So over the last two weeks I have taken a look at two different R7 370’s and two GTX 950’s so this week I’m going to pair them up and see just how good they perform in dual card configurations. Today I will start off the testing by testing and looking at how the two R7 370’s perform when in Crossfire. As with all of our Crossfire and SLI articles, this is not a review as I have already tested and reviewed both cards individually. So all I’m doing today is taking a quick look at what you can expect from two 370’s in Crossfire. Enjoy!

Product Names: Sapphire Nitro R7 370 4GB and Asus R7 370 Strix 4GB

Review Samples Provided by: Sapphire and AMD

Written by: Wes

Pictures by: Wes

Amazon Links: Sapphire and Asus

 

Our Test Rig and Procedures

Our Test Rig
CPU Intel i7-3960X Live Pricing
Memory Corsair Vengeance 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM Quad Channel  (4x4GB) Live Pricing
Motherboard Asus Rampage IV X79 Motherboard  Live Pricing
Cooling Intel Active Thermal Solution RTS2011LC Live Pricing
Power Supply Cooler Master Gold Series 1200 Watt PSU Live Pricing
Storage Kingston Hyper X 3K 240GB SSD Live Pricing
Case High Speed PC Test Bench Live Pricing
Our Testing Procedures
3DMark The same goes for the most current version of 3DMark using the Fire Strike benchmark in normal, extreme, and ultra settings
Unigine Heaven Benchmark 4.0 Using the “Extreme” preset
Unigine Valley Benchmark 1.0 Using the Extreme HD preset to get an average FPS
Bioshock Infinite Using the Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool we run Bioshock Infinite on the “Xtreme” quality setting. This has a resolution of 1920x1080, FXAA turned on, Ultra Texture detail, 16x Aniso Texture Filtering, Ultra Dynamic Shadows, Normal Postprocessing, Light Shafts on, Ambient Occlusion set to ultra, and the Level of Detail set to Ultra as well. We also run this same test at 2560x1440 using the same settings as mentioned above.
Tomb Raider Using the Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool we run Tomb Raider on the “Xtreme” quality setting. This has a resolution of 1920x1080, Exclusive Fullscreen turned on, Anti-Aliasing set to 2xSSAA, Texture Quality set to Ultra, Texture Aniso set to 16x Aniso, Hair Quality set to TressFX, Shadow set to Normal, Shadow Resolution on High, Ultra SSAO, Ultra Depth of Field, High Reflection quality, Ultra LOD scale, Post Processing On, High Precision RT turned on, and Tessellation is also turned on.  We also run this same test at 2560x1440 using the same settings as mentioned above.
Hitman: Absolution Using the Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool we run Hitman: Absolution on the “Xtreme” quality setting other than the MSAA setting is turned down from 8x to 2x. That setting puts the resolution at 1920x1080, MSAA is set to 2x, Texture Quality is set to High, Texture Aniso is set to 16x, Shadows are on Ultra, SSA is set to high, Global Illumination is turned on, Reflections are set to High, FXAA is on, Level of Detail is set to Ultra, Depth of Field is high, Tessellation is turned on, and Bloom is set to normal. We also run this same test at 2560x1440 using the same settings as mentioned above, except on the “high” setting.
Sleeping Dogs Using the Adrenaline Action Benchmark Tool we run Sleeping Dogs on the “Xtreme” quality setting. That means our resolution is set to 1920x1080, Anti-Aliasing is set to Extreme, Texture Quality is set to High-Res, Shadow Quality is High, Shadow Filter is set to high, SSAO is set to High, Motion Blur Level is set to High, and World Density is set to Extreme. We also run this same test at 2560x1440 using the same settings as mentioned above.
F1 2014 We use the built in benchmark for F1 2014. We use the Ultra setting and then test at 2560x1440 and 1920x1080
Total War: ROME II Ultra setting tested at 1920x1080 and 2560x1440, built in forest benchmark
Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor Using the built in benchmark we test with ultra settings at 1440p
Sniper Elite 3 Ultra setting tested at 1920x1080 and 2560x1440, built in benchmark
GRID Autosport Ultra setting tested at 1920x1080 and 2560x1440, built in benchmark
Theif Tested using the “Very High” setting at 1920x1080 and 2560x1440
Folding @ Home Using the Folding @ Home benchmark we test both single and double precision using the explicit result
Cinebench R15 OpenGL benchmark
Unreal Heaven Benchmark 4.0 heat testing We run through Unreal Heaven using the “Extreme” preset for 30 minutes to test in game cooling performance.
Power Usage Using Unreal Heaven Benchmark 4.0, we get our “load” power usage number from the peak power usage during our test. We get our numbers from a Kill-A-Watt connected to the test benches power cord.
Noise Testing Our Noise testing is done using a decibel meter 3 inches away from the video card on the bottom/fan side of the card. We test an idle noise level and then to get an idea of how loud the card will get if it warms all the way up we also turn the fan speed up to 50% and 100% and test both speeds as well. The 100% test isn’t a representation of typical in game noise levels, but it will show you how loud a card can be if you run it at its highest setting or if it gets very hot.

