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New gfx. 290>780?

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Corby Glenn
Hey fellas.

After years of being a red, I got the 680 when it came out and it's been a great card since.

Looking now to upgrade, I can't see anything competing with a 290.

I see the manufacturer cards are out imminently, are these the way to go?

I have a Haf932 so internal heat isn't too much of an issue.

Just looking for confirmation really and don't want to go SLI.

Ta

JB
 
Hi Jobe,

I came from SLI 680's to SLI Titans and the gains were night and day. I was gaming on triple 120Hz screens then though but even being on one 1440 or 1080P screen now, the Titan is a massive gain over a 680. Now the 780 is fractionally slower than a Titan and when overclocked, it can pass a Titan with little effort.

The 290 seems to be a bit of a lottery at the moment and it seems to be a bit of a gamble as to black screening or not, so things like this need to be considered but it is comparable to a 780 and the reference card is slightly cheaper and of course, all cards can have issues, so seems harsh to mention that but I thought it worthy of a mention.

Other things to consider is Mantle Vs GameWorks... It has come to light recently that newer Nvidia TWIMTBP titles will be using GameWorks, which is a set of libraries which Nvidia only control and give a massive boost to Nvidia games, pretty much in the way AMD have Mantle but Mantle is open source and nothing stopping Nvidia jumping on this tech, so by going Nvidia again, you could potentially have your cake and eat it :D

If it was me buying today, I would be jumping on OcUK's ACX 780
http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=GX-218-EA&groupid=701&catid=1914&subcat=1341

With EVGA, you get fantastic warranty suppoort, they allow the warranty to stay with the card and not just the original purchaser and they have no qualms about people removing the cooler to pop it under water. This alone is a great asset for any purchase.
 
Thanks G, some good advice there.

Didn't realise they had dropped so much in price.

Doesn't that price make the Ti780 way too expensive?

Also Anandtech has the 780 generally slower than the 290.

Does this mirror real life performance?

Ta

JB
 
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The Ti is Nvidia's flagship card for performance and as others will like to confirm, the price is very high for that little bit of extra performance. The 290X is similar and seeing prices of custom cooled 290X's, Nvidia will only be marginally dearer.

As much as I love to use Anand (fantastic for base comparisons), they tend to use older drivers and reference card Vs reference card. With some of the custom 780's, they will surpass the 290 with ease and using the standard over clocking tools, the 780 has a higher overclock in general to the 290.

I have been using a 6970 for a while and whilst everything works, I just found AMD needed more effort. I needed to run Afterburner and have the power limit raised to stop crashing in BF4, whereas with Nvidia, you can plug and go. Just little things like that had me bugged and shouldn't need to be done.

My tiny gripe with AMD over :p

Have a look here at the Hexus review of the EVGA ACX and you will see what I mean :)
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/62733-evga-geforce-gtx-780-ti-superclocked-acx/?page=4
 
As it stands I wouldn't recommend the 290 over the GTX780 despite being a 290 owner myself, unless you absolutely need/want the AMD specific benefit such as 1GB extra vram, Mantle, TrueAudio etc. This is because up to now, the black screen issue is still very hit and miss (some people don't get it at all, some get it only when they overclock the memory clock too high, some get it even on stock memory clock)...reliability wise, it certainly does fall short comparing to the GTX780.

One thing to bear in mind when reading reviews is the 780 at stock is very underclocked compared to its potential.
Not too sure about that, considering most GTX780's (except for reference) standard boost clock is above the core clock of the stock clock of the 290.
 
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at the end of the day they are cards that compete in the same bracket. Both fast as hell and good cards. Best thing to do is decide which extras you prefer? nvidia or amd. Personally i went for 290. But they are under water. People with nvidia will say go for the 780 and people with amd will say go for 290 (except those who got a bad one (put 6 in pc's so far and all were ok here))
 
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One thing to bear in mind when reading reviews is the 780 at stock is very underclocked compared to its potential.
Yes this is the thing many buyers fail to take notice of when comapring review results between the r290 & GTX 780.

Nvidia no clock there GPU's to the limit out the box like AMD do..
 
I had a 290 and it was very loud and liked to crash quite a bit. Swapped to a reference 780 which was considerably quieter and worked a lot better. I'm now running a single 7950 which works well so not an AMD thing just the 290 is not a very well thought out card. Things should improve with the 3rd party coolers.
 
If you can, wait for non ref 290's to be released b4 making your decision.

I had a 290 and it was very loud and liked to crash quite a bit. Swapped to a reference 780 which was considerably quieter and worked a lot better. I'm now running a single 7950 which works well so not an AMD thing just the 290 is not a very well thought out card. Things should improve with the 3rd party coolers.


Is the problem just the cooler?

JB
 
Not had any problems with my 290 but looking around others are but in amds defence these are still early days for drivers, but lets be fair the 780 is a decent card so just buy what ever takes your fancy
 
What about the 780Ti over a 780?

There seems to be about 10% performance at 1900*1200 which is what I game at.

Thinking about it, 10% for £150+ doesn't seem too good a deal....

JB
 
What about the 780Ti over a 780?

There seems to be about 10% performance at 1900*1200 which is what I game at.

Thinking about it, 10% for £150+ doesn't seem too good a deal....

JB
The top end GPU's have always be overpriced..:(
But the 780ti is the perfect GPU for gaming at 1920x1200 if you want to use high detail settings....;)

:p...Go on Treat yourself to a late Christmas present by buying two GTX 780's to run in SLI to see the new year in..... As you know how that saying goes "you only live once & life to short BAH BAH BAH"...:p
 
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The top end GPU's have always be overpriced..:(
But the 780ti is the perfect GPU for gaming at 1920x1200 if you want to use high detail settings....;)

:p...Go on Treat yourself to a late Christmas present by buying two GTX 780's to run in SLI to see the new year in..... As you know how that saying goes "you only live once & life to short BAH BAH BAH"...:p

Lol value my danglies too much
 
Not too sure about that, considering most GTX780's (except for reference) standard boost clock is above the core clock of the stock clock of the 290.

Well having first hand experience and hung out in the owners thread it is very much the case. Mine boosts to 1250, well above the already overclocked boost, many other 780 owners the same, looks at the leader boards and you will see overclocked 780s mixing it with titans and 780tis
 
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