in the interest of Nvidia or AMD for it to work, seeing as their solutions were licensed technologies.

Here we sit, nearly 10 years later and multi GPU still doesn't work. Not really.

I think it'll work better in the future, because Moore's law is dead. Eventually it'll have to work, if the industry shifts towards stacking smaller chips. Daisy chaining them together to increase performance instead of biennial process shrinks. Multi GPU or at least MCM type designs will reappear I suspect. For now though it's still a very weak prospect.

 

[amstech]

The amount of games not supporting Crossfire correctly, or even at all, is staggering.
Not picking on AMD.

 

[Adi6293]

Considering this technology has been out for so long its a disgrace it works this bad.....

 

[xiromisho]

The amount of games not supporting Crossfire correctly, or even at all, is staggering.
Not picking on AMD.

And yet it's still more than the support for RTX.

 

[BigBoomBoom]

I like how RTX 2070 consume less wattage than 1 RX590...

 

[Sausagemeat]

Be interesting to see if a single Titan RTX is better than SLI 2080ti as they cost around the same. I presume it will be.

 

[letsgoiowa]

It's not like the Crossfire setup is obsolete, but game devs dropped the multiGPU support. Still it makes sense when you got cheap AMD cards from discontinued crypto rigs. Really good article, makes you aware of drawbacks and limits.

This is exactly what I did. Got a second Fury for $200 and I'm doubling performance in more games than I'm not. It's amazing.
It is a pain trying to get it to behave with some games sometimes, though.

 

[texasrattler]

So yall did a article on something that you not only dont believe in but the fact that the tech isnt even going anywhere didnt give you any hints. Yall have done test after test in articles and Steam charts show that no one really cares or even bothers with sli let alone crossfire.
That means you basically did so cause a few users moaned about crap tech that actually died years ago. Not to mention devs could careless about multi gpus.

Just let the tech die, any real gamer knows it died long ago. If people really want to know about it, let them go buy 2 cards n find out its crap. Also the reason of why its crap, nvidia gave up and AMD well its AMD, need we say more. Again, the devs didnt support n never cared for it so they never really adopted it. Sure a few games may have worked for it but overall it was a mess with drivers and no real dev support. Sometimes people gotta find out the hard way, so let them.

 

[Bubbajim]

So yall did a article on something that you not only dont believe in but the fact that the tech isnt even going anywhere didnt give you any hints. Yall have done test after test in articles and Steam charts show that no one really cares or even bothers with sli let alone crossfire.
That means you basically did so cause a few users moaned about crap tech that actually died years ago. Not to mention devs could careless about multi gpus.

Just let the tech die, any real gamer knows it died long ago. If people really want to know about it, let them go buy 2 cards n find out its crap. Also the reason of why its crap, nvidia gave up and AMD well its AMD, need we say more. Again, the devs didnt support n never cared for it so they never really adopted it. Sure a few games may have worked for it but overall it was a mess with drivers and no real dev support. Sometimes people gotta find out the hard way, so let them.

I bet you're fun at parties.

 

[Lounds]

So basically a single 1080 or Vega 56 is the better option, in fact based on the current pricing of the rx590 it's probably best to get a single RTX 2070.

 

[ET3D]

Thanks for the interesting test. Yes, looks like multi-gpu is for people who already have an old GPU and can get a second one for cheap.

 

[ShagnWagn]

I've never even considered going SLI due to cost and complexity. The part that affects me is that I bought a 980 GT (not sure how it compares to the 1060?) right before the 1080's came out. It looks like my rig won't run any of these games at 1080p, so I guess not only is the hardware industry losing out on my money due to greedy video card manufacturers, but also the game software companies. There is no reason for me to buy any newer games. All because of nvidia/amd. I'll make due with the games I bought already. I have plenty I haven't finished yet. Guess I will wait a few more years?