 


Synthetic Benchmarks

To just jump right into things I started testing the two R7 370’s in Crossfire by running through our synthetic benchmarks. Typically this is where I compare how cards perform and then I focus on the overall gaming experience in the gaming benchmarks. I wasn’t really sure what to expect from the 370’s in Crossfire, their performance individually was good enough to play most games at 1080p but typically cards like that when run in Crossfire or SLI run into some limitations due to things like their overall memory size or bandwidth that prevent them from completely scaling or comparing with single card setups. In 3DMark Fire Strike using the performance benchmark the cards in crossfire fell right in between a single GTX 780 and a single GTX 780 Ti. Considering just how good both of those cards are even today that is good company to be in. This still does have things like a GTX 970 up above the duo. Basically they fall in between the R9 390 and the R9 380 in AMDs current product line. Surprisingly the extreme and ultra tests don’t have any of those scaling issues I mentioned before. The higher memory bit rate and 4 gigs of ram in each card seem to help handle the higher resolutions properly.

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The results in the Heaven Benchmark 4.0 are discouraging to see though. There is obviously no crossfire support so the end result are results slightly less than an individual 370. In Valley the numbers are better with the duo getting close to the numbers that the GTX 780 puts up as well as the R9 390’s.

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In Game Benchmarks

For my next bit of testing I ran the two 370’s through our in game benchmark suite. This consists of 9 different modern games at their highest settings at both 1080p and 1440p (with the exception of one game). To make the results easier to take in I like to break down the results into three different FPS categories. Anything under 30 FPS is considered unplayable, anything over 60 FPS is ideal, and anything in between is playable but not perfect. Beyond that I also split up the results between the 1080p testing and 1440p. Just to recap how a single 370 performs I saw the following in my individual card testing.

1080p

Under 30 - 2

Over 30 - 5

Over 60 - 1

1440p

Under 30 - 5

Over 30 - 4

Over 60 - 0

As you can see below jumping up to Crossfire did give a nice performance boost, moving most of the games that performed okay up into the great performance category at 1080p. At 1440p most of the games weren’t playable at all but now almost all of them are with a few being up in that 60+ FPS category as well. There were a few issues though, specifically a couple games didn’t have Crossfire support, that is why even with Crossfire a few games were considered unplayable at our test settings. Hopefully AMD continues to work on the crossfire support as it would obviously increase the playability of a few games.

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So where did the 370’s fail? Well a big one was in GRID Autosport where the results were considerably lower than even the cards individually. Thief was the same as well with both 1080p and 1440p results falling under 30 FPS. Beyond those two games the cards in Crossfire did perform about where you would expect given the results in 3DMark. Most of the time they fall in between the GTX 780 and the GTX 780Ti. In Hitman:Absolution they performed even better, right up under the GTX 980 and above the R9 390’s.

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Power Usage

Normally in this section I would be taking a look at all of the cooling and noise performance. Seeing as today I’m looking at Crossfire performance so really the only thing to look at in this section is the power usage test results. I ran the two 370’s through two tests, Heaven Benchmark 4.0 and the newer Valley Benchmark as we are moving away from the Heaven Benchmark slowly. So how did it perform? Well in Heaven Benchmark the peak wattage was 346 watts but the more demanding Valley Benchmark pulls a much higher 470 watts. This is because the of the lack of Crossfire support for the Heaven Benchmark that we saw earlier. At 470 watts the 370’s pull nearly as much power as the GTX 980 TI but less than the R9 390’s that I have tested previously.

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Final Thoughts

So at the end of the day how is the performance of the 370’s in Crossfire? Well I was a little disappointed with two of our  games and one of our synthetic benchmarks not having Crossfire support with the 370’s. That said in the games and benchmarks that supported the cards I was impressed with the numbers. Surprisingly the higher memory bandwidth and the 4GB per card in memory really complemented the 370’s in Crossfire. In the end the performance was right up above a GTX 780 and below a GTX 780 Ti in nearly every test. This put the pair below the R9 390 and above the R9 380 that cost $330 and $190 respectfully. So what does a pair of 370’s run? Well you can get a pair for 300 for two 2GB models but the cards tested were slightly higher in price so about $350 for two. At that price it’s not really the best buy as you could pick up an R9 390 for less and see a little better performance.  Where going crossfire on the 370 is best though is if you build a nice $600 budget build now and upgrade to a second card later, in that situation you can upgrade your performance for the price of a few games and you don’t have to worry about selling your old card to try to recoup some of the cost.

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Author Bio
garfi3ld
Author: garfi3ldWebsite: http://lanoc.org
Editor-in-chief
You might call him obsessed or just a hardcore geek. Wes's obsession with gaming hardware and gadgets isn't anything new, he could be found taking things apart even as a child. When not poking around in PC's he can be found playing League of Legends, Awesomenauts, or Civilization 5 or watching a wide variety of TV shows and Movies. A car guy at heart, the same things that draw him into tweaking cars apply when building good looking fast computers. If you are interested in writing for Wes here at LanOC you can reach out to him directly using our contact form.

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garfi3ld replied the topic: #37078 01 Sep 2015 15:45
Today I take a quick look at how the R7 370 performs in Crossfire

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