Hi all I am in a bit of bother lol with choosing between these I currently have a Msi 7950 3gb which I have been happy with but want to be able to play games in 1080p at ultra settings with as many frames as possible I have a 120hz monitor and would like a smoother experience when playing games like bf4 crysis 3 etc which one would be the better upgrade and will last me for a few years thank you
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Gtx 780 or r9 290 for ultra settings 1080p
- Thread starter padmdhs
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A single one of either gtx780 or 290 isn't going to cut it for a consistent 120+ fps. You'll need 2. If you can't afford 2, get another 7950 and crossfire, that will be the best bang for buck at present. Is your 7950 clocked?
No I haven't overclocked it I understand with one card I won't hit over 120 frames on those kind of games I will defo go sli/cf when I can afford to but for now will only be able to get one card which one would be best in your opinion in my situation I just want the games to look there best in 1080p and have as many fps as possible for a smooth experience thank you for replying
Soldato
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780's are a safer bet, create less heat/less power consumption and more reliable 
780's are a safer bet, create less heat/less power consumption and more reliable
Thank you i think i will change sides this time round and go for a 780 i was looking at the EVGA GeForce GTX 780 3GB Superclocked with ACX Cooler
Soldato
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Great card which will just do what it says on the tin, backed by good warranty support.
Flip a coin, the cards are pretty close together in performance. The 780 will probably marginally edge it in the majority of games if you're assuming you're overclocking both of them but the 290 is a cracking card if you get a custom cooled version.
The 780 needs to be overclocked really. It's quite underclocked out the box in general. Even without touching volts you should get a nice safe bump from an increase in clock speed.
The 780 needs to be overclocked really. It's quite underclocked out the box in general. Even without touching volts you should get a nice safe bump from an increase in clock speed.
I have this one, great choice, you won't regret it!
Yes i agree with all of those points i never buy reference cards always go with after market coolers i usually like msi or gigabyte i currently have a msi 7950 twin frozr just overclocked it while i was bored lol but tried crysis 3 on ultra and was getting bad frame rates whice i suspected would happen but it happily runs it on high with ultra textures and no AA so i think i will see what i can get for my money with maybe a 780
Be interesting to know what you are currently getting with your current setup with BF4?
I'm using an i5-4670K not overclocked and a 780 not overclocked and at 1080p Ultra Settings I always get a consistent 90 Frames and that's with the Frame programme running in the background.
I'm using an i5-4670K not overclocked and a 780 not overclocked and at 1080p Ultra Settings I always get a consistent 90 Frames and that's with the Frame programme running in the background.
Soldato
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What do you mean no contest. So does the 780 struggle running BF4 at 1080p or something?
Not even close, ultra settings and I have mine FPS capped to 100, unless some of the levolution bits are happening I rarely drop below the 100.
In every other title, it's win some lose some 290 v 780 stock or oc'ed.
BF4 running Mantle on the 290 series, no contest on what's the better card, with Mantle, you don't need 120fps as Mantle fps dips have less of an impact than DX in terms of fluidity, it's a superior experience than DX.
It's a similar comparison that used to be associated with frame pacing issues present on CrossFire, higher fps on AMD but a lesser gaming experience than Nvidia SLi running lower fps.
If I'm right in saying the human eye cannot detect much beyond 80 frames a second so unless you are buying a card purely for benchmark figures a single R9-290 or 780 will be more than enough to run games at 1080 on Ultra settings with a single screen.
Only if you are using 3 screens do you need to consider a SLi set up at the moment. BF4 is well optimised now with one card Metro and Crysis 3 are not very well optimised with any single GPU so in that case if you want 80 frames plus then you need more than one Graphics card , but that is not to say that the game is perfectly playable with just one GPU if using one screen. Therefore if it were me as both single 780 and 290 can play games no problem I would be tempted to wait until the next generation of cards become available which will be in the next couple of months before investing in two cards.
Only if you are using 3 screens do you need to consider a SLi set up at the moment. BF4 is well optimised now with one card Metro and Crysis 3 are not very well optimised with any single GPU so in that case if you want 80 frames plus then you need more than one Graphics card , but that is not to say that the game is perfectly playable with just one GPU if using one screen. Therefore if it were me as both single 780 and 290 can play games no problem I would be tempted to wait until the next generation of cards become available which will be in the next couple of months before investing in two cards.
^^ 80fps ish is about the point that the average person's ability to effectively utilise information from higher framerates starts to taper off but its by no means a hard and fast limit.
A decent factory OC 780 will handle more maps on BF4 with full ultra setting 1920x1080p and excluding when the engine falls apart i.e. levolution which sometimes goes a bit funky you'll see something like 60-70fps mins, 90-100 avg. But there is no denying that purely for BF4 a 290 w/ Mantle does have the potential to offer the better experience in the long run - currently though its not the smoothest experience for everyone - memory leaks and associated graphics lag plague some people and additional crashing on top of the already buggy core game.
If I'm playing the game seriously (which is less and less with all the glitches and bugs and how each patch fixes 1 things, breaks 2 things that were previously fixed and introduces 3 new bugs for every 1 it fixes) I tend to turn down some settings to get the cleanest view anyhow which means I can easily hold 120fps w/ vsync or 125 without vsync (to minimise tearing) much of the time.
A decent factory OC 780 will handle more maps on BF4 with full ultra setting 1920x1080p and excluding when the engine falls apart i.e. levolution which sometimes goes a bit funky you'll see something like 60-70fps mins, 90-100 avg. But there is no denying that purely for BF4 a 290 w/ Mantle does have the potential to offer the better experience in the long run - currently though its not the smoothest experience for everyone - memory leaks and associated graphics lag plague some people and additional crashing on top of the already buggy core game.
If I'm playing the game seriously (which is less and less with all the glitches and bugs and how each patch fixes 1 things, breaks 2 things that were previously fixed and introduces 3 new bugs for every 1 it fixes) I tend to turn down some settings to get the cleanest view anyhow which means I can easily hold 120fps w/ vsync or 125 without vsync (to minimise tearing) much of the time.