Hardware Your opinions about used PC parts?

[Humanity]

Does anyone here have any experience running 2 AMD cards at the same time on the same machine via Crossfire?

Anything I should look out for and think about? Advice, please?

 

[FAST6191]

Does anyone here have any experience running 2 AMD cards at the same time on the same machine via Crossfire?

Anything I should look out for and think about? Advice, please?

SLI and crossfire might achieve measurable boosts in speed in benchmarks but usually at the cost of making graphics drivers and game devs cry (neither of which are doing that much for it these days -- there is a reason most articles and reviews you will find today were from 2017 and early 2018), you having to worry about heat coming out of a system, you having to worry about power (if you already have a thirsty system then trying to draw another several hundred watts makes things fun), you having to worry about your power bill (said several hundred watts of extra power draw does more than just heat and needing a beefier power supply), and making multiple monitors with such modes enabled a tricky proposition (to the point where stumping up more for something like https://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/ is a better bet).

It is better than it was back in the day but still not great as so few do it and the gains are not minimal but far from double less a bit for overhead that some initially expect.

As tricky as overclocking is these days then that probably makes more sense as a course of action from where I sit.

 

[AkikoKumagara]

Does anyone here have any experience running 2 AMD cards at the same time on the same machine via Crossfire?

Anything I should look out for and think about? Advice, please?

I think it's generally more advisable to use the funds towards a singular more powerful GPU than to worry about a dual GPU setup.

 

[CallmeBerto]

Just use one card as FAST said. Most games don't even support SLI/Crossfire anymore and the few that do the scaling is shit (about 20%ish)

 

[Humanity]

Tru, I am aware of the weak scaling.

 

[subcon959]

I've tried SLI in the past, and while it was very nice when it worked properly, it was a total pain in the arse and a big waste of money when it didn't.. and the latter was a lot more often than the former.

On topic, I see no problem with buying used PC parts. It's no different than buying anything used, it all comes down to how good you are at spotting good sellers (ebay). It's always a bit of a gamble but you can definitely minimise the risk with some effort (don't just rely on feedback). One thing I like to do is start a dialogue with the seller to get a bit of insight. I've even spent £400 on a cpu from a zero feedback seller in the past purely based on our conversation.

 

[Humanity]

I have abandoned my idea for running Ryse.

I am now interested in just Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 but at 1080p60 locked, everything on medium settings except AA on high. Do you think these specs can handle that?:

• 2x 4GB DDR4 RAM
• Intel 6th Gen. Quad Core i5 6600T 2.7Ghz LGA1151 CPU
• AMD RX 570 4GB GPU
• SSD, not HDD
• Windows 10

 

[Humanity]

What about 900p60, too? Thank you.

 

[Humanity]

Anybody?

 

[The Real Jdbye]

On Aliexpress you get it cheaper:

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/329...chweb0_0,searchweb201602_5,searchweb201603_52


https://www.aliexpress.com/item/329...chweb0_0,searchweb201602_5,searchweb201603_52


https://www.aliexpress.com/item/329...chweb0_0,searchweb201602_5,searchweb201603_52

Let me explain what they do.
They take very old (ancient) and very slow cards that are not worth what they are asking, and patch the firmware to show that it's whatever card they are trying to sell. It's obvious once you try it that it's not the card it's claiming to be because the performance is awful.
That said besides GPUs you do generally get what you pay for from China when buying PC parts. It's just that it often ends up being more expensive than what you would pay elsewhere. PC parts aren't especially cheap in China (they're not especially cheap anywhere, really) and shipping them costs money. Due to the size and weight of many PC components you aren't likely to get free shipping. Plus you end up getting some noname brand that might not be as reliable or might fail prematurely.
The one time LTT did a video on PC building in China (using parts bought locally from stores) the parts actually cost him more than equivalent parts would cost in US or Canada and that was despite the fact that all the parts were noname brands.

 

[Alexander1970]

Let me explain what they do.
They take very old (ancient) and very slow cards that are not worth what they are asking, and patch the firmware to show that it's whatever card they are trying to sell. It's obvious once you try it that it's not the card it's claiming to be because the performance is awful.
That said besides GPUs you do generally get what you pay for from China when buying PC parts. It's just that it often ends up being more expensive than what you would pay elsewhere. PC parts aren't especially cheap in China (they're not especially cheap anywhere, really) and shipping them costs money. Due to the size and weight of many PC components you aren't likely to get free shipping. Plus you end up getting some noname brand that might not be as reliable or might fail prematurely.
The one time LTT did a video on PC building in China (using parts bought locally from stores) the parts actually cost him more than equivalent parts would cost in US or Canada and that was despite the fact that all the parts were noname brands.

Thank you.

 

[RattletraPM]

I have abandoned my idea for running Ryse.

I am now interested in just Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 but at 1080p60 locked, everything on medium settings except AA on high. Do you think these specs can handle that?:

• 2x 4GB DDR4 RAM
• Intel 6th Gen. Quad Core i5 6600T 2.7Ghz LGA1151 CPU
• AMD RX 570 4GB GPU
• SSD, not HDD
• Windows 10

What about 900p60, too? Thank you.

Well... You may get away with a somewhat consistent 900p 60 FPS in Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 with your config and settings but I doubt you'll be able to reach stable 1080p 60 FPS, after all, the RX 570 is what it is. If I were you, I'd try to get at the very least a 580 if you want to go with an AMD GPU: their prices dropped like crazy and you can get great customs with 8 GB VRAM for not a whole lot more than your average 570 anyway.

About the CPU, I'd also say it's not ideal. First off, quad cores are still okay in most games nowadays but they may get quickly worse in the future as games are finally starting to take advantage of a higher number of CPU cores/threads - which is why you may want to get at least a 6 core for anything that's not a low-tier/entry-level build. Second, your CPU is a T SKU, which means it's a "power-optimized" model: in other words, it's a downclocked i5 6600. Needless to say, that's not going to be good for gaming. In the end, if you can't afford or get anything else than a recent-ish quad-core then that'd still be fine if you ask me, but I'd try to go with another model, possibly an unlocked one so you can overclock if you want.

 

[Humanity]

Well... You may get away with a somewhat consistent 900p 60 FPS in Sniper Ghost Warrior 3 with your config and settings but I doubt you'll be able to reach stable 1080p 60 FPS, after all, the RX 570 is what it is. If I were you, I'd try to get at the very least a 580 if you want to go with an AMD GPU: their prices dropped like crazy and you can get great customs with 8 GB VRAM for not a whole lot more than your average 570 anyway.

About the CPU, I'd also say it's not ideal. First off, quad cores are still okay in most games nowadays but they may get quickly worse in the future as games are finally starting to take advantage of a higher number of CPU cores/threads - which is why you may want to get at least a 6 core for anything that's not a low-tier/entry-level build. Second, your CPU is a T SKU, which means it's a "power-optimized" model: in other words, it's a downclocked i5 6600. Needless to say, that's not going to be good for gaming. In the end, if you can't afford or get anything else than a recent-ish quad-core then that'd still be fine if you ask me, but I'd try to go with another model, possibly an unlocked one so you can overclock if you want.

Dabn.