R9 290 4GB or GTX 780 3GB ?

[Nadleeh]

Hi all.
I hope you guys can help me to make the right choice

I am building a mATX PC for LAN purposes and it consists of Cooler Master N200 case, Asrock H61M DGS R2.0, 8GB Crucial BallistiX 1600MHz, Intel Core i5 3570K, Cooler Master Hyper 212 cooler, Enermax MaxPro 600watt.

I have in my possession a Sapphire R9 290 4GB reference card

and a Zotac GTX 780 OC 3GB card

I am unsure which card to use for the longest possible time ? I want the best performance of but also not a jet plane noise like PC.
I like that the R9 290 is a bit faster and with 4GB vram, but I dislike the potential heat and noise. The GTX 780 I know is a bit slower and only has 3GB vram with may not be enough - but I like that it's cooler and quieter.

"The winner" I keep and the "looser" I sell

 

[Nadleeh]

Sell both, go Fury/980Ti .

Actually Fury Nano might look pretty sweet in a small build...

That would be nice, but is too expensive even after selling both cards
The only reason why I have both cards is because I got each for a great price - much cheaper than a new GTX 970/R9 390.

The difference will be ~10% iirc. I don't think its a performance gap worth worrying about personally. My own choice would chose the quieter of the 2. I don't know if noise is a priority for a lan machine though.

I should think that 1080p ought to be fine with 3GB, but others might be better placed to say as I have not played any recently releases games. Although, if its a Lan gaming pc wouldn't you want to be using medium-high rather than ultra gfx settings to maintain framerate and fluidity anyway, which will limit the ram requirements somewhat.

It's a LAN machine but I'm also planning on double it as my HTPC/media center in the living room when I'm not out for LAN. And here a quiet machine would be nice - at least I'm sure my fiancee would agree

Either way it could be I have to try out both cards and see which solution will be right for me.

 

[Nadleeh]

i have both a 290x and a 780ti, and at stock speeds when running 3d mark tests they both score the same.

if its in a small lan you want an card the exhausts outside the case.
I use both cards to game at 1440 and both again play the same and feel the same, bo get around the same FPS.
Right now in BF4 the cards use 1.75gb of Vram at 1440 all setting on ultra, so the 3gb of ram on the 780 will not be a problem.

Both of may cards are ref cooled, and if i have to bin one and keep only one i would be keeping the 780ti and dropping the 290x so....

i do find the my 290 to hit 85c watching 1080p movies and the fan will ramp to 40%, its not a card to be used in an htpc, the 780ti plays films at 33c

with the experience i have had if i was you i would be using the 780ti in the lad.

Thank you for the indepth answer ! That really gives me something to consider.
The case I'm using is the Cooler Master N200 mATX. It's a reasonable sized case with good airflow.

 

[Nadleeh]

Thank you all for the answers. Before both cards I had a Gigabyte GTX 670 Windforce X3 oc in the case and that card additionally overclocked reached about 68°c in this case, so I am pretty confident that the zotac too would run not far from those temperatures.

As for selling the cards (both) of them and getting a new I can't afford, I only have the two cards because I bid on both in hope of just getting one, but ended with both (got them for £200 in total). A new GTX 970/R9 390 is at least £260 where I live. So selling one of the cards will reduce my overall expenses and keep things within budget. Also my LAN/HTPC is purely made out of used hardware I bought to keep the costs at a minimum. Only the case is new.

I think I'll have to try both cards and if the noise is unbearable with the R9 290 I'll settle with the GTX 780.

 

[Nadleeh]

So I have tried out the Sapphire R9 290 reference card today in the living room. For normal browsing etc it is quiet but when we started watching movies it started being noisy. When I later tried playing a bit Singularity my fiancee got pretty annoyed by the noise while she was reading (I had headphones on), and granted when I took of the headphones the pc was louder than our dishwasher at its loudest in use...
So it seems that the GTX 780 is going in there, so tomorrow I'll swap cards and retest.

 

[Nadleeh]

Tried undervolting the 290? You should be able to get at least -25mv. It has made a huge difference on my MSI 290 GE with -37mv

Personally I wouldn't put up with a worse performing card and by quite a bit in new titles now, it is only going to get worse with future games, especially DX 12 and even more so when nvidia's new GPUs come out Not to mention 4GB vram is a big bonus now.

Well I have seen quite a few reviews of newer cards where the R9 290 and GTX 780 appear also and performance wise they don't see too far from eachother. When looking at the gtx 780ti it also stacks up pretty good vs the r9 290x & gtx 970/980 as far I've seen, so the gk110 performance should still be acceptable.

I tried undercoating but the cards crashes when just going - 18mw and it doesn't make a hughe difference noise wise.
Getting a 3rd party air cooler on it isn't really an option either since it takes up 3 pcie slots and hereby it will cover the only 4 SATA ports on the motherboard .
I've been trying to figure out if it could be ghetto modded with a big 1cm tall 100m fan on the heatsink block, but it realized it has a flot upper surface so air can't be blown into it.
While I would have liked the r9 290 I think I'll have to let it go and the upgrade further down the line.

 

[Nadleeh]

Depends what game but in some of the newer titles there is a decent enough difference, you can see a decent comparison in various titles here:

https://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/Sapphire/R9_390_Nitro/1.html

And then the new tomb raider game:

http://www.techspot.com/review/1128-rise-of-the-tomb-raider-benchmarks/page2.html

In highly tessellated games, the 780 should perform better though since it has much better tess. performance.

I was looking at the 780 back in June 2014 and it was ahead "overall" compared to the 290 and back then I was having second thoughts with the 290 purchase but with the VRAM hungry games nowadays plus dx 12 around the corner, I'm glad I didn't go with the 780 now

Not sure if you answered it before but honestly, you would be far better of just selling both and getting a 970.

Selling both to get a gtx 970 is more than I can afford. I am already in minus on my bank account because I won both cards instead of just one of them (betting on two horses etc). Also selling both wouldn't even cover the cost of a gtx 970. Also the gtx 970 is also 3.5gb + 0.5gb and we have seen Witcher 3 causing hiccups due to that. I would have gone with a r9 390 4gb if I could.
I think I'll sell the r9 290 and go with the gtx 780 untill I can afford a better card down the line.
I have the 780 installed now and overclocked it from 941@1120mhz core and Vram from 6ghz to 6.5ghz, and it runs cool and quiet enough and performance wise it's running a bit faster than the r9 290 due to the OC (I didn't dare oc the r9 290 since it ran so hot).