 

[meric]

I've never even considered going SLI due to cost and complexity. The part that affects me is that I bought a 980 GT (not sure how it compares to the 1060?) right before the 1080's came out. It looks like my rig won't run any of these games at 1080p, so I guess not only is the hardware industry losing out on my money due to greedy video card manufacturers, but also the game software companies. There is no reason for me to buy any newer games. All because of nvidia/amd. I'll make due with the games I bought already. I have plenty I haven't finished yet. Guess I will wait a few more years?

If your card is a GTX 980 that's still a capable card. Assuming you have a decent CPU, you should be able to run any modern game at acceptable frame rates. I don't know what you are complaining about

 

[ShagnWagn]

If your card is a GTX 980 that's still a capable card. Assuming you have a decent CPU, you should be able to run any modern game at acceptable frame rates. I don't know what you are complaining about

I was going to edit in a "sorry for the rant"... Since the 980 GT (not a GTX) isn't even on the list, I assume it is not acceptable, especially being it is so "old". If I have to run at the lowest settings, I might as well just play older games that objectively may look just as good or better than new ones at lowest. I guess I will do some benchmark searching. I guess I also need to do some searching on which ones are Pay2Lose. Paying is by far more cheating than using a cheat the game company isn't profiting on.

 

[Boilerhog146]

980 GT is not listed because.there is no such critter! A 9800 gt maybe and yup.its old.unless you live in Asia somewhere.and got a phony .modded card.labeled as a 980 GT.would not surprise me.

 

[Mike89]

When SLI (and crossfire) first came out, I just shook my head at the idea. I thought of it as nothing more than a cash grab. Here it is years later and I'm still shaking my head wondering why people do it. Just makes no sense to me with the extra price, extra problems with drivers, extra draw of electricity, for a minimal gain in benchmarks (when if not paying attention at benchmark numbers and just playing the damn game, you're probably not going to notice/feel any difference to write home about anyway). I'm just not spending the extra bucks to have two vid cards in my system. All I would get out of it is the feeling of Nvidia ripping me off 'again'.

 

[ShagnWagn]

980 GT is not listed because.there is no such critter! A 9800 gt maybe and yup.its old.unless you live in Asia somewhere.and got a phony .modded card.labeled as a 980 GT.would not surprise me.

I can't find my order and I'm not at home. You guys must be right. Thanks, that is great to hear. CPU I think is the i7-6700k and 16gb ddr4 mem. GA-Z170X-Gaming 7 mobo.

 

[torchyear]

@Steve your thoughts on current and future DX12 multi-GPU implementation? This was touted to be the magic pill when it was announced last year, with Ashes of the Benchmark showing promise - and even some people doing silly things like an AMD + nVidia GPU in the same machine seeing improvements.

 

[nuwb13]

I'm also very surprised at the interest and requests for SLI benchmarks but thank you for doing them. Maybe someone out there finds out about the capability and sees a bunch of old articles saying it isn't worth it and wonders whether the situation has changed. Though I suspect if SLI got gud, news would travel fast. Or maybe the info would languish in forums and in its place on tech sites are the usual stories about latest Qualcomm SoC or some flagship phone. So it warms my heart to see your article.

There's a bunch of things that deserve a second look periodically on the off chance the conventional wisdom is wrong e.g. PCIe lane and generation speeds, ultra high memory clocks, HT on/off, different power states, SATA vs NVMe, etc.

In the games where SLI does offer benefit, I'm impressed to see it generally offers benefit to minimum FPS so it looks viable for a few. Selling old hardware can be such a PITA sometimes that I can see why someone might go SLI despite the hassle.

 

[Bubbajim]

I'm also very surprised at the interest and requests for SLI benchmarks but thank you for doing them. Maybe someone out there finds out about the capability and sees a bunch of old articles saying it isn't worth it and wonders whether the situation has changed.

I suspect people asking about SLI are thinking, "one thingy is good, two thingies must be twice as good!"

And who wouldn't want two thingies?

 

[moral hazard]

Excellent! Now that you've got SLI/XFire do another on Hybrid AMD with Nvidia for Physx. Its working again